248/365

No Red Lights, No Yield Sign

An intersection with no lights or signs.  Traffic just goes whichever way it wants.

Not in the United States.

115/365

Row of Homes

These 5 homes are only about 4 years old and are on the edge of downtown Abilene, Texas.  

They're within walking distance of the town if any of the residents care to walk.  They each have a driveway and a small back yard.

Before they were occupied I looked in the windows of the lower level.  It looked like the layout of each is the same, but I couldn't tell how many bedrooms are upstairs.

94/365

Street Workmen

I was sitting outside a store waiting for my friends to finish their shopping when I saw this scene.  I took it because I wanted to see how it would look as a black & white.  

I like it.

My heart is grateful today because:

my grandson seems to be getting the hang of his MixedMartialArts lessons and is interacting with a smile on his face.

A Day in Haleiwa

8/365

My friend and I spent the day in Haleiwa.  I wasn't too excited about it when she suggested it, but I agreed because I haven't been out shooting much lately and I needed the diversion.  Once we got there, I decided to put some effort into it.

It was hot and I'm not a big fan of hot-weather photography.  But unlike hot weather in the northeast, there are always chances to cool off by getting into the shade or when the trade winds blow, so it was fairly tolerable for me today.

I'm pretty happy with some of the images I brought home.  

So I give thanks to my friend, Jackie, for giving me the impetus to get out there, for the stimulating conversations we had and for the great ideas for some creative uses for my images.  

Waikiki in Black & White

5/365

The other day my friend and I went to Waikiki with the intention of doing some street photography only in black & white.  We both LOVE black & white and I remember back in the day when the only  way to shoot b&w was to insert an entire roll of b&w film into the camera.

If you decided you wanted to switch to color halfway through the roll, you either had to stick it out and finish the roll or remove it which was pretty tricky to do.

Now....with digital, it's just a matter of switching functions. 

But shooting b&w is a different animal than shooting color.  You have to "see" differently and anticipate what will look good and what won't.  Sometimes it's easier to shoot in color and then convert to b&w on the computer.  Part of me thinks that's cheating.  Part of me thinks that's cool.

Shooting in a b&w function forces you to be more discerning--you know that the image has to stand on the merits of composition and contrast without the impact of beautiful color to grab the viewer's attention.  Of course, the digital darkroom can really enhance any image, as did the wet darkroom, so some images can be salvaged.

So we set our cameras on b&w and began shooting.

After we finished at the beach, we headed over to our favorite Starbucks.  We did a little practice with panning and slow shutter speed.  I didn't have my tripod and I was just trying to teach my friend how to do these techniques, so I really didn't anticipate having any keepers.  Most of the images I shot were deleted, but these next three appealed to me.  

(Although the camera was hand-held, I was resting the camera on a newspaper box)