Happy Friday!

Away, originally uploaded by lilwilli.

I just kind of like this photo. It wasn't how I planned at all, but the texture in the carpet turned out to be much more interesting than a silhouette of me.. Happy accident:)

CC please!

Desk Stimuli

Stimuli, originally uploaded by lilwilli.

Welcome to my desk.

Thank you for taking eyes off of me:)

Rants for your late night evening pleasure

1)Winter I hate you. I'm sick of you. I can barely handle taking photos of you anymore. Please go away. Please, please, please stop being here already. I really don't think I can that I can play with you anymore.
... We need to break up.

2)I don't know how many of you live in the city.. or even care to live in a city. But if you visit, and happen to ride a bus (in any city).. and you happen to find yourself sitting next to someone, you don't particularly know.. and it's rush hour (so everyone is glad to finally be off work).. and people are exiting the bus.. and the bus has multiple open seats-- consider changing seats. I am one of those people that sit there, wishing and praying, that the person next to me would move. Please let me spread out. Please let me relax for the evening. Why crowd me? I cannot understand why you, yourself, would not want to spread out?!

3) It was funky hat day and no one told me.

Here's to editing

I have meant to work on these images for a very long time. I have finally gotten around to them. I wish for two things:
1) I get better at editing photos more quickly.
2) I get better at editing.

I feel like I keep doing the same things to all of my photos. I feel like I need to be... more inventive? Maybe I'm wrong.. Here's B&W for now:)

Let me know what you think:)

blog stalk

I'm sick and tired today.. so i decided to do this today. I found it online somewhere (i can't even remember where, but i have all the links).

here The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

here The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

here The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

photo by Kristamas°

This is what happens when I blog stalk people.

Venician Door

I took this photo in 2004 when I studied abroad. There are a handful of photos that I took while I was there that I still love looking back at. This happens to be on of them. I love the texture of the paint peeling off the doors.

We spent the weekend in Venice and the entire time we were there it was rainy and cold. About 4 hours before we were set to leave on the train, the sun came out. Some of my favorite photos were taken during that 4 hour window.

I'm still working on getting myself to take photos everyday (or more than once a week). Enjoy:)

Chicago Bean

After living in Chicago almost 9 mo. I finally made it to Millennium Park to capture The Bean.

I kept getting frustrated because I really felt like I couldn't get a new interesting perspective on this thing. I tried to shoot high, low, and all around. Finally I decided to focus on all the tourists. I don't know the people in this photo, nor did I ask permission to photograph them. I decided on this photo because it shows why people like to visit it. They want to see it, and they want to take their picture in the reflection. I thought the snow on the ground made an interesting mix as well as how the Bean fades into the sky. It is quite an interesting sight, to see all these people milling around this funky shaped thing. I think it's definitely a sight to see while visiting the city (as long as its not -25 outside).

CC always welcome:)

Sunlight and Escalators

Let there be light! Finally the sun has decided to shine for more than 20 minutes. Here is just a quick little shot I caught of Buddy while I was walking him on Saturday. I'm extremely happy that I am able to grab shots with my cameraphone and actually be semi-satisfied with them!

Yesterday I decided to check out the Rock N Roll McDonalds here in Chicago. Don't let the name fool you. No matter how cool somethings sound, sometimes they just aren't. I did find a nifty escalator to catch my fancy. I always think that it's bizarre when companies try to make things look cooler than they really are. I guess enjoy them for what they are:)

HDR Valentine

Today I have been through quite a few frustrations in my first attempt to create an HDR photo. I've seen some really amazing HDR photos online, and thought it would be interesting to try it out myself since I have the technology available. As always I got to excited, opened too many things, and ended up having PS freeze and shut down saving none of the work I had spent most of the day learning.

After finally restarting the computer and the program I had to redo most of the work I had already done. In a general sense, this is good because I get more practice trying to make the new information stick. But it was still frustrating. Once I was finished I was ready to upload and blog.

Here is where things got really frustrating. After spending so much time just getting the files to work properly I upload my photo ready to blog. Now blogspot has a deal with picasa, and considering the fact that I already use picasa web albums, this was a happy revelation for me (no more new photos sites to log into and remember username/password for!). Tada photo... look, look, look.. WHAT! I work so hard on the definition in an HDR image and picasa is going to compress my already compressed photo! You have got to be joking me. The above image is from my flickr account. The image below is from my picasa account. Now I am being a bit OCD about the definition in this pretty unexciting picture. But I worked very hard to make that wrapper actually look like a wrapper, instead of blown out flat plastic. So I believe I have every right to rant about it.

So now I will apologize because I may be going back and forth between my flickr account and my picasa account while posting photos in this blog (until I figure out some other alternative). Here is my photo for today. It really isn't exciting, except for the fact that it is probably the most detailed picture I've been able to come out with in a long time. Feel free to leave any comments. I know that it isn't anything fantastic, but it was fun to learn the technique:) Enjoy and Happy Valentines day!

Cameraphones and Snow

While the snow keeps falling, I have to find ways to keep myself from hating it. This is just a fun little photo I took from my camera phone, while on my way to work last Friday. I did edit it in PS3 to give it the aged look. I am quite impressed with the fact that I was able to take such a decent photo with my cameraphone!

Buddy

My favorite guy had TPLO surgery(he tore his ACL and basically had a knee replacement) about 8 weeks ago. We went for his final check up this weekend and the doctor says that he healed beautifully :) This is an old photo, but after worrying about him all weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to do a post for him!

As always feel free to leave crit!

Snow Patterns

I have to say that I love the patterns that you can make in the snow.

I've been looking around at the constant winter wonderland that has become Chicago, and I have to say that I can't get over how beautiful it looks when there is fresh snow. I wanted to capture this but not in the usual snow on trees. When I looked down from my back porch, I couldn't pass up this scene.

These are the good things I need to remember about winter;-)

Enjoy!

Always looking for feedback, please feel free!

More snow

Just wanted to do a little update. I thought Talia's advice was really accurate so I corrected it:D

~Thanks Talia!









Hello all:)
*************
More snow is falling here in Chicago and I'm going to try to make the best of it. Here's a little something that kept me occupied.

Feel free to leave me any comments or suggestions!