Thanks to my lovely cousin for bringing this to my attention, despite my not living in DC. For those who do or might want to make the trek, DC is having an impressive photo festival from the 7th through 14th, “filled with powerful international exhibitions, thought provoking lectures, and, of course, the chance to have your own portfolio critiqued by experts.” Sounds very cool - I wish New York had something like this!

My cousin Kelly got engaged this summer and did me the flattering favor of asking me to take her engagement photos. These were shot at her home in Fairfield, Connecticut, in the late afternoon. We had originally planned a few different locations, and I wanted to shoot some film, as well, but we ended up having limited time, as they live in Washington DC and were only in Connecticut for the weekend. But even with the limitations, I’m still thrilled with the results. As someone who knows the couple personally, I definitely feel as though their relationship comes through. You can see some of my other favorites here.

All of these were shot with my 50D, then lightly edited in Photoshop CS.

Here’s the other photo/story I submitted to the NYT. This photo was taken with just a little point and shoot, Nikon Coolpix 3200, that was something like three megapixels, so the quality isn’t very good. Definitely one of those instances where I wish I had had something better at the time. The one they picked is the better photo of the two.

While I was in Athens, I very much clicked with the Greeks. They tended to be very warm, outgoing, generous people, eager to tell me about their city. While at a cafe one evening, a young man named George struck up a conversation with me, and offered to give me a tour around Athens on his motorbike. At the time I was a recent college graduate, usually shy, but the romantic notion of seeing the city by motorbike was too much to pass up. He took me out to Piraeus, where I snapped this picture of the boats lighting up the harbor. It reminds me, not only of my tour guide that evening, but also the bright, energizing current that runs through every aspect of Athens.

Here’s the flickr photo page.

As it turns out, the NYT selected a photo from my submissions to their “Why We Travel” feature! You can see the full screenshot here. Supposedly this link should take you directly to see it on the NYT site, but it doesn’t work for me. I submitted one other picture/story, which I’ll put up here a little later.

The photo they used is actually a scan of a 35mm print, taken with my Pentax ZX-7. I forget which brand of film.

I’m not going to say who’s copying who, but Time is running a photography submission showcase, similar to the one from the New York Times - however, the Time thing seems to be more permanent. This week, they’re showing waterfall submissions, and are asking for submissions from New England for next week. Maybe I’ll send in a Vermont or New Hampshire photo!

The first photography course I took in high school was black and white film based. The first photography course I took in college was also black and white film based. I never took a course that dealt with color photography, really - the other courses I took were “alternate processes” (which dealt with old processes, tinting, distortion, etc. - all film based), and a portraiture class (more composition based, obviously, used digital). So I’m pretty new at both color photography (and digital photography, for that matter). I do notice color, like the purple light from the window above, but often at the sake of composition. I love the color of this, but that was really all I noticed about it. As a photographer in general, I often feel as though I’m struggling to notice every aspect of a picture - sometimes it’s a person, or an object, but I forget to put the camera on a proper technical setting. Usually I feel as though I have to be quick to act and can’t take the time out to think about every variable of a photograph. But even when I’m not pressed for time, I end up so focused on one aspect of a picture that I inevitably think later, “Oh, this might have turned out better if I had thought of ——-.” It’s all part of the learning process, of course, something that becomes more intuitive with time. But sometimes I wonder if any of my other friends with photographic aspirations feel this way.

Inspiration: The Big Picture

I’m sure most of you have seen/know of Boston Globe’s Photo Blog, “The Big Picture,” but I just have to talk about the quality of some of these photos. At lot of them are more photo-journalistic event documentation, impressive by the sheer size/scale of what they capture. But others are artistically fascinating, providing unique perspectives, inspiring different ways to look at things, such as in this picture from their Tango entry. Shot looking at the man’s back, instead of their faces, or from the side, it shows the contortions of her leg, her body in a way that makes them seem even more impressive than those shot from more traditional vantage points. This particular photo was credited to Natacha Pisarenko.

You can see more of their photo essay on the Tango here.

It’s hard to tell where to start with this, but recent stuff seems like a good place!

A couple weekends ago, some friends and I got together and wandered around San Gennaro, a yearly feast in Little Italy that celebrates the Patron Saint of Naples. There are vendors lining the streets, selling pizza, sausage, cheese, pasta, cigars, lemonade, torrone (a nougat made with honey, egg whites, vanilla and walnuts or almonds), gelato, zeppole, cannoli and more.

I had my eyes on pizza, but my friends stopped to feast at a sausage and peppers stand, where I saw this woman. There was such great detail and texture in her skin, and I like the red nails. It’s hard to take pictures of strangers without them noticing, and I’m still pretty shy about asking, but I thought maybe among all the people I would be less noticeable. Buuut, I wasn’t. It’s quite a skill to make a large lens disappear, one I still lack, apparently. So, I didn’t quite get the killer picture of her I had hoped for, but I like this one pretty fine. It was ever so slightly over-exposed, so I adjusted the levels and brought down the highlights in the editing process on Photoshop CS.

I took this on my Canon 50D in aperture mode, using the widest aperture (3.5). I forget what ISO - I think 640.

Here’s the flickr page.

The New York Times is calling upon people to submit their pictures of Europe, along with stories about the photos. On October 11th, they’ll put the photos and stories into a little multimedia display they have going called “Why We Travel.”

I submitted two photos. If they don’t make it into the Times pick, I’ll put the photos and stories up here - and if by some stroke of luck they do, I’ll let you know, too.

I changed the URL of my personal blog. For various reasons, I was not exactly comfortable with a personal forum being one of the first results when you search my name on Google. Those of you that read via tumblr should have changed over automatically, but those of you who read via direct link or rss may be left in the dark. If you’d like to know the new location of that blog, feel free to e-mail me at taylorlong at gmail dot com.

Otherwise, please enjoy what will, in short time, become a place for me to both showcase pictures I’ve taken, tell their stories, as well as talk about things I’m learning, and some of my talented friends.