A Scenic World

Day Four: The Ventures’ “Frosty the Snowman”

I had a great plan for this photo. It’s been around 80 degrees here the last week or so. So I was going to get a chocolate snowman and take a photo of him melting in the foreground while I frolicked in summer clothing in the background. Brilliant, right?

Regardless of the plan, it was completely and utterly thwarted. First, as soon as I woke up, I heard that the heat was on. When I went outside to see what the temperature was like, I realized that not only was it NOT in the 80’s, it was cold enough to need a sweater and a coat.

I donned both and headed for the convenience store down the block to purchase my chocolate snowman. Of course they didn’t have any. I opted for a marshmallow one and walked back.

I REALLY wasn’t looking forward to going outside in summer gear in the cold, so I procrastinated for as long as possible. Finally, I forced myself into the cold, carrying snowman (obviously), camera, tripod, a box of stationary to set the snowman on in the grass, and some bubbles (the frolicking part).

I commenced to set up the shot with the camera on the ground. While I was in the process of doing so, no fewer than EIGHT PEOPLE walked away from the sidewalk and into my yard to ask me what I was doing. EIGHT! No one had ever asked me before, except for my next-door neighbor, who comes outside to talk to me any time she hears my door open, and the little three-year-old across the street, who usually just yells at me from the window.

Who are these people who would WALK INTO SOMEONE’S YARD to talk to them while they’re obviously busy doing something? Seriously! I walk a good bit, and I see people in their yards, and I JUST KEEP WALKING.

I was pretty annoyed by the last one, plus I was freezing, so I just went inside. Of course, I still had to take a shot and post something, so I went outside and took this rather silly photo. It has none of the original elements I’d planned and none of the artistry. Ah, well. Time for work!

I love cheese. I love McSweeney’s. How could I not love a McSweeney’s list about cheese?

*note to people who might not know me in real life: my friends can attest to the fact that I live off chocolate, cheese, coffee, toast, and bacon.

What to do when a friend from the Navy has a few days’ leave and comes and visits? Why, drag him out to a 365 shoot, of course!

We drove out to this dirt road I’d found before while exploring the town of Waldo. You can only drive so far, then you have to park and walk, which is what we did. I hadn’t see the lonely tree before, but I knew it was picture gold if I could just find the right angle.

The sun was to the right of the tree, which made the clearing to the left useless. So I decided to set up my tripod and camera behind the tree, keeping the sun to the right of both the camera and the tree.

There were brambles and weeds a few feet high back there, but I waded in with my open-toed sandals. I had just about gotten the tripod pushed down far enough into the detritus when I felt a sting. And another, and another.

I looked down and my right foot was covered with ants. I love ants, but I don’t like them biting me. I jumped out (leaving my camera where it was, actually) and managed to get all but a few stragglers off within seconds. Stephen helped we swipe away the ones I couldn’t see, and he used his 6′3″ frame to reach over and get the camera to avoid the ants.

Three nights later, I was still fighting the urge to scratch my ankle, which by then had scabbed over from the places I’d scratched so hard they bled. But hey, the picture’s alright, right?

I tried to force the 43mm into being a wide-angle lens today. Needless to say, it didn’t work.

I’d been taking some photos of the lovely yellow weeds behind my porch with the 43mm attached. The sun was alternately shining brightly and going behind clouds the entire time. At the beginning, I didn’t even bother to look up when the light changed - I just thanked God that the sun wasn’t singeing my skin for a moment. For some reason, though, when the sky clouded over the last time (it was actually the very last time of the entire afternoon), I looked up.

Ah, the tableau was stunning! I immediately ripped my camera off the tripod, changed the settings, and propped it on the grass, leaning against the tripod to try to get a jump shot for my 365 pic with that incredible background. I hadn’t really tried one before, and the angle was terrible - the nice part of the sky was just above the house behind mine, so I had to put the camera at about 60 degrees to miss the house (I had a few shots where the roof was in the corner). Then, of course, I had to jump into the camera frame AND capture it all with the remote. Ha!

It was still a nice sky:

And that photo I’d been shooting prior to this? Here it is, although I’m not completely finished with it yet:

I’m sprinting toward the finish line of my “favorite books” series for my 365 project. I already have Wednesday’s photo planned in my head, so in a sense, it’s just a matter of filling in the days until then.

For instance, today, I knew I wanted to do either The Grapes of Wrath or Darkness at Noon. I had had a disastrous try at the first one two days ago; one wet camera later, I decided to do the latter today.

“Darkness at Noon” is all about psychological torture in a totalitarian regime. So obviously, this photo wasn’t going to be about rainbows and fairies. My plan was to use a bright light, like an interrogator’s lamp, and have me trying to block out the light. The background would have to be dark.

I waited until noon to start, hoping that a symbolic act like that would somehow lead to a better picture. I duly hung up my black felt to block out the light coming from my windows, and as an added touch, to make me look a little more tortured (as if getting 4 hours of sleep wasn’t good enough), I put some dark eyeshadow under my eyes. Voila! I had a my-life-is-miserable-and-I’ve-been-tortured-for-days look.

I chose my 70mm lens, which is one of the harder ones to focus. With the room so dark and my “interrogator’s lamp” being just an old desk lamp with a 40watt bulb perched precariously on my bookshelf, I opted for an aperture of 2.4.

Twenty minutes later, I had let the autofocus do its thing a few dozen times and taken quite a few pictures. I headed outside to my porch to see if there were any actually in focus. Nearly the moment I stepped outside, I spotted my neighbor playing with her two-year-old son in the gorgeous weather (well, he might be two. Or one, or six. I’m really bad with ages). She’s half of this perfectly beautiful, hip couple that live across from me.

For the first time ever, she actually walked over and introduced herself! We exchanged pleasantries, and I settled down to review my photos. I thought I might have one or two decent ones, so I went inside to upload them. On my way to my desk, I caught sight of myself in the mirror.

I still had on that makeup.