More From the 50 States

Well as we all know, I became quite infatuated with The 50 States Project. The first assignment was for each participant to photograph 'people'. I posted some of my favorites.

This round of the project, the assignment was to photograph 'habitat'. Here are a few that I really liked and found interesting.

Of course I have to start with Michigan, because, I am Michigan!

"Future Home - New Hudson, Michigan, 2009" © Peter Baker

I lived in one of these bad boys, and I loved the cozy double wide very much, unfortunately, our neighbor also enjoyed our cozy double wide and its occupants a little too much. So our stay in the lovely double wide was short lived.

There is no caption to go with this picture just a title, and I think once again, Peter the photographer for the state of Michigan, captured Michigan in this photo perfectly, even the title is fitting. With the hard economic times here in Michigan showing no signs of letting up, many people are downsizing and moving into smaller, more affordable homes, such as these trailers.

The photo from Delaware is very interesting after seeing this photo from Michigan.

This caption accompanied the photo.

"I live in a small beach town on the coast of Delaware and there is a huge disparity in types of housing here. A lot of the houses in town are second homes for wealthy tourists from the DC area. The only industry here are service or retail which creates an huge economic gap between the locals and the tourists. Due to the inflated price of real estate because of the proximity to the beach a large majority of the locals live in modular homes and trailers. This single wide trailer still sales for upwards of $200,000."

There were two other pictures that related to each other.

This one from Vermont.

"Peter King, builder of Vermont Tiny Houses. Bakersfield, VT" © Seth Butler

With this caption.

"On the perimeter of his personal one-eighth acre garden and Tiny House, Peter King of Bakersfield, VT, carries his unicycle and juggling implements before an inaugural evening ride around his current Vermont Tiny Houses project in honor Earth Day, 2009. A former busker who currently lives off-the-grid on less than $14,000 USD income per year, Peter King is now thriving as a teacher, gardener, carpenter and homesteader while building houses 10 ft. by 10 ft. by 10 ft. [sometimes taller] and managing to work an average of three days in a given week. King is very excited about Buckmister "Bucky Fuller", sustainable community and de-industrialization. He is now planning one of many future micro-socioeconomic experiments where community farmers work together to encourage people in living a more simplified life, teaching the ideas surrounding building small self-sufficient but scalable, reduced-carbon-footprint communities of Vermont Tiny Houses and Gardens which have recently become quite appealing, especially given that people are looking to cut back in the midst of the current economic downturn facing all the United States of America. In a recent Burlington Free Press article, King was quoted as saying "You can live a fantastic life in one of these things [Vermont Tiny Houses] if you're clever... You never feel claustrophobic or trapped because you're always two steps from the door.""

And this one from Washington.

With this caption.

"Caleb Goodaker-Craig, a student at the Evergreen State College lives "off the grid" in a one room cabin. He has no electricity, running water, or even an address. He enjoys the peace and quiet afforded him by living alone in the forest, free from distractions of traffic, television and neighbors."

It's amazing to see how all four actually relate together maybe for different reasons but they all are looking at downsizing. Four entirely different states completely relate to one another.

Through The Viewfinder

I finally tried it! I bought the required camera back in October off of ebay, and just today I made the light blocker and started experimenting with 'through the viewfinder' photography. To learn more about what ttv is, here is an article.

These are some of the pictures that actually turned out, my mom took the pictures of the flowers!

These are the ones I experimented with. The flowers turned out much better! I think there is too much light getting in on the ones I took. I didn't fix anything on the pictures except for cropping, which could use some practice too. The first picture is of some wine bottles on my kitchen counter. The second one is the lifeguard chairs at the Spring Lake Beach, where I've spent many summers!

As you can see, I need a little more practice, but I thought I'd post what I had!

Art House Co-op

My friend Holly sent me a link to Art House Co-op and to one of their photography projects to join. It took me about 2 seconds to decide to join the project...and about 2 more seconds to join a 2nd project.

The first is a project called A Million Little Pictures. Here is the brief explanation of the project from their website.

"One thousand people from around the world will document their lives in 24 frames using a disposable camera. An exhibition will be held showing over 24,000 photographs."

Basically, you sign up for the project and pay a small fee, and they send you a disposable camera and you shoot 24 pictures just living your life, you develop the film just at a one hour place and mail the pictures in. The exhibition will be held in Atlanta, and in the city with the most participants...I doubt it will happen in my city!

The second project is called the 10,000 People Project. Again, here is a brief explanation of the project from the website.

"You sign up, we send you a sheet of paper with a word on it, and then you create a visual representation of the word. The catch is that 10,000 other people are doing the same as you. How many different ways will tens of thousands of people interpret the same word?"

They both sound very interesting and fun to me. It's not a big commitment or heavy time constraint, it's just easy and laid back. I'm excited to get started on both!

The 50 States Project Revisited

Macho, Macho Men.

This is the People picture from Maine from The 50 States Project. I think it's hilarious!

"Macho, Macho Men; 2008" © Julie Kuceris

The 50 States Project

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this blog now that Honduras posts are done. I know I don't have many (if any) followers, but eventually I'd like the blog to grow and develop a life of its own. I think I will push for that once I know what I'm going to do with it!

For now, I will post about interesting things I find while browsing the Internet.

Here is one!

California People post by Jeremy & Claire Weiss

This is The 50 States Project. One person from each of the 50 United States was selected to participate in a photography project. Each person photographs assignments that best portrays their home state. The first assignment was to photograph people. This is the photograph for the state of Michigan, and I think the photographer captured the essence of Michigan very well. Peter Baker, the photographer also added a title and a description of his photo, see below.

"Joe Diesel, Ypsilanti, Michigan, 2009" © Peter Baker

"Joe McEachern is a mechanic in Ypsilianti who specializes in converting diesel vehicles to run on vegetable oil. He's a young entrepreneur as well, starting a veggie-powered party bus service that shuttles college students to local bars, driving business interests and providing safe rides to the partiers. He is part of a hopeful future for Michigan, using mechanical ingenuity and environmental passion to create new opportunities for the state."

This is such a symbolic photo and a great representation of the state of Michigan's economy right now. With the Big 3 auto makers struggling, and GM announcing that they are in more trouble than they thought, and as a result, smaller businesses losing work, it's hard here. The only way things will pick up is with the hard work and innovation of individuals. The Big 3 should look at Joe McEachern's design and ideas and learn from the 'average Joe'. Get on board!

I really enjoyed looking at all of the pictures for each of the 50 states! I can't wait to see what photos the upcoming assignments will be. Check out the pictures from your state!

Vote

I know it's too late to go vote. But I was just looking through Flickr to see how many unbiased voting campaigns were out there. Not many. It's no surprise Obama won, if you watched the news, followed CNN.com, or talked to friends or co-workers you would have known that Obama was the big favorite. I hope he can pull through on all of his promises, or else all of his supporters may have made a big mistake in following the fad. No matter which way you voted, I just hope you voted based on research, knowledge and education.

FredFlare Fun

I want to take pictures like these!! And I can, with this camera from fredflare.com!!

I was browsing online during work yesterday and stumbled upon this fantastic website! I am in love with everything about the site. Not only the goods for sale like this and this, but also because of the page set up, colors, and personality. I am becoming obsessed very quickly with reading their short and sweet blog posts.

They also offer this camera to take shots like these, with just one click of the shutter button!

One of the employees at fredflare.com, Anne is from Michigan and works out of Michigan!!! Maybe I can meet up with her and work for FredFlare.com out of Michigan too! I did however look at their job postings and noticed nothing was open in Michigan. And I can not move to NY to make their $10/hr offer. Bummer deal, maybe someday I'll get a fun job...until then I may just buy a few cameras!!

Bored

So I'm super bored and work this week. It's not all bad to have nothing to do at work, but it sure makes the day go by slowly! Anyhow, I am catching up on blogs that I used to enjoy on a daily basis and found this neat idea from stitch marker. You type your answer to a list of 12 questions into the flickr search bar, and using the Mosaic Maker create a piece of art! Just copy and paste the URL from flickr into the Mosaic Maker, hit create and there you go. Just to get a look at some of the pictures on flickr is amazing.

This is a great way to browse flickr if you've never done it and also a great way to try out Mosaic Maker. I became a member of bighugelabs, and there are a ton of cool things you can create using that website. Unbelievable fun!!

Here are the questions. Try one for yourself!

The Questions:

What is your first name?
What is your favorite food?
What high school did you go to?
What is your favorite color?
Who is your celebrity crush?
Favorite drink?
Dream vacation?
Favorite dessert?
What you want to be when you grow up?
What do you love most in life?
One Word to describe you.
Your flickr name.

Enjoy!!

Staying On Track

I'm trying to post more regularly, for no particular reason except to prove that I can. I have my photography make-up class tomorrow morning. Should be a good one since we will actually get to take pictures in the day light!!

Our assignment was to take 3 pictures that we want to share with the class focusing on Aperture, Shutter Speed, Metering, White Balance, ISO and Exposure Compensation. I mostly chose my Apterture and the camera chose the Shutter Speed, I chose the White Balance, ISO and Exposure Compensation. It was hard to find things to photograph since I had Thursay evening and this evening available to take pictures and Thursday was Valentine's Day so I didn't get many pictures taken. Here's what I've got.



The top left is Abby Rose Sullivan, Ross's dog. She is the most beautiful, friendly, loving dog ever! I took her portrait! It's a little blury but she had a hard time holding still! The flower is also at Ross's house. His mom got this as a kit for a Dirty Santa game. I think she made out pretty well in the whole deal. It is such a vibrant red/orange against that beige wall. I think the colors pop quite nicely. I'm not sure if I'm going to use the final picture or not. Ross decorated his chocolate chip pie very nicely and wanted me to photograph it. While the swirl is beautiful, I like how the Cool Whip looks on his fork. If I would have thought about it I would have taken more time on this picture, I don't really like the orangy tint but it was dark and a fire was going, so it kind of captures the mood.

A New Beginning

It is the beginning of a new year and I decided to make it the beginning of a new things. To start the new year I decided to take a Digital Photography class at Kendall College of Art and Design. It is part of their Continued Learning program and is offered in the evening. I am taking it on Wednesday nights from 6:30 to 9:30. I decided to take the class alone, to prove that I could do it! I'm much more comfortable doing something with a friend and it is usually more fun that way, but this is the new activity!

Our first assignment for the class was to take pictures and choose our favorite 3 to share with the class. The requirements of the assignment were to 1. Make the subject of the picture take up the entire frame, leaving as few distractions in the back ground as possible. I thought this photo that I named "Cold Birds" filled the first requirement. It's hard to see in this little picture but the birds are so cute and you can see their little eyes. Very cute. That boat lift in the back ground is a little distracting, but I'm guessing we'll be learning how to crop that out in Photoshop in our next class.

Our second requirement was to use the rule of thirds. I found this simple example of the rule of thirds at http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/rule-of-thirds/. The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows.

The idea is to make the main subject or the focus of picture land on one of the four intersections that are marked in red. I used this requirement in my next two pictures. They pictures were taken last Saturday when we were in a blizzard here in West Michigan, but I had no other free time to set out and take pictures. You will see what I mean about the weather conditions in the pictures.


I called this "Winter Lighthouse". In Grand Haven, you are bound to see tons and tons of pictures of this lighthouse. However, most people get their pictures in the summer time...well this is what it looks like on the third weekend of January...at around 3:00 p.m. Not quite the tourist attraction everyone craves in August!!

Well, even though it is a little foggy, (actually that fog effect is actually blowing snow, not fog at all), you can still see that the lighthouse is on the right third of the picture, which follows the rule of thirds!

If you look, you can see the waves hitting the side of the boardwalk and those are ice chunks on surface of the water, burrr!





This is my favorite picture to the right. It also follows the rule of thirds. I have the circle of the cross beam matching the intersection of the thirds.

I decided I really like pictures with a lot of depth. I wish all of the lights would have been lit up on the building but I notice the 2nd and 3rd lights are burned out.

That little glow around the street light is actually a snowflake that landed and melted on my camera lens. Kind of a bummer, but good placement to make the light look like it's glowing.

I don't have a name for this photo, but it is my favorite, so I should probably come up with something to call it! It is the old Grand Haven Museum.

Those foot prints in the snow along side the building are mine and Ross's, this was not my first attempt and a cool night shot!