Photographs in Gallery

Last week I entered two of my photographs into the College of Art & Architecture's Juried Art Exhibition. I found out on Monday that both of them were accepted into the Gallery. I was pretty amazed that I made it in because when I dropped off the photos there was some pretty good work already turned in, and not just photos. All I did was set up the shot and click the button, some of these are large sculptures, paintings, etc.

This first one is the Ira Keller fountain in downtown Portland. I took it while I was there on an architectural field trip during the fall semester of 07. The longer exposure, half a second, creates the effect with the water but also makes it difficult because any movement will show up blurry in the final photo. The thing that makes me the happiest about this is that I didn't have my tripod with me when I went to Portland so I had to support the camera on the ground, try to frame the shot while laying down, eyeing it through the viewfinder, propping the camera up with little rocks, the shoulder strap, etc. and setting a timer so I wouldn't shake the camera when I released the shutter.


This photo is of Venus and the Moon just last week. I took it on the 29th, the night before the entry deadline for the exhibition. The night before I had seen Venus and the Moon very close in the sky but didn't have my camera or the time to set up and take a photo. I planned to come back the next day and just hoped that they would still be fairly close. They were, but by the time I got outside to take the photo they were too close to the horizon to get a good image from where I was planning on taking it. I walked around campus a bit and took some different pictures but had to scramble to get this one taken before they "set" behind the Kibbie Dome. This time I had my tripod and remote switch for the shutter release so I didn't have to mess around with the ground and rocks. It was a good thing too because one, the angle from that low wouldn't have worked for the photo and two, I probably wouldn't have had enough time to do it. The exposure was for 8 seconds and you can actually see how far the Earth rotated in that short amount of time if you zoom in on Venus. There are also a few stars that are in the image as well that you can see a short streak as the Earth rotated.


Finally, I put these on my Flickr page, so if you want to see a larger size you can check it out. Also, if you happen to be in the area tomorrow (Friday, February 6th) between 4 and 6 you can come to the gallery opening, or stop by anytime next week as they will be up until Friday.