This week’s assignment for On Taking Pictures was windshield.

I’ve decided to start submitting only one image per assignment on the google+ community, but I’ll throw any outtakes on here.

As I’ve been working my way through the OTP podcast archives, it seems that a lot of the Photographers of the Week are admired for being willing to let things get blown out / drop all the way into black. Because my commute heads East in the mornings to work and West back to home, this week’s assignment became an exercise in playing with sun blowouts while stopped at a redlight. I’m pretty this shot is a direct result of those studies.

When I first heard the assignment on Wednesday morning, I was like “hmm, Tuesday had the dramatic clouds and the weather forecast is hot and sunny for the rest of the week.”

But it turned out I just wasn’t looking carefully enough. The best thing that happened was that I realized how fucking beautiful the Vegas strip can be during dusk, with the skyscrapers reflecting the setting sun during my commute home on I-15. Unfortunately, 65mph is not particularly conducive safe shooting.

What was safe however is going super slow shutter speeds in the back yard. It was dusk so I had to pull out the tripod and on a couple different nights I shot some long exposures.

When the sky shots seemed a little barren, I decided to insert something into it…well myself. I didn’t take a ton of these, but I got really lucky with this one. We live near an airport, so several shots include trails of airplanes, but the luck came in how everything ended up right, the focus, my location on the photo, the fact I chose to stare into the camera for once….I guess sometimes you just need to show up for something cool to happen, because I really don’t think intentionality had much to do with this final outcome, but I’ll take it.

From episode 160, the assignment was Horizon

Visually I actually kind of prefer the black and white version because it is so visually striking, but I think the color photo both captures the “horizon” of the assignment and is much more mundane, which is was the point of the shot.