These photos are a story. There will be no commentary, you will just have to figure it out for yourself.

The title of this collection is "Take a Minute and Look" That's the only hint you get.

All the pictures were taken on my property

I hope you enjoyed

Until next time.

These photos have been altered, ever since Photoshop 'seeing' is no longer 'believing'

   

Someone told me that the swing annoyed them. Sooo...

*Photoshop magic* Poof! It's gone.

But matter cannot be created or destroyed, so where'd it end up?

Can you find it?

When making thinks 'unbelievable' it is much easier to do so with a side-by-side comparison with things as they actually are.

Bright, vibrant colors are commonly admired. In nature, flowers, birds and other animal's chances of success in life is tied to how 'pretty' they are. Interesting to note that even humans tend to agree when color saturation is amplified the object becomes better.

And again, a slightly less exaggerated, but nonetheless poignant example of color saturation.

Until next time.

These photos are moments captured without the knowledge of the participants to record a genuine moment. Sometimes being genuine is hard to imitate. 

Contrary to common opinion the weekends are not for rest or fun. The week's workload of school and jobs are merely replaced by more domestic demands. Roofs need cleaning, lawns need mowing and gardens need tilling in preperation for the oncoming planting season. So is life on a 'Gentlemans Farm', we work in the week, and we work on the weekends.

Of course, there are those members of the family who are too young to understand this principal, and too youthful to work effectively. These do spend most of their time playing on the weekends, in these cases the weather was perfect for the task. 'Shade in the Sun' was taken to show the warm sun contrasted by the cool shade.

These youthful figures are playing a game of basketball. Not the kind you and I are familiar with however, in order to prevent tears and anger they take turns shooting the hoop completely uncontested, and they go until one or the other gets bored or runs away with the ball. 'Taking Turns' is the epitome of the method used to prevent conflicts between these little people.

These photos demonstrate motion and stillness. 

An object's purpose is fairly easily seen even when it's not being used. A chair is obviously for sitting in, a door for opening, the desk for holding items in easy reach while sitting. It's all pretty basic stuff to us, but think of all the years of experience it took us as children to learn those functions? "Don't climb on the desk, don't slam the door, don't stand on the chair" all these things we tried many times, all the while being told by other people how not to use them.

However when we see an object in motion, we have only one mental outcome: Is it being used correctly for its intended purpose? A wheel in motion shows you the object, and its purpose. It transfers linear motion into rotational motion to conserve momentum.

Things in motion appear differently than they would in a passive state. These buckets for example list to  one side, if they were truly hanging they would be completely vertical. So they must be in motion, swinging from side to side, appearing differently in motion than when still.

Until next time.

Some photos are focused on one subject, others attempt to capture an entire scene. Sometimes it can be beneficial to set everything aside and focus on a primary task. Becoming lost amidst a sea of clamoring noise disables our enormous potential for focus.

This picture focuses on only the subject. It has a shallow depth of field and simple techniques, portraits are focused precisely on the subject exclusively.

On the other hand, a landscape has no particular focus; it just captures a general theme without an exclusive subject. The entire picture is the subject.

A combination Portrait/Landscape has both a subject and a background general theme. It is less focused on one particular layer, because a camera cannot take in full detail of large changes of depth. Likewise our minds don't focus as well when there is a conflict of attention. Distractions or simple frivolity can consume precious focus, depriving us of our full capacity. 

Until next time.

 These photos have different lighting. The quality of the lighting has effects on the color tones and shading of the picture itself.  

The lighting in this picture is right. That does not mean that the picture has a lot of light, but it does have the correct tone, quantity and angle to complement the picture.

On the other hand, the light in this picture it too direct, resulting in washed out lighting. What you cannot see because of the flare on the screen is the true darkness of the hallway this picture was taken in. The quality of this particular light flooding in through the windows and door only came through at these particular points, causing deep light-dark contrast, resulting in an ugly white-washed photo.

"Rise and shine" is a common saying. When taken literally it has a motivational context that in quite unfitting of the time of the day it is most often said at. However, the saying is epitomized quite nicely by the following series of pictures. Morning can be noted for its pale skies and muted landscapes.

As the sun rose, it did indeed shine. and melted off the fog that clung to the morning air, leaving only vivid, vigorous colors and strong defined shadows.

Evening closes and the light begins to wain. Clouds move in and obscure the sun behind their curtains before it descends behind the horizon, going up in a fiery orange blaze. I dunno if that's how most people's days end, but it sure doesn't end that way for me.

Until next time.

These photos are a compelation. I have tried to capture as many aspects and techniques possible in them.

The rule of thirds is applied by placing the formost flower and the fence in the foreground on the top right third. The background is simple and uncluttered, with complementary colors of green and red.

Unique perspective and ballance on the rule of thirds. We finally have some sun peaking through the clouds, heralding the return of summer. Change is in the air.

Leading lines and perspective. The curb is both the subject matter, and the leading lines.

Until next time.

Some of these photos have a bad outlook on life. By that I mean their perspective is all wrong.

 With two eyes, and a complicated computer we call a 'brain', we see in three dimensions. However, a camera is but one eye, and thus converts all incoming light into a two-dimensional rendering of a three-dimensional object. This being said, Our minds are so intuitive that most of the time we can do a little head-math and decipher three dimensions from the picture. But even so, when exposed to an extreme example, it can be quite shocking.  When something is positioned with few enough depth reference points that even our computer has a hard time figuring out exactly what it is we're looking at. This picture 'Skytops' it is difficult to tell just how tall the lamp is, or how low the sky is. The two look adjacent.

 In 'Honda M.D.' it is fairly easy to see the trick here: "The car is wearing a surgical mask"

Likewise, perspective is being exploited and it appears as if 'My Other Car is a Jet Fighter'

Angles carry similar perspective-altering properties. In case you've never seen a chicken in real life (I pity you) they are not the most intimidating of creatures, nor do they have imposing size as this image would suggest. However, given the low angle, the close proximity and the distant background, the 'Assertive Chicken' is exaggerated.

Framed, with concrete frames. I couldn't pass this beautiful redundancy up. The subject is bordered by thirds and thus is given the spotlight. 'Frame-Frames' makes the subject the exclusive object of our focus.

Until next time.

Some of these photos have distractions in them, I've tried to capture these distractions and compare them to an image without the distraction.

 This picture is not particularly cluttered, as a matter of fact, the background adds dimension to the image. However, sometimes as artists, when attempting to emphasize a particular trait or phenomenon it is necessary to cut out everything but what is absolutely necessary.

Isolation is a useful tool for concentration. 'Meditation' has a couple meanings for me; one is deep concentration on a particular task, it can also mean not thinking, or cleansing your mind of thought. In either case the same purpose is achieved, you are focused on one particular goal or object. Taking in an object is in it's entirety (or its absence).

We can look at this image and see the bag and the gloves atop it, clearly the subject of the picture. But the subject is cluttered, obscured because of the objects behind it. These other objects have a similar theme; they are all mechanical, industrial and practical. But this makes the hanging bag seem out of place, the theme seems to be shifted away from the subject. Unnecessary distractions, though adding depth, are detrimental to a simple narrative.

Until next time.

These photos don't really make much sense, only I know what the object really looks like, because only I can see what is off screen.

Who can tell what this is a picture of? By the given image there is very little to use for an educated guess. Evidently it is exposed to the elements, some sort of plant matter gives that away. The concentric circles are obviously man made, no natural phenomenon produces grooves that symmetrical. Yet the tops of the ridges are clean, indicating that something regularly rests atop it and leaves erratic scratches along the surface occasionally. That is where the data stops, and only assumption remains. What you cannot see, is the rope that protrudes from the center of the circular seat which the grooves are a part of. The object that sits atop it, leaving scratches across its surface, are young (and old, I'll admit) people who wish to experience the way the forces of gravity affect a 'Pendulum'. 

Life is so much smaller than we can possibly comprehend. 'Minimum Distance and Maximum Clarity', this is a bit of concrete, with a little pebble covered in moss tiny enough that to the passersby, it merely looks like a green rock. As humans, we rarely associate ourselves with things much smaller than what our eyes can easily see, if it gets much smaller than that it simply doesn't make enough of a difference to matter. This 'pebble' as I call it was probably a quarter of your pinky-fingernail, really not that small to be honest, because a red blood cell is about 8 micrometers, or 0.0008cm. So small that it may as well not even exist... right? 

This is the 'Mud-Mat' that I walk over every day to get into the office for school. it is commonplace for me, I barely even notice its existence. But what would be the repercussion of removing it? Dirty floor, dirty shoes, not much really. What would be the repercussion of removing something equally commonplace, but far more important, lets say... my heart. It beats around 1.1 times per second, and it has all my life, it weighs around 0.625% of my body mass, so really its not that big. Why is my heart so special if I never even notice it? 

The Earth's mass is 5.9736 x 10^24kg, I won't convert that number from scientific notation for the sake of brevity, nor will I add the estimated mass of the galaxy in comparison to that of our tiny planet. Suffice it to say our earth is many times smaller in comparison to the galaxy than a single heart cell is to our body. Our human minds tend to ignore things too small to make much difference, yet all things are composed of even smaller things, and without those smaller composite parts no matter how large something is, it will break down and collapse. In the end, its is only the small things that matter, things 

so small they are taken for granted are all there is, and each one has a particular role.

Until next time.

 These photos are really wet, and after walking around in the rain for about 3 hours looking for them, I am too.

This picture, I dubbed 'Waitin' in the Rain' just about sums itself up. Sweatshirt, rain-jacket AND umbrella. When waiting outside in Washington, one does not simply rely on one of these. Mechanically speaking, this image uses the rock wall as a curved leading line to lead to the subject matter. Unfortunately, I was not able to place the subject matter on any of the thirds, as it would ruin the leading lines.

The human mind is incredible. Even after imposing a wrought iron bench in the field of view, you can still connect the dots and see the picture beyond the picture. However, the self-centered bench provides detail that we might be unable to see otherwise: the hanging water droplets. Combined with the blanketing, gray sky we can connect additional dots and see that it is no longer freezing temperature, another sign that winter and spring are locked in inevitable combat. 'Super-Imposition' would have felt very unbalanced, however, the overly-confident bench provides symmetrically shaped apertures through which we see the picture. This gives the feeling of an equally balanced image.

There is so little captured in this image, yet we all know what this is a picture of, and we all know what occurs shortly after this picture. The automobile either ceases combustion and its occupants have reached their destination, or the car and its occupants leave, and who knows when you will see either again? Such is life, comparing what we know with what we do not in an attempt to predict a future with millions of factors and inconsistent outcomes. 'Destination?' is an unbalanced photo that puts all the empty space right of the subject, giving it a lonely or an unpredictable nature.

Until next time.