D 162 - Crane

Long tele-lens shot from my window.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW developed in Lightroom.

D 161 - Urban Planning

View from a backyard just next to my house.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW developed in Lightroom.

D 159 - Another World

Reflection in a traffic jam.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW developed in Lightroom.

D 154 - Trailer / Park

Another kindergarten shot. I spotted this lonely trailer on a desolate lot behind a new house from D 149. Then I found a satisfactory angle to shoot it from the kindergarten window.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom.

What I learned

I'm more and more happy with my new, critical attitude toward making photos.
I don't take quick snapshots. I respect every shot like if I had a film with limited capacity loaded into the camera body.

As a result I come home with three to eight shots, each of them workable, some half of them interesting to my eye even after the first enthusiasm passes.

I don't get the nasty feeling I used to, when I look at my photos on PC and wonder: 'What the hell did I see in this frame when I pressed the shutter?'.

D 137 - Leaning out

Another forced perspective from my balcony.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
In Lightroom: levels, blue filter, sharpness, noise, little crop to remove some distractions at the bottom and left edges of the frame.

What I learned

Photos don't have to be straight to be O.K.

D 134 - Generation Again

My son loves to climb on the desk under this window and watch the cars, clouds or planes. I'll be anti-climatic to inform that he usually laughs and shouts to me about whatever he sees down there. He was not even sad when I took this photo.

Equipment

w810i
In Lightroom corrected: levels (strengthening blacks), decreased saturation, split toning, sharpness and noise.

What I learned

Again the same conclusion: it isn't the lens or matrix that makes good photos.

D 92 - The Factory

This is an old factory being adapted to a modern tenement house with lofts.

Equipment

S630 shot through a car window.
Saturation, sharpness and levels in Lightroom.

What I learned

I had never been a fan of HDR or high sharpness and saturation photos. But when I get a sort of dull colored photo I can either push the contrast and make it a monochrome photo or like today, artificially increase the saturation.

D 87 - Does not apply to trams

Just a scene as seen from a car.

Equipment

Samsung s630.

What I learned

Any dirt stains on the windshield can be made irrelevant by putting the lens very close to the glass. Reflections however are a big concern and difficult to avoid when the shot must be done quickly.

D 60 - This ugly meltdown

The mercury bar jumped above the melting point for the first time this year. Some winter it has been.

As everything in life this boon also has its downside. With this much snow changing to water, we are bound to get mud. Loads of mud.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on manual settings.

I did some tonal curve adjustment and faded out the buildings (by local adjustment of contrast and clarity) in Lightroom.

What I learned

I tried to separate a single bush sticking out from the snow cover, then I tried to catch those heaps of snow as mountains striking against the sky but none of those photos came out well. So I went for this one with buildings oddly contrasting with the mountain-like snow formations.
If at first you don't succeed try again.

D 47 - High

I'm glad. It looks like I start to like my own photos. Another afternoon walk with the son.

Equipment

Samsung S-630.

What I learned

"Be careful!"
As I reached for the camera to my inside pocket of the jacket, kept there to keep the batteries warm, I was following my son with my eyes. I took the camera out in my woolen gloves and as I shifted it to my right hand I accidentally caught the short line attached with one of my left hand fingers and dropped the camera into the snow.
Nothing happened, lucky as I was, and I could go on making photographs after I cleaned it with a tissue. Still the lesson learned is to be careful with the camera.

D 43 - Oh, it's snowing! again...

Oh boy!
I learned today that not only you can go outside, you can also go somewhere by a car. Even to another town (or in my case - village). You may not have time to shoot anything when you are there but a snapshot or two, while in traffic can be fun.

Equipment
E-510 with ZD1442, handheld from a car which was almost stopped.

What I learned

Always have the camera on you and always look out for opportunities. In this case at first I thought that the photo would be horrible if shot through a snow-stained window in a moving car without any way to stabilize the camera body. But I gave it a try and proved myself wrong.
Maybe not entirely, because two out of three shots were blurred. But it was worth it for the sake of that remaining photo.

D 42 - The Doors

Oh man, is it good to break on through to the outside. After so much time at home I was finally able to get out to some daylight even if it was just being 'devided by the night'.
I never even had to get any further than half a mile from home to get some great photos.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30 lens.

What I learned

There is no one thing more important in photography than health. If I weren't stuck home for the last two weeks I'd be able to get out with a camera at least three or four times a week.

D 35 - Down the wells

Typical yards from the city Łódź.
Deep, tight and neglected. Yet still full of life despite their inhospitality.

Equipment

E-510, Pentacon lens.

What I learned

Pentacon seems to have some notable barrel distortion. It is only 30mm wide and a prime lens so I didn't expect any.

I wonder how much can I explore my apartment and the view from the window before I can't find interesting frames anymore?
It seems a little inert but keeps me going. What does it say about myself?

D 30 - Misty

Foggy day outside, ill child inside. I'll have to postpone my decision to go out with the camera more.

I noticed that I always use contrast adjustments on my RAW files to increase the output contrast. So I tried to go for something different this time.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4.

What I learned

This photo was done hand-held with window glass as a support but the ISO had to be high. It comes out that perhaps even more than with high contrast, low contrast photographs must be done with low ISO to minimize the noise.

I was kindly instructed how to upload larger photos to Picasa and then shrink them when embedding in blog. So now you can click the photo to see four times bigger photo in Picasa.

D 24 - The Star

Od Dark Light Back

Od Dark Light Back

High in the sky or just within reach? The star - symbol of hope and things we are looking forward to. This are my two takes on another random topic.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 and in case of my son's photo built-in flash with softbox.

What I learned

This self imposed random challenges are a very inspiring concept. It almost seems to easy to just pop up with some more or less universal symbol and work around it. At least it is so for me.

D 9 - Urban Horror

Od Dark Light Back

Urban Horror.

I got back my Canon A570IS from my sister and this is a huge relief to have a camera in your pocket instead of a bag being a regular drag.

This is a snapshot I took while coming home from a walk downtown. It was made at 1 sec exposure so no wonder it got all blurred but I really like imperfect photos, mine or others. Since the composition was fine and the mood as well I decided to spice it up with some textures and give it a go.

Equipment

Canon Powershot A570 IS and a pair of gloves.

I changed exposure levels, noise and sharpening (go figure) in Lightroom and added layers in GIMP. One was a worn floor tile and the other a wooden surface with some editing (both textures downloaded from Deviantart). I used Overlay mode for texture layers visibility, added some noise and gaussian blur and adjusted brightness and contrast on both of them.

What I learned

Textures are for people to use so it was the first time I used them but - as with tone splitting - not the last time for sure.

I saw an ad of new Olumpus Pen camera with Kevin Spacey. The bottom line was that he didn't want to feel like a tourist but have childlike fun with photography, so he wanted the new compact camera not a new DSLR. I heard another ad like that on some Polish radio for a different company.
I totally agree with this guy: "The best camera is the one you have with you." And the more handy your camera is the more likely you are to use it frequently.
So maybe it is this year's marketing idea of the major camera producers but I have give them a big thumbs-up for finally dropping the Megapixel Race and giving people small cameras with big (in physical size) sensors. About time they did!