Location! Location! Location!

Now that I am doing a 365 project, I am finding myself getting very bored and taking photographs around my house, and am starting to think of more exciting places in the Grahamstown district that I can venture to. What this has led to is me putting together a hitlist in my mind of places to shoot from. This is what I have come up with so far (and bear in mind that I am writing them down as I think of them). Let me know if you can think of somewhere that I have missed!

1. Botantical gardens. Who doesn't love the bot gardens? Of course, this would mean more plants and flowers, but it would certainly be more interesting ones than what I can find in my backyard.
2. Grey Dam. It is a wonderful feature in Grahamstown, and if I can get someone to come with me who is willing to take a swing into the dam as well, it would certainly make for some good action shots. But even on my own, it would make for a great landscape if I am willing to take a bit of a walk.
3. Toposcope. Though I have heard that this is not the ideal spot for star gazing (thanks to the city lights), it would be a great place to get some scenic shots of the town, during the day and at night. What would be even better is getting the sunrise or sunset from the Toposcope, but that would take advance planning, a skill that I am not particularly good at.
4. Monument. Both inside and out. I imagine that the tiles in the monument, though not allowing for particularly good lighting, could provide a good backdrop for portraits. I also know that there are some pretty views from the monument that I would like to capture.
5. High Street. And by this I do not necessarily mean the activity of High street, that that should also be something that I should consider. What I mean is the highlights of High street - the statues, the cathedral, the High Street that is often forgotten in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
6. The hill above the sports department. This is something that was recommended to me this afternoon, and it sounds gorgeous. Apparently there was a fire there that has led to greenery growing from the ashes so to speak, and it certainly sounds like an interesting photo opportunity.
7. The golf course. More action shots, more greenery, more scenery. Hopefully these pictures would also involve either sunrises and sunsets or a Piddle on a walk. We will have to see.
8. Studio. One of the places that I am most looking forward to shooting in. I intend to put a large portion of my salary towards this next month. Grant, if you are reading, you can't say I didn't warn you!

Day 112

I decided that today's photo had to be of the snow. I could have put one up of the snow falling that was taken from my school, but instead I decided to put up this one of the little snow covered zen garden and bonzai tree up the road. There is reason for the high ISO - it is called silliness. I raised the Aperture to cut off some of the overly bright sunlight that was coming in, but forgot to change the Shutter speed and ISO. Thankfully, I think it still turned out okay.

Shutter speed: 1/100
Aperture: 9.0
ISO: 3200
Lens: Canon EF 50mm 1.8 II

Day Sixty-Eight

I have been really useless about uploading my pics this week. Unfortunately, I have also been pretty useless at taking them. I woke up on Thursday and realised that I hadn't taken a photo for Wednesday. While I could let this ruin my project, I decided instead to let today's photo be one that I have been working on all week. I have been having serious problems with Photoshop and trying to get it to do my panoramas. Either it takes forever (and by forever, I mean at least 45 minutes) or else it won't let me save it. I heard rumours on the internet that this was because it was too big, and so I decided to try again this morning with files that have been resized to quite a large extent. And it worked. So here is my panoramic effort, taken on Tuesday and worked on everyday since then.

Shutter speed: 1/500
Aperture: f/7.1
ISO: 1000

Day Sixty-Two

On my way to Shinae this afternoon, the sun was setting so beautifully that I couldn't resist taking my camera out. Unfortunately, I was in a cab and by the time I got there, I was in a concrete jungle and couldn't manage to take a shot. Luckily, knowing that this would probably happen, I managed to snap this on the way. I quite like how it ended up with the background being a great deal more in focus than the foreground and the combination of colours.

Shutter speed: 1/40
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO: 100

Days Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six and Thirty-Seven

I was without a computer for most of the weekend, and so wasn't able to keep up to date with the photos that I was taking. While that can be seen as a bad thing, I choose to see it as a good thing - it means that now I have a bundle of photos that run together to kind of tell the story of my weekend (kind of). While I have only been gone for three days, I have decided to post four photos mostly to show off my panoramic of which I am so proud. Now that I have learned how to do it, I have been playing around a lot, and while there are some better ones that I have taken, they haven't been put together yet (I arrived back late last night, okay?!)

So on Friday night I boarded a bus to Seoul, and the first photo was taken in this bus. The windows fogged up very quickly and the lights were reflecting through the fogged up window in a really beautiful, romantic way. I stared at it for a long time before deciding to just go ahead and draw a heart on the window so that I could take a pretty photo.

Shutter speed: 1/10
Aperture: f/3.5
ISO: 640

On Saturday I headed with Adventure Korea to Tongyeong island in Gyeongsangnam-do. There we took a cable car up a mountain which had beautiful views, perfect for practicing my panoramic picture taking. This is the first one that I took.

Shutter speed: 1/320
Aperture: f/7.1
ISO: 100

Later on Saturday, we headed to a Science and Fisheries museum, and before getting there some people had to release a bit of their extra energy. This is where my second photo comes in. This was one of the girls jumping around and posing for photos. I do not know her name.

Shutter speed: 1/250
Aperture: f/7.1
ISO: 100

On Sunday we headed to another island which was a two hour ferry away, and we were supposed to go on a hike there. I was too tired though, and instead opted for some hot chocolate in the tearoom at the bottom of the hiking trail. There was a dog there that we fell in love with, so I felt that this day's photo should be of Rose, the highlight of my day.

Shutter speed: 1/80
Aperture: 4.0
ISO: 500

Day Twenty-Seven

I refuse to take my camera with me to school. Every time I think about it, a picture comes into my mind of how my students would react to me bringing it (a combination of "Ooh! Teacher! Photo!" and "NO PHOTO! NO PHOTO!") and about all the damage that it could incur on school property (this is where you need to remember that I am from South Africa where keeping something as precious as a camera in an unlocked locker means it will probably be stolen in minutes. But even though I refuse to take the camera to school, I wish that I had it every morning and every afternoon on the walk that I take through Cheongseok High School. Yesterday was a public holiday and I took advantage of that by taking my usual walk through the school and taking some photos along the way. Yesterday's photo is one of the photos that I took. It was taken with a 1/400 shutter speed, an aperture of 8.0 and a 100 ISO.

Day Three

I wasn't very optimistic about today. I thought that no good photos would be taken and was planning on just capturing something random in my apartment (be prepared - this moment of desperation is still likely to occur at some point over the next 362 days). And then I was invited to dinner, and the opportunity for some photo taking was not lost on me. After dinner, I took a walk over the Shinae bridge and, after many failed attempts, got this picture of the city life. I particularly like the colours reflected in the water. Taken at a shutter speed of 1"6 with a 4.0 aperture and an ISO of 160.