I picked up our photos yesterday - two rolls, including our trip to Oregon and the regatta in May (we didn't end up taking pictures at the most recent regatta). Unfortunately I only have slides, not digital photos, so I can't post any here. We used to have all of our slides put on PhotoCD but that got expensive. One of these years I'll get a slide scanner, but as the one I want costs about $900 it may not be soon. Ditto a better digital camera. I do need to get at least some of these shots and some of the Antarctica ones scanned onto CD, though, because I'm finding it annoying not to have them.
Neither of us will ever be hired as portrait photographers, but oddly enough this time it was the people photos that were most interesting. We'll have to look at the photos more carefully before we decide (I've only gotten a quick look on the light table at the shop) but I got some shots of the grandRudders in characteristic poses (him working on a gun barrel in his shop, her sitting by the house) that we may enlarge and frame for Rudder's parents and/or brother this year.
One thing I can do is get photos where people are sculptural elements rather than the main subject; I have a few of Rudder on the beach that I like, a few where he's running and seen only in silhouette and one where he's walking away from me with his sneakers slung back over his shoulder. There are also a few with Rudder and his dad, from a distance, standing at the bottom of the grandparents' driveway with a rural mailbox at one side, trees framing the scene and hills in the background. In at least some of them Rudder and his father are in identical poses - it's a classic father and son shot. I'd like to get the best of those printed for Rudder's mother.
We've also got a dramatic picture of She-Hulk in her blue, red, and yellow uni, carrying her yellow boat on her shoulder, with its shadow streaming down in front of her, and another of Rudder in a bright red shirt with yellow stripes down his sleeves getting into his boat. There are also a few beach landscapes that look better than I expected and some flower shots from the parents' garden that, if they're crisp enough, I may enter in a contest for garden photos the Oregonian newspaper is having.
There is one shot, one Rudder took, that I'm not sure I want to see again. It is of me, and is the reverse of flattering; in it I look middle-aged and decidedly grumpy. I think, though, that if it were of someone else I might like the image quite a bit. It's full-face, on the beach with sunset light coming onto my face from one side. The picture is stark and unsparing. I'm not smiling. It's a revealing sort of photo, which may be one reason I don't like it, but there seems to be a lot of information in the face's lines and expression, which is why I might call it art if it were someone else.
Of course, once I get a chance to look at it more closely it may also be hopelessly fuzzy and not good art at all. I can't wait to get home and really look at the pictures.
Actually, I can't wait to get home, period. It's been a hard week.
Posted by dichroic at July 30, 2004 02:32 PM