Decatography

Second Semester at Ferris.

2009-01-21T14:45:00.000-08:00

Well, back to school now and I'm started on the next set of projects. Check them out here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Decatography/SpringSemester09#

Busy at College!

2008-10-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

As of this fall, I am currently enrolled at Ferris State University in Michigan. I'm pursuing a bachelor's degree in Graphic Design. This means that time is pretty tight during the week and I don't get around to doing as many little things as I used to, like this blog. So here is what I have accomplished so far in my classes up til my first midterm:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Decatography/FirstSemester#

Angelwood Gallery's Anniversary and Glen Arbor's Art Fair

2008-07-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

More description to come soon, but I am beginning to post pictures of the prints I had at each show.

Here are the framed prints from Glen Arbor

Stationary Cards

Please keep checking back often! I will finish posting the rest of the prints I had available soon. For anyone interesting in purchasing prints, please contact me at scdeca@hotmail.com.

Finally, an update.

2008-07-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

For everyone interested out there, you may have noticed that I haven't updated this for awhile. Between getting ready for selling my wares at Angelwood Gallery in Grand Rapids (Ohio) and the upcoming Glen Arbor art fair and enjoying a summer break, I just haven't gotten around to it. Along with this week late update is an extra week of photos in the gallery today. This is the most photos posted yet, so there are plenty to look at! I do plan on eventually posting photos from before this websites existence, but for now these should do.

The photos included range from the blooming lilies to the Muskegon River to the bees and to the cats. The farm fields were all the way up in Big Rapids, Michigan which we stopped at on my way back from orientation day at Ferris State University.

Last week I visited the Toledo Botanical Garden and took pictures of bees and ducks. For the bee shots, I used my homemade contraption consisting of a Pringles tube and a Minolta lens, which gives about a focal length of 110~120 and a fixed focal distance of about 6 inches or so. So most of the shots were just off by a hair in focus so I only posted two with that lens.

Just two nights ago I felt inspired after coming home from a Mudhens game to take pictures of clovers and mushrooms. These photos were taken around 1am through the use of a side spotlight on our house. Note that the clovers are closed at night. Also, if you look closely you can find a slug in one of the pictures.

Lastly are the photos I took today using a new OM lens to 4/3rds adapter. That allowed me to use old manual focus lenses for Olympus cameras on my digital Olympus. The results were very satisfying. Enjoy!

Gallery page here.

The Old West End Festival

2008-06-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

This post is a week late, but that should come as no surprise given the trend in all of my entries. Regardless, all went well and my friends sold a lot in their garage sales and I sold a couple of photos. That is to say, two photos. I was not there to see them being sold but I'm thankful to whoever bought them. The 48 other photos that did not sell are currently staying at Fiddle Stix and are selling there for 6 dollars a piece. They are 4x6 prints on signed stationary cards with envelopes.

On another note, we also got two puppies over the weekend, now that they are seven weeks old. Included in this weeks photos are pictures of the cute duo, Daisy and Howie. They are both golden retrievers, acquired from a breeder not far from our house. Also in this weeks pictures are my three new kittens, who have grown up quite fast, along with their proud mother, Opie. Lastly, you'll notice a macro shot of a spider. I assume it to be a wolf spider and it was discovered in a friends house. Enjoy!
This week's photos.

April 24th Controlled Burning

2008-05-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

Today, May 30th, I'm writing about a fire that happened all the way back on April 24th. Partly because I wanted to wait and cover the immediate effects and the re-growth together but also partly out of laziness. Regardless the photo shown here on the left was taken in April and the photo on the bottom right was on the 28th of May. This fire was one of several occasional controlled fires that Oak Openings starts to restore the oak savanna ecosystem and to move it away from the oak woodland it has become. "'Fire equals butterflies', said Jim McCormac", as reported on metroparkstoledo.com, meaning that some species have adapted to fires and actually need them to thrive. The butterflies in this case are the Karner blue butterflies (Lycaeides melissa samuelis). The third member included in this fire-butterfly kinship are the wild lupine, pictured in my "After Graduation" post. For more information just visit http://www.metroparkstoledo.com/ or view my source of information regarding the Oak Openings Research Forum.

Currently, there are ferns covering entire sections of the controlled fire, especially in the area of Monclova and Wilkins road. The photos in the gallery following this article show the dense covering of the ferns, as well as other photos taken this week.

This week's gallery.

Day after graduation

2008-05-25T01:53:00.000-07:00

I'm all grown up and graduated from high school. Well, mostly. Anyways, it's the day after my graduation party today and I went for an evening bike ride. Among other recent changes as spring progresses are the appearances of wild blue Lupine.

Today is also the day I'm going to start to include web albums to go along with each blog entry, or at least a link to similar pictures of the same topic. Today's album contains 8 pictures, including one of my potted cacti who is beginning to bloom. There are also several infrared images included.

All of these images were taken in Oak Openings Metropark in the Whitehouse/Swanton area.

More Pictures...

May 13th Infrared Shoot

2008-05-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

On this day I thought I would take the Olympus E-510 out for a bike ride shooting infrared only. It had been about a month since my last shoot with the Olympus/R72 combination so I felt it deserved some attention. I still had a lot of excitement after some recent success with some Kodak HIE infrared film and I couldn't wait to shoot more.

For this photo I tried to juxtapose a flowing and full of life pine tree next to the asphyxiated oak. The four brownish/gold tinted photos were all taken with custom white balance and later adjusted in Lightroom.

These next two photos were taken out in the Oak Openings Metropark also. The black and white photo was converted with Lightroom, using hue sliders to change which colors would be reproduced darker.