Spring Starts

Spring Steeple, originally uploaded by Ty Randall.

Today was tax day. Somehow I managed to get my taxes done early this year so I had time to go out and shoot a little today. I had a couple shots to do for current projects and then I snuck in a few extra since spring was in the air and the urge for photographing some of it is in me.


I just wanted to show these two examples of what I saw today. The first photograph (Spring Steeple) is of the First Presbyterian Church Steeple, in Cranford, New Jersey. The blooming tree first attracted me and when I noticed a piece of the steeple sticking up behind it, I thought I would frame that in the shot.


I kind of like how the other tree between the steeple and the blooming tree hasn't started blooming yet so you can see the branches and still see the steeple behind it. I'm sure it would look quite different if I came back in 2 weeks.


If you care about such things (although I don't see why you would), the exposure was 400 at f/10 shot with a Nikon D70 and zoom lens focal length of 102mm (153 equivalent on 35mm). I shot it at 400 because I didn't bother pulling out my tripod. It was shot at 3:59pm on 4/15/08.


As soon as I finished the shot, I turned completely around to go back to my truck when I was attracted to something on a building at the other side of the parking lot. I moved in for a closer look and found what turned out to be this second shot.


I call the second photograph, "Building Comb Over" because that's what it looked like to me. There were all these vines attached to this building that haven't started blooming yet, so it looked like a stringing mess that reminded me of those bald guys that comb their hair over their head in some lame attempt to disguise their baldness and end up looking funny because they don't have enough hair to cover the amount of baldness.


As you can see, some things are beginning to bloom here in New Jersey, but not everything yet. Certainly not bald men, which I happen to see way too many of.


As far as the exposure stuff goes for the second shot, I felt it was kind of bland, pale, and had lousy lighting, I may have "tweaked" it a little in photoshop to help, but not much.


When I say I "tweaked" something, that's my way of telling you that I may have done something to it, but either don't remember what I did or don't want to tell you. I purposely don't keep track of such tweaking because the raving artist in me wants to create something unique that has a chance of not being duplicated. If I don't keep track of what I do, I might not remember or know how to do the same thing again, and therefore it would make that piece more unique (and valuable). I mention this more for future reference than explanation for this image.

View larger versions of images on my Flickr page.
Happy Spring.
Ty