Cherry Blossom Festival

Katie Hoyle, facing, and Carley Norris, both 8, take a spin on a ride at the Cherry Blossom Festival in downtown Cherryville on Saturday April 28, 2012. 

Track stars

Bessemer City's Tray Good leaps the last hurdle to win the boys' 300m hurdles with a time of 41.44 seconds during the Gaston County track and field championships at Ashbrook on Wednesday April 6, 2011.

South Point's Tyler Bray leads the boys' 400m dash on his way to winning with a time of 51.94 seconds. Forestview's Sham Williams, right, finished fifth.

Back in the Saddle Again...

Dan Hughes rides the mountain bike trails at the U.S. National Whitewater Center on Friday August 27, 2010.

It's good to be back in a place where there is singletrack. It's no secret that being close to good trails is half the reason I chose to come back home and work for The Gazette again.

They sent me out to shoot some mountain biking today at the Whitewater Center where I used to ride four or more days a week when I lived here before, and it's making me want to get back on the bike bad. 

Maybe when I get finished moving and getting my truck repaired I'll actually have time to start riding again.

More Funky Lights

I took some more Palaroids recently for my Polaroid Lights project. As with the previous photos, these Polaroids were made with multiple exposures of a point source of light in a dark room, some of them long exposures with camera movement, and others stationary. Focus and distance to the light source were also varied.

These photos are not of a Christmas tree, as before, however, but of 'On' lights on electronic devices. The red is from a surge protector, and the green light featured prominently here is on a computer speaker.

I liked funky effect so much after the first time so much that I just had to find some other lights to use the technique on. I love how the different lights create and entirely different look with the same technique. The Christmas tree pictures have a decidedly festive feel, while these have more of a cool techno feel.

The second picture from the bottom even has lines reminiscent of sound waves -- appropriate since the green light is on a speaker!

Now I'm addicted, and looking for my next fix. If I see some interesting lights in a dark room I'm going to pull out my Polaroid and fire away!

Check out all the photos.

Smoking Ban

Rick Rackley smokes Jan. 20 outside Mama's Pizza & Italian Restaurant on Benvenue Road. Rackley stated the smoking ban hasn't stopped him and his family from visiting the restaurant on each week.

Polaroid New Years

With no ill New Years Eve party to go to, I decided to make my own--with my Polaroid!

...and my Christmas tree.

I recently acquired a Polaroid Countdown M80 land camera, and it's popped the cork on all sorts of vintage instant print fun. A precission instrument it is not, but with a little imagination, serendipity and Polaroid magic cool things can happen.

Exposure control is limited to a little 'lighter / darker' dial on the lens, but in low light (a room with only a Cristmas tree on qualifies) the shutter speeds get pretty long.

And because this is a pack film camera where you pull out the film manually -- as opposed to the 600 type of Polaroid that growls and spits the thing out automatically -- you can easily do multiple exposures.

You can keep cocking the shutter and firing frames off to your heart's content before yanking the tab--how cool is that! You just keep cocking the shutter and firing away until you see fit to yank the tab and see what you got.

In all the excitement I kind of lost track of excttly how many exposures I made on each frame. I'd say some of these pics might have as many as 10-20 exposures. I turned out the lights and made exposures of my Christmas tree with a variety of techniques.

For some exposures I held the camera steady, for others I swirled it, twirled it, and swung it to make light trails. For some I held the camera right in front of a bulb and pulled it away quickly with the shutter open.

Some shots were in sharp focus while others were thrown completely out to get some nice big colorful blobs (bokeh if you're one of those people that uses the term).

I did some pictures with my 'real' camera too, but you can't get pictures like this with a digital camera. Sure, you can use Photoshop to make a composite from multiple exposures, but without the serendipitous magic of the instant print it just wouldn't be the same.

So long story short; I stayed up way past my bedtime playing around with this fun stuff on new years. Hope you like it!

If you like this, you might also enjoy this post and this post.

See more cool stuff on my Flickr.

Fall with a Twist!

I left my expectations behind and went out into a back yard full of leaves with just a camera and an idea--this is what I got.

The top image was made using flash to "freeze" the leaf (or leaves) while twisting the camera during a 1/40 sec. exposure. Oh, and the leaf is falling (not from the tree but from my hand--many times until I got something cool). The second picture was made in similar fashion, but it's the branch is still attached to the tree.

The below images were taken of a falling leaf at night with a two--flash setup where one flash fired on first curtain synch and the second fired on rear curtain synch. A spotlight was used as a continuous light source during a 1/10 sec. exposure resulting in a sharp image of the leaf at the beginning and end of the exposure with a smooth blur in between.

The bottom immage is exactly what I had envisioned when I set it up, but on some of the shots the second flash didn't fire, such as in the one directly below. The result was still interesting.

Ultimately, this project was about serendipity. No two leaves are the same, and even the same leaf never falls the exact same way every time, so you never know what cool patterns you might get!

See all the fall photos.