“My heart isn’t in it anymore!” I cry looking at the last few photos from this month.

Since I’ve been gearing up to move, apartment hunting, flying cross country, and generally running around like a beheaded chicken, it’s unsurprising that my photography has fallen a touch to the wayside in recent weeks.

However, there’s still some goodness… and some oopsies this month.

31. Wide Aperture

I was loving sitting in my friend Amber’s backyard, with two rambunctious housecats doing their best to sneak towards the end of the fence, or hang out in the grass.

This is a portrait of Zeus, once he was chillin’ out.

I mistakenly remembered this prompt as “maximum aperture” and opened up all the way when I actually wanted a touch more depth of field so that more of Zeus’s face would be in focus. Whatever, this is the one I picked. and I have a lot of real good shots from that day, some of which are more stopped down & which I prefer to this one. i.e. to get more of the nose, whiskers & ears in focus.

32. Song Lyrics

This was a stumper for me, because I’m a pretentious arsehole who likes listening to pretentious music. So, I went with “Bridle and Bit” by Owen Pallett…

The song is about a love song between two galaxies… and also an unhealthy relationship with controlled substances:

“Never was a prize at the bottom of a bottle
Though I’ve looked more often than I would admit
Never was a prize at the bottom of a bottle
There is only a bridle and a bit

That’s the inspiration for the bottles on the ground. (Which aren’t nearly as prominent a part of the composition as I would have liked – the tabletop tripod would have been better than the full-size.)

The inspiration for the night & stars was:

Andromeda I hold your hand
Gonna run this body into the ground
Andromeda make us one again.“

So, the oopise here is mainly that I failed at figuring out some of the long exposure settings on my camera before I went outside and had no good means of looking them up. The long and short is that I wanted to use the mode where you press to start & press to stop, rather than holding down the button the whole time, or just setting a long shutter speed.

Some lighting was added artificially via my cellphone flashlight. Gotta get swirly.

33. Night Photography

After last week’s astrophotography, I suddenly found myself confronting the same topic again. Minus the bottles, but with the same lens and the same camera. Unfortunately, it was a weak of cloudy skies and thunderstorms.

There was a thunderstorm in the distance, contributing to the pink sky when I took this 67-second exposure/composite in my parents’ backyard. I think it’s understated, but that it achieves… well, pretty close to exactly what I wanted.

Yay for reading the manual… by which I mean watching someone on YouTube go through the settings methodically at 2x speed.

34. Texture

This was a quick snap – I also wish I had framed this shot better, but ah well. I really wanted to drink the thing.

The drink is a cafe nico, that’s an espresso shot + frothed half & half, cinnamon and some orange zest. Lots of beautiful textures on display that make for a sumptuous beverage. From Vivace Coffee, Seattle.

Lighting was a challenge, because much of the seating area is dim, but the coffee’s surroundings are reflective in the brighter spot that i chose.

35. Nostalgia

The biggest oopsie of them all…

I didn’t realize the camera was in manual focus, and I clearly did not actually focus.

Other than that, this is supposed to be a rehash of a picture I took earlier of St. Peter’s Village anyway.

So the lesson learnt this week is… well, make sure you are in the right focus mode.

But, hey, nothing says nostalgia like an out of focus shot, right?

Weirdly enough, it seems to have gotten more positive comments over there than most. Perhaps I was able to sharpen it enough in post to make the fuzziness seem like a compression mishap rather than a technical flaw, or, perhaps even it’s not a bad composition.

Food for thought.

…and onwards to the next month!