Maggie’s Camera: A 5 Year Retrospective
About 5 years ago, my sister was working on cooking blog and I thought it would be fun if I started a blog. I choose photography because it had developed into my own favorite activity and my opportunity to take photography classes and share my photographs were going to be slim in the future. And so when I began my last photography class, nature photography, my blog launched!
In celebration of the 5-year anniversary of my blog, I wanted to take you all through some of my favorite posts in various ways. Please click on the links to see the some of my favorite photos and experiences!
My Favorite Posts from Each Year:
- Year 1: Texture
- I love the various solid shapes in the photo and how the stone halves appear to be floating over the area below. The composition makes the depth of the photo is difficult to interpret.
- Year 2: I couldn’t pick a favorite from this year because I was abroad and produced to many favorites. So here is a selection of some of my favorites:
- Favorite Post about food: Portraits of Spices
- I took A LOT of photos of food when I was abroad. Mainly because the food in Italy was the best I ever ate. (Sorry Mom!). The Italians really know how to cook. Not only do they know how to cook, but the markets display all these fresh ingredients that look equally delicious. This was my favorite because my eye was drawn to this collection of spices and I had a great time capturing them.
- Favorite post highlighting a place outside Florence: Not Such Disney Movie-esq
- I first traveled to Paris when I was 11 years old during a two-week vacation to Europe. Paris was towards the end of the trip and I was museumed out by the time we stopped at the Notre-Dame Cathedral and did not remember much of the location. However, I acknowledge my young age on my first trip and encouraged myself to return while I was abroad. I enjoyed my second visit to Notre-Dame much more. It was such a peaceful and beautiful place. This is my favorite photo of the cathedral because I think it captures the atmosphere of the interior. Even through the Cathedral is bustling with visitors, there is a stillness and sacred quality of the space.
- Favorite Post highlighting Florence: Coming to a Close on Florence:
- The Florence Duomo is the most recognizable image of the city and I was lucky to leave with a photo that captures its beauty. I have a hard time elaborating more on the photo because I am still captivated by the duomo’s beauty. I entered the photo into a photography show at my school, which my parents than framed as a gift to me. I am so fortunate to have this beautiful photo hanging on my wall to remind me of my wonderful experience in Florence.
- Favorite Post about food: Portraits of Spices
- Year 3: Sunday Stills: Blue
- I am fond of this post because of the work I put into it. I love making collages from photos taken out of magazines, especially National Geographic, and translated this craft into a photoshop project. This was the result and I am extremely proud of it.
- Year 4: Fall Walk
- Since beginning college, last fall was the first time I had been in Cleveland and I tried to capture the city’s beauty and share it with you. I love the way these 5 shots work together to give you a vivid picture of what fall looks like as well as the beautiful quality of the lake near my parents’ house.
- Year 5: Weekly Photo Challenge: My Neighborhood
- One of the more recent posts, is one of my favorites because it demonstrates the shift my own process has taken over the past year when I got an Iphone. Before I got on Iphone, I had to actively bring a camera along with me in order to take photos, but now with the Iphone (I swear this is not an ad) I can take beautiful photos even when I am not planning on it.
Ongoing Projects
- Alphabet Project – One of my ongoing projects is my compilation of a photographic alphabet. Although I haven’t posted much on it, I am still working on it, and I always knew this would be an ongoing project and would come together over the years. My favorite post is “ABC, its easy as 1, 2, 3.” The variety of the subjects shows how various objects, big or small, can still be interpreted as the same letters.
- Photoshop – As someone who continues to dapple in digital photography, I have enjoyed experimenting with photoshop. My favorite photo I had posted to date with a photo edited in photoshop is “RIP Tree.” The touches I added are similar to when I was working with post-production work with physical prints when you added a tiny bit of color using oil or permanent markers.
- Beer Bottle Project – Probably my most ongoing project is my beer bottle collection and the photographs that accompany. This project began an interest in the packaging of beer bottles. I do more planning for the collection than I actually do taking photos, but continue to collect beer bottles with the intention of expanding the project in the future. My favorite post, “Pumpkin Ale“, reflects what I hope to develop the project into. One of the series will include bottles that are similar types of beers, photographed together to make an interesting image of bottles. I think this post captures that idea particularly well, especially with the pumpkin in the background
Favorite Series of Posts
I was almost evenly split between my Wave Hill Series and Lake View Cemetery, but ultimately chose Lake View Cemetery. I continue to be drawn back these since I first visited the fall of 2006. And for those of you that follow my blog, see a draw for me towards cemeteries. For me it is not in a dark sense, but more from the art historian perspective that finds the grave markers beautiful and interesting and then the artist in me who loves taking photos of them and framing them in different compositions.
- Sunday Stills Corner
- Lake View Cemetery Crosses
- Weekly Photo Challenge: Peaceful
- Lake View Cemetery: Crying Angel
- Lake View Cemetery: Figures
Favorite Spot Revisited
My favorite aspect of Claude Monet’s work is that he returned to the same spots again and again and painted how they would appear different times of the year, the day, as years passed, etc. This created beautiful series among his worked (as well as how differently he saw the same things as his eye sight deteriorated). It became a personal goal to return to some of the same spots with the same goal in mind. I did this most frequently with places in Cleveland. My favorite series created with this goal in mind is of the South Chagrin River reservation. The first selection of photos are from the winter of 2009 while the other two are from 2011, one selection focusing on photos taken over the summer while the other highlights the fall.
I hope you enjoyed my retrospective. Please flip through my blog and let me know what some of your favorite posts are! I look forward to 5 more years of posting!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Up
After a very long day Friday here in Boston and a relaxing day yesterday, I finally made it out side for a much needed run. It was a beautiful day and the trees are in bloom,and my allergies are clearly at full force. I took handful of photos of the trees. Here is my favorite looking up at two very different and beautiful trees!
When I originally saw this weeks challenge I knew I wanted to post photos of the marathon and how much my life changed between this year’s marathon and last year’s. However, in the aftermath of the explosions by Copley Square and the Marathon finish line I decided to go a different route.
I live about 5 minutes from the course between the 21 and 22 mile markers. This allowed me to go up with some friends, watch the elite runners and go back to my apartment for a bit while I waited about 3 more hours until my cousin got to the same point. The crowds were pumped up both times and were a lot more entertaining the second time. When runners were running by (mainly the people running to raise funds for various charities) it was obvious they had been joined by friends who were running with them at various miles.
While I was waiting to cheer for my cousin a college looking kid popped up beside me and began offering the runners chips. I captured that moment and thought his enthusiasm captured the excitement of the crowd cheering the thousands of runners along.
And then about 30 minutes later, my group of friends and I were beginning a movie and my sister texted me asking if I knew what was going on. And suddenly the energetic excitement changed into shock and a somber atmosphere filled the room. We proceeded to watch the coverage non-stop for the next three hours. We watched the number of reported casualties slowly increase. We saw the same clips of the explosions multiple times. And we watched a wonderful man talk about how after he completed the marathon he picked up a women who had lost both her legs and carried her to the medic tent.
I am still taking in all the news. Fortunately for me all my friends and family are safe. My cousin was unable to cross the finish line but was unharmed. News will continue to trickle in and I will continue to learn more about the incident. But I will always remember how my excitement disappeared into a shocked somber mood.
One Color
When I posted my Weekly Photo Challenge: Color, I posted my favorite photo that I did post-processing color adjustments to. As I explained in that post I love adjusting the colors and saturation in photoshop to give the photos various effects. Here are the rest of the photos and descriptions about what I changed. What do you think the color adds to the photos?
I took out the red while increasing the blue to a full 100% and increased the green a tiny bit. (I posted a photo of the same subject on Flickr here).
Green was increased. (Originally posted in Wave Hill Part 4)
Red was taking out while both blue and green were increased. (Originally posted in A Rocky Texture)
Red was increase while blue was decreased. (I posted a similar version of this stone cross in Lake View Cemetery Crosses)
The blue hue was increased a lot while red was increased a little. (Originally posted in Slides or Black and White and posted another photo of this grave marker in Lake View Cemetery: Figures)
If I have time in the next week or so I am going to try to discuss this effect in more detail because it really is my favorite and for someone who is just learning photoshop, one of the easiest ways you can manipulate a photo with out using the one click tools.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Color
When I read this week’s photo challenge and it discussed post production work on the photos for the theme color I knew exactly what I wanted to do. My favorite post production work in photoshop is playing with the hue balances and saturations. It reminds me of my photo 2 days in high school when we would do various coloring devices on our black and white prints. This included dying the photos with sepia or taking ink and hand coloring a print. It allows the photographer to take a black and white photograph and altar how someone interprets the photo than when they originally saw it.
I first used this element in photoshop when I was taking my nature photography class and occasional returned to it at varios times (Sunday Stills: Blue and Simple Saturation). I selected 6 photos that originally were either black and white or somewhat bland when it came to color where the texture and lines of the composition were the focus.
Here is my favorite one. It began as a black and white photograph where I decreased the blue and green hues while increasing the red ones a bit. I am going to post the rest of them this week.
Sunday Stills: Potluck
Here is my contribution for this week’s Sunday Stills: Potluck. I took it last weekend when I was down in the North End Park on the Boston Greenway. I was taking photos of the skyline and these square arches caught my eye and I began snapping away at them. Enjoy my photo!
Weekly Photo Challenge: My Neighborhood
One of my favorite things about my neighborhood is the pond. I’ve always lived close to water, usually in the forms of small lakes, so I was excited when I learned my new apartment was near a pond. I’ve enjoyed taking snap shots of the pond on my phone and watching it change in the seasons. Here is a photo I took today on a run. Enjoy!
