My favorite photo of the day is a prime example of negative and positive space.  If you aren’t familiar with the geeky art terms: positive space is the area occupied by your subject matter and negative space is the rest of it. Your positive space can be spread out, take up most of the picture, or be more contained and small, like my friend, Mr. Ducky, here.  Negative space doesn’t have to be empty space, necessarily.  It can just have less importance, detail, etc. than the rest of the image.  Some people like to minimize negative space.  Those people would probably have cropped in real close around the duck and allowed him to fill in most of the frame.  I tried this and didn’t like it, so I left it as it was.  The subtle patterns in the water held enough interest for me to want them in the picture.  The lovely thing about art is that it’s all about preference.  I like it this way, and I’m right.  If you prefer it with less of the water, you’re right too.  Yea!

The downside to ruling the boat: less time to photograph.  In fact, I took 75% less pictures than our first visit to Horsetooth Reservoir.  I did a pretty thorough job the last time, however, so I didn’t feel it was too big a loss. I did see two or three opportunities I’d have liked to have taken, but such is life I guess.  The stuff I did get to do, like get in the water twice (and with Bessie too!  Pictured above in her stylish doggie life-preserver), hang out with my dad, and – did I mention steer the boat?-more than made up for a couple of missed photographs.

Here’s the thing: what is fair to expect of someone?  Or is it even right to have expectations of someone?  So often we place these weighty requirements on the people around us that have nothing to do with who they are, but rather who we want them to be.  Families are perfect examples of this.  I think we all have these pre-conceived notions of what mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, and daughters are supposed to be like or what we want/need them to be.  We hold the people we’re actually given up to these ideals and they’ll never be a perfect fit.  Notice how I say that won’t be a perfect fit, and not that they won’t measure up?  It bothers me that we instantly take a negative view of people when they don’t meet our expectations.  So maybe your mom wasn’t a great cook (not true in my case, just an example) but she had the patience of a saint and was always willing to lend a helping hand.  Maybe we should just learn to love people for who they are and appreciate what they are willing to offer of themselves.  Which brings me to the other piece of my puzzle: why  do we have to demand so much of one another?  I am perpetually reminded of the “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” conundrum as of late.  If you’re not familiar with the children’s book it’s about a mouse that gets a cookie and then wants milk.  Once he gets milk, he wishes for something else, and then something more, and so on.  I particularly like the “If You Give a Pig a Pancake” sequel, but as always, I digress.  My point is that we are rarely satisfied with what we’re given.  Someone helps us, and we wish they’d done more.  Or gives us a gift and we find fault with it.  Why?  Isn’t it enough that they gave their time, ability, etc. in the first place?  We are all busy, with our own lives to lead and our own interests to pursue.  I don’t know.  I realize it’s an answerless query in many ways.  My stance comes from Taoism which teaches the practice of not having expectations and just taking every person, place, thing and moment for what it is.  Now, I’m not saying I am successful in my practice in this, but I strive to be.  It is not my intention here to insinuate that I am above all this and worthy of climbing up on a soapbox to preach to the rest of you.  Truly, I think I am just trying to reason and write my way through my state of irk.

So what does this have to do with photography, you might be asking?  Well, very little, but that’s the hazard of visiting a site maintained for personal reasons, now isn’t it?  You are kind of at the mercy of my moods.  Sorry about that.  Although, in a way, my current state of mind does tie in nicely to the day’s images as they exceed my expectations.  I shot out the window of the airplane as we began our descent into Colorado yesterday afternoon on a whim, really.  I didn’t think I’d get much from it, or that I’d have to edit them quite a bit for them to be presentable.  Because, really, you should have seen this window.  Clear is not the first word that comes to mind.  Not a trace of the scratchiness and smudginess that made me worry is noticeable on the final product though, and I didn’t have to do a bit of retouching in that respect.  See what I mean about approaching things with no expectations?  Ah well, thanks for indulging me and reading through to the end of the post.  I’ll endeavor to keep things a little lighter in the future.

Today’s images come from Saturday afternoon when the rainfall still seemed novel and refreshing.  Although, to be honest, I never really tired of the weather even when we embarked on day three of constant rain.  In fact, I actually grew impressed with its perseverance.  It just kept coming.  By early Saturday morning though, the banks of the Poudre River had become swollen and flooded.  All of the shots were taken from the passenger side of the car.  I know, I know, that’s super lazy of me.  But wait, I have an excuse: I didn’t want the camera to get wet, now did I?  I had to stay in the safety of the car to protect the camera.  At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Whenever I drive somewhere special just to photograph, I always feel like a bit of a fraud.  Don’t ask me why, I did it plenty of times in college.  But somewhere along the way, I began thinking that to be authentic, the photograph had to be taken in the course of everyday life.  You only photographed a new setting if you happened to find yourself in one.  That’s really a pretty lame mindset though.  Some of my favorite photographers, like Robert Parke-Harrison or Aaron Rose, go to some impressive lengths to create the photographs that comprise their work.  And I show it to my students and tell them that it’s okay to care about your work that much.  It’s okay to go to great measures and invest time and energy in something you care about.  You can craft entire miniature worlds and photograph them if you feel you need to.  I forget that lesson sometimes, I guess.  And when I remember, like now, that fifteen minutes we went out of our way to take today’s images seems like a minor detail.

I know, I know…I can’t help it.  If there’s something that looks remotely fuzzy or feathery in my general vicinity, it’s like my camera locks on it and I just can’t not take the picture.  So I present you with today’s cuddly creature: a little bunny that was hanging out near our car in the parking lot of the marina.

One of the unforeseen benefits of this blog is an increased number of photo-related discussions with people who are checking out the site.  Sure, during the school year I talk photography for about 3 hours a day.  These conversations aren’t always quality though.  In fact, I’d wager that 50% of the time the word “photo” passes my lips it’s in this sentence: “You’re missing the following (insert a number between 3-8 here) photo assignments”.  Or this one: “Your grade in Photo is a(n) ____”.  Don’t get me wrong, I like my job and I don’t mind the more mundane part of it like keeping a grade book and such.  It’s just that I prefer the conversations I get to have about the medium itself.

I bring all this up as a very round about way to my discussion yesterday with Dylan’s mom, Jamie.  She asked me a question about megapixels (as in, what’s the difference between a 2.o megapixel and a camera with more, really?).  And I am sorry to confess, nice readers, that megapixels are one of those technical aspects of photography that make my eyes glaze over and my brain turn lazy circles wondering why I just can’t get myself to care about this.  Luckily, to a certain point, megapixels aren’t the be all and end all of digital photography.  If you’re looking at two cameras (don’t you wish the plural of camera was cameri?  I do, but that’s a little off point, isn’t it?  Sorry.)  with a small difference between the amount of megapixels each offers, I wouldn’t get my feathers too ruffled.  What I’ve been told, and what I believe, is that what really effects the quality of the image is the glass in the lens.  The better the glass quality, the better the image clarity, etc.  So, if you’re in the market for a digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) then focus more on the lens you’re purchasing and not the megapixel count.  If you’re considering buying a point-and-shoot though, you might pay a little more attention to the megapixel count, but certainly don’t lose your head over it.  Once you get beyond a certain number, like 10, it really is a moot point.  And don’t worry, if your eyes glazed over while you read this, I completely understand.

It was a beautiful day for both boating and photography.  The clouds managed to keep the sun from being too intense, but it was still bright and warm.  I had to coat myself in sunscreen twice, but really, there was no avoiding that or the light of sunburn I sustained anyhow.

I’m actually not one for landscape photography, but as that’s what I had handy I gave it a shot (or 142 shots, to be precise).   And as I shot the afternoon away (and ate hot dogs and chips and brownies and jumped into water that was a bit too cold…I don’t want you to think I was attached to my camera the whole time), I thought a bit about the different reasons that we photograph.  There is commercial photography, journalistic photography, artistic photography, as well as keepsake photography.  Well, that’s what I call it.  Most people take keepsake or souvenir photos of the important moments in their lives.  Birthday parties, graduations, vacations, and gathering of family and friends all fall into this category.

Of course, the categories can mix and mingle.  Yesterday I shot for both artistic and keepsake reasons.  Part of this was because its really hard for me to turn off the part of my brain that is constantly looking for an assessing situations for photographs.  What I was really interested in though was remembering the afternoon and journey.  While the images may not make it onto this site, there are images of my dad and Bessie and of Dylan because when it comes right down to it, that was the part of the day that mattered, spending time with people (and dogs) that are important.