You Capture – Photographer’s Choice

This week’s You Capture assignment should have been easy. Instead of some arbitrary theme, it was photographer’s choice. So I could do whatever I wanted.

What I wanted to do was take my camera into the city (I hadn’t decided which one) and, using my 50mm, fixed-focus lens on manual setting, try to capture cool pictures of stuff at odd angles. Some of the other You Capture participants have shared some really cool, odd-angle shots and I wanted to try to emulate that.

It never happened. Surprise, surprise right?

I did manage to do some shooting this week. After deciding which images to share (there’s even one I captured this morning as I was writing this post thanks to Shannon), I had to come up with a theme.

I call this collection Eye of the Beholder. Because much of what I like about photography is capturing pieces of life that I’ve seen in my own special way.

My daughter, Amy, calls this guy Grasshead. It’s something one or both of her kids did at daycare this year. It’s just a sock stuffed with some medium, topped with grass seed, decorated to look like a man. What a cool idea, eh? The other night, as I sat on her deck staring at the guy, I kept thinking of Kilroy. I think it was the angle, which I did not manage to capture, but I wanted to share this shot anyway.

Photography to me isn’t always about capturing a perfectly focused and lit shot. It’s often capturing something interesting I have seen. I love the label on this bottle of beer (I have a thing for cows). And I thought it looked interesting sitting atop this gatepost with goldenrod as a fuzzy backdrop.

Speaking of fuzzy… I did some post-processing on this one to make the image blurry. I captured it towards the end of our evening yesterday. Shannon had invited her best friends over so we could finally meet all of them and hang out. Shannon made an excellent Thai Red Curry for us (shrimp, broccoli and red peppers in a curry-flavored coconut-milk base). Laura brought some delightful wine to go with it, which we all did a nice job of finishing off. All except for Hubby who prefers beer. Not cow beer. Just plain ole German wheat beer.

Meg, deep in thought. I captured this shot while poking around the backyard looking for something, anything interesting to photograph.

The next image is my favorite capture from that session.

I couldn’t share that shot without sharing this next one.

I never get far without one or more dogs being nearby. That’s how I captured the picture of Meg posted previously. In the image immediately above, you can see K’s leg in the foreground with her body reflected in the frog’s silver ball as she interrupts my shot.

And speaking of frogs… here’s the shot I captured this morning after Shannon popped into my office to say, “There’s a really cute tree frog on my window.”

You can’t really appreciate this guy’s size just by looking at the picture. Even with his (or her) legs extended, it was probably only about 2 inches long from toe to toe. This is the one shot I got before it hopped away.

So those were my choices to share for the week. If you’d like to see what other participants came up with, visit Beth’s site. She hadn’t added this week’s link at the time of this writing, so you may need to check back later. She’s a very busy Mom of three who lives in a time zone at least an hour, maybe two, behind me. So be patient.

Which of my captures, if any, did you like best? Do tell, please. Comments make my day.