Spoons 04/19 - 04/25 (Jaime)

Sorry I haven't posted in the last couple of weeks. Getting ready for yesterday's move was taking up all of my time.

It was a very busy day yesterday, the movers came at 9 am and left at 9 pm. We now live in an empty house until Thursday and then we're homeless for a week.

You may be asking, what does this have to do with spoons? Well, the movers took everything, so this is what we were left with for breakfast this morning:

Plastic spoons for a week!

Spoons 04/19 - 04/25 (Sara)

Wee, spoons. The challenge with a topic like spoons is that though spoons are easily accessible, I felt like I needed to find a way to make a spoon (or make spoons) artistic. I had trouble with this, so I'm not sure what the response will be for my spoon pictures. I noticed that a spoon kind of looked like a flower petal, so I made a flower out of the spoons:

Then, just for kicks, I did a close-up on the detail on the spoons. Why did I choose a green background? Partially because it's my favorite color, and also because it's symbolizing the grass which the flower grows in?... haha:

Spoons 04/19 - 04/25 (Mel)

I went Hiking to a tea plantation this weekend but before I left I took one of the spoons from my apartment just in case...

I tried several things with my spoon. First I tried an animated GIF because I wanted to do one for a while.



I also took pictures of the spoon in different places


and different poses.


These are the ones that I liked the most.

Spoons 04/19 - 04/25 (Josh)

Spoons? Ok, cool.

I wasn't in the mood to make a spoon sculpture, or filling a spoon up with something (since I don't really cook). Instead I thought I'd go with the sub-theme of "SPOONS IN ACTION!"

So I grabbed my bike, my camera and headed down to the National Mall. After getting into a collision with a novice biker and de-skinning my left hip/cheek (if only the theme this week was skin), then I went down and forgot that they were having concerts on the mall with Earth Day Week. As you know there are a lot of food and DC souvenir stalls next to the museums. So it was time to stalk the tourists and welcome them to DC. Since it was a nice and warm day, ice cream was on the menu. Unfortunately most of them were on sticks or in a cone, but I found some people using spoons!

After stalking about 5 different people with their spoon usage, I decided to merge two pics of the same lady. She was by far enjoying her ice cream the most! And also, she definitely noticed me by the third shot as I tried to pretend that I was taking pictures of the National American History Museum. I was pretty sure she was about to walk over to me and say "wtf?", so I bolted. But I think I got too good ones here, as I was trying not to make her the focal point of the photo, but rather an "action of spoon usage" that accompanied the picture.

Macro 04/12 - 04/18 (Jeff)

Guys, Sorry I am late as well with the post. But I got to play around with the Macro setting, and really had some fun with it. Please Excuse my lateness. But I really am fascinated by this method of photography and will use it later on, probably in more posts! Enjoy!I took this picture just trying out the macro feature. Really fun Stuff!

Macro 04/12 - 04/18 (Sara)

Hey guys!

Sorry for the late post! I took my picture on Saturday but you know how lazy Sundays go (true that, DOUBLE TRUE)

Anyway, my first shot were these azaleas bushes outside Jeff's house, and unintentionally, I got some nice bokeh! Jeff thinks these bushes are annoying, but I think they're pretty and don't appear to have annoying pollen like easter lilies.

I took the shot from an upward angle, so the bokeh comes from the light coming through the trees.

On Sunday, I got to spend about 3 hours at a Barnes, waiting for Jeff to finish golfing with some church friends, and found this totally awesome book!


(GLEE!)

Here are some more macro shots I took. I try to submit photos to the Pioneer Woman Photography Assignments because she's my favorite food blogger, so some of those pictures are older (namely the hamster and non Miso cat pics).

Macro 04/12 - 04/18 (Josh)

As with what Mel stated, my first urge was to take of something of nature. However, I also wanted to try something different. After the crazy B-day party for Raul at our house on Saturday night, all day Sunday I was pretty much just cleaning up. When I was doing so, I found on my little "stuff from India" section in my house, three little Indian God's that girlfriend from high school, Sabrina, bought me at this little Indian store in Paris. The tallest one (from left: Ganesh, Vishnu, and Shiva) are only about 1 inch tall. So what I did was in the background when I was in India at Neha's wedding, I bought two stone statues each about 8 inches high of Lakshmi (left) and Ganesh (right) holding up a marble slab painted and mounted inside of a frame. So the focus was on Vishnu in the middle and I tried to use the depth to make the statues in the back look really big, even though they were only a few inches taller. I hope I made Sara proud.




On a side note, I'm annoyed by how Shiva is angled too much, but I was still hungover when taking this, so it was the best I could do.

Macro 04/12- 04/18 (Pere)

Very busy weekend for me so I did not have a lot of time to do anything fancy...

On the very first week Sarah posted the sunset progression and I really like it so I wanted to do something involving more than one picture for this week. I took this pictures of a coffee mug, not very exciting subject but I hope that by combining two pictures together they will enhance the effect...

Macro 04/12- 04/18 (Mel)

I am not sure if I got the theme right or not.. but I tried to copy Sara's example..





It's the third time I take pictures of plants, I need to find something else...

Love 04/05 - 04/11 (Scott)

As with the other posters, I struggled to find a working definition of love to use as my inspiration. When I think of love, I think of a face and a feeling, paired together. While I can't take a picture of a feeling, I can try and express it as a beautiful merging of two entities and I think my first picture captures that. The opportunity arose during the thunderstorm when the power went out, and the candles got lit. A pair of candles set in hoops provided the scene and light for this picture, capturing a lovely warm hue. I really like love the soft glow in the forground, as the candles individual lights merge together and the once contrasting shapes of the candles - one tall and one short - even out, creating almost identical shapes.

The other part of love, the face, came to me accidentally and exposed a highly passionate "love/hate" relationship. Like loving an ugly pet, words can't express the reasons people love certain things. My house and I at times have that kind of relationship, including this weekend when Chrystelle and I were demo'ing a basement bathroom and nothing was going right. At the end of the night, just as I ripped the sink off the wall and felt like throwing it through a wall, I see this hideous face smiling up at me and I can't help but smile back at it. This is probably one of the more disgusting things I have seen, however I can't help but find it cute and loveable with the beady eyes and the crooked smile. A smile only a mother could love.

Love 04/05- 04/11 (Pere)

When I saw the theme of the week the first picture that came to mind was this one...

I love the way it came out, I love that we were together in the raft (ok not a raft but a kayak) and I love the subject ;-)

So is perfect for this week

Love 04/05- 04/11 (Mel)

I had this idea to get a picture of people in love during the weekend but Chinese couples are kind of prude and they do not enjoy public affection so I went with an inanimate object

There is a tradition in which couples buy a lock, engrave their names on them and then hang them on a special place and throw the key away. Supposedly, this will lock their love and make them stay together forever

For this one I did selective Sepia. The edges are not so well defined but for some reason I uploaded the wrong file to flickr


This one is the complete chain of locks


I thought this was a Chinese thing because I had never seen such a thing before but Google showed me that I was wrong. Apparently is a very common tradition everywhere and there is even a town in Nevada called 'Lovelock'. (More info and pictures from around the world here)

(I hope that you guys don't mind that I added my own blogger account to the site . it's just a lot more continent for me to post from my own account considering that I need to bypass the firewall)

Love 04/5 - 04/11 (Sara)

I wasn't quite sure what to do for this week's post. I wasn't sure if we could just take pictures of things that we love, or if we had to take pictures of things that mean love. Anyway, my picture is of the days where little girls pluck flower petals, asking the flower (or fate) whether the guy of their dreams loves them or not. In the end, it doesn't matter what the flower says. I already know :)

Spring 03/29 - 04/04 (Scott)

I ventured down to the cherry blossom festival Sunday morning, arriving around 9am. Unfortunatley the sky was semi-cloudy then, but it was all sun by the time I left around noon. Overall, I didn't like most of the shots I took of the blossoms as they tended to blur into the cloudy sky. They had quite a bit of greenery to them as the leaves had definately sprouted by sunday, however i'll leave you with a series of festival sights I think few people captured.

The first is from a bridge on the south end of the tidal basin and one of my favorite spots to shoot the washington monument. I enjoy the fact that you are close of the monument yet show the water, trees and flowers. I think it really beautifies the mall and shows that DC isn't just a metropolitain area, we have a large park in the center too, just like NY. I feel like this is a 'postcard' shot.

This second shot proves the existance of the eastern bunny as this was taken on Easter Sunday. Unfortunately he had no basket with him, as far as I could see, but he does have a carrot for a heart - update your anatomy books please.

The next shot took me a while to capture - on the western side of the tidal basin the wind was picking up and was ripping petals off of the trees. It was very hard to capture the frenzied effect on film, but I think this picture did it best. I think this best captures the spring feeling as you have the couple with stroller, almost out of frame, taking a walk under the cherry trees.

The last shot was a woman who stood on my picnic table where i was eating lunch in order to grab a shot. I thought this captured the essence of my festival experience - tons of people taking pictures - not of the usual washington monument, but of the blossoms - as seen in the reflection in her sunglasses. I wanted to crop in around her sunglass to emphasize the cherry trees, but then you lose the washington monument.

Spring 03/29 - 04/04 (Melissa)

Sorry for posting so late
The office was closed on Monday and I didn't have access to non-blocked internet untill today
Here is my pic! I took it on Putuo Monuntain.

Spring 03/29 - 04/04 (Jaime)

I hate to sound like a broken record, but here's another pic of a spring flower! :)

I don't believe this one is a cherry blossom, i found it in the sculpture garden next to the Natural History Museum.

Enjoy!

Spring 03/29 - 04/04 (Pere)

So I did make it to the festival, and I get the bonus points as per Scott's email :D

To not disappoint the group here you have a couple of shots from the blossoms...



Yes you’ve guessed right it was busy, very busy and I think that every single person there had a digital camera so I’m pretty sure that the two pictures I have posted you have like millions of copies out there from all possible angles.

I wanted to post at least a couple of pictures from the event that hopefully not many other people saw, well the shadow of the monument most likely was snapped by other people but definitely not a shadow of Maraea and I

Spring 03/29 - 04/04 (Sara)

This topic was one of my favorites because I love flower photography! I know spring isn't all about flowers, but when I think of spring, I think of flowers (and pollen).

I took a few pictures in Reston, and a few in NC when I was there for the weekend. I even arranged some flowers with Jeff's mom, but those pictures came out too dark because we took them indoors. I can't help it that my favorite lighting will always be outdoor lighting :)

When I took this picture, the sun was so bright, so I couldn't see the exposure meter inside the view finder, but I think it turned out ok with post processing. These flowers (what are these? they're outside MicroStrategy too and they smeeeell) are so cute, but they smell disgusting:

Another one of my favorites from this weekend was a random shot outside an REI. This was one of those circumstances where I hate carrying the camera around but this time I'm so glad I did. Jeff and I went to 4 different bike shops so he could find the helmet he wanted to buy. He did not find the helmet due to poor selections in NC, but I found a great shot :)

I love the bokeh in this picture.

Spring 03/29 - 04/04 (Josh)

Seems like this year it's going to be all about extremes.

The largest amount of snow (per inch) recorded in DC.

And now it seems like we're going to have a really warm summer ahead of us as it's supposed to be in the 50s right now during the day as a high, and instead for the past week, we've been pushing 80. Therefore, it was only fitting that with the warm weather comes blooming, emerging, sprouting.

Most people think of tulips, cherry blossoms, lillies, etc. However once thing that I always like to examine, because at a world of it's own it has it's own type of forest is moss. As I went home to good ol' Johnstown, PA for Easter then I noticed that although it was really warm and almost 80, it hadn't hit up there as soon and therefore everything was still pretty dreary. But the moss was starting to grow like crazy because of the amount of moisture still on the ground left over from all of the snow.

So go explore the forests (thanks to macro) of moss:

As a bonus since I didn't have time to go see the Cherry Blossoms, this one is of a close-up of a Hyacinth (commonly known as baby's-breath) and it was one of the few plants that was growing around my mom's house. I like it because if you look at the pollen anthers (look at the full size), they remind of the small Aliens that would burst out of the chests of people in the Alien movie series. :-D