Light Trails

For years (literally) I have been fascinated with light trails.  I've slowly picked up the equipment needed to do long exposure photography, primarily a cable shutter release, and 10 stop filter (a really dark filter), and a few tutorials on how to shoot long exposure photos, but I had't really done anything about it.  Last night after working on some statistical analysis (I had an inspiration driving home while listening to Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable), I decided that I should take my mental health break early in the morning and try to photograph some light trails.

Every time I walk across the Legacy Bridge, I always think it would be a good spot to shoot light trails, with cars going both directions.

Interestingly, as I was walking to the bridge this morning I noticed how much light there was - street lights, lights from buildings, and lights on the bridge. Looking - and seeing - with intention is a nice feeling; it's the anticipation of trying something new and seeing how it goes.

While there are things I will do differently on future attempts, I'm really pleased with how my first attempts at light trails came out.  It is a whole different sort of seeing than trying to catch a bouncy dog mid-bounce, and that's really cool!

Looking south; at this time of day, there are a lot more cars going toward the hospital than away from it.

Still looking south. The red lights on the middle right side are the TRAX train.

I really wanted to get some tail lights, so I started looking toward the hospital.

The arc on the low left side is from the crossing guard for the TRAX train - and the red lights on the left side are the TRAX train itself.

Soooo cool!

Yep, these are pretty cool! I definitely want to try some new things next time, but I'm really pleased with my first attempt!

It was really cold out there, so I could only stay for about 40 minutes, but I managed to just barely catch the first hints of the sun.

Rebooting My Brain

Wow. It has been forever since I posted anything here, and rather than beating myself up about the quality of the photos from 6 years ago, I'm going to appreciate where I was 6 years ago and where I am now with my photography.

Anyway, that's not the point of this.  Life has changed quite a bit in the past 6 years.  Abby has long since gone to her great reward (FAR too young, and the loss of Abby really changed my perspective on my photography both for myself and for my clients), and Fiona, the love of my life (okay, all the girls past, present, and future, are the loves of my life, but Fi is the first puppy I had as an adult, so she really is extra special to me), has lymphoma, and is living out her days being spoiled rotten, while still being my muse, my companion and confidante.  At work, I am a full-time statistician, so I'm crazy busy with that, and I treasure the time I spend volunteering with Salt Lake County.

In short, life is busy, and while I'm generally good juggling things, there are long days at work where my brain starts to get a little frazzled.

I did a Leisure Consultation through the PEAK program at the U., and came to the realization that the best way to 'reboot' my brain is to take a break during long work days and take some photos. I bought an old D90 (the camera I was using back in 2015-2016), and that has been a bit of an adventure, too.

I've only been out a few times so far, and it's been really interesting; photographing pets is easy, finding my 'eye' for static stuff is a bit more of a challenge.  So, I'm more excited than even I was a few weeks ago, as I'll get to stretch my view of things, and I've got a bunch of ideas of things that I want to try.

But to get started, here are a few photos from my first couple of walks.  My thought looking at these is that I didn't really shoot with 'intention', and that's something I'm going to work on, as it will help me reboot my brain.

28 Jan 2020

29 Jan 2020

I won't lie; I didn't really want to find out where this stairwell goes!

This actually turned out better than I thought it would

Interestingly, I didn't really "see" the three trees to the left when took this photo.

 6 Feb 2020

Okay, so this last photo wasn't taken at the U., but I needed a new header photo, an when I remembered that I had this old Kodak, I thought it would be cool.  And it fits with one of my core fascinations with photography - the ability to travel back in time through photos.