Photos as I Like It

For the 5am moment, I have another new location to feature. I'm in Santa Cruz, which is the beach town I grew up in. Not knowing what would be lit at this time of the morning, I gave myself extra time and drove along west cliff to see if there were any interesting lights from the wharf or Boardwalk. It was pretty dark for awhile, and then I found a few lights reflecting off the water from the wharf and surrounding shops and hotels.  5am on March 22 Molly 5am Sarah 5am

For the 4am capture, I decided to wander outside and see what this sleepy island of Alameda looks like in the middle of the night. It was very quiet, at least at my corner of Bay Station in middle Alameda. There wasn't another person or car coming my way, so I focused on the corner market which was closed, but still had a little light coming from inside.  I'm definitely looking forward to moving into morning hours, and soon daytime hours. I'm sure many people consider 4am morning, but it still feels like the middle of the night to me, somehow 5am feels significantly different.  4am on March 15 Molly 4am Sarah 4am

I recently moved from Los Angeles to Northern California, less than a week ago, so for the 3am moment in time I wasn't quite ready to go exploring the neighborhood in the middle of the night. I was slow to wake up, so the one shot I had thought about beforehand is what I went with. I've moved into a small cottage behind the homeowners house, it's really very cute. This is the view out my new front windows. Despite how many lights were on last night, it was very quiet at 3am. 3am on February 22 Molly 3am Sarah 3am

For the 2am challenge I had intended to go outside and save the inside shots for 3 and 4am, but that didn't happen, and I decided to play with light on a glass mouse figurine. So far, I'm noticing that regardless of my image, location or subject, light (or lack of it) is becoming a key element. It'll be interesting to see if that keeps up in the daylight hours. 2am on February 2nd Molly 2am Sarah 2am

The beginning time slots for this year's photo challenge are going to be a bit of challenge. Trying to decide to stay up or set an alarm is going to be a constant conversation for our images. I managed to stay up for 1am, and as I did listened to the cars driving by on the 110. With the historic Arroyo Parkway/110 State Route/Pasadena Freeway just across the street, I've captured images of moving cars multiple times, but never at 1am, so I figured I'd head over there. This image captures a few cars heading north and south with an infrared filter applied. I like the flood of light that is created by just a few cars. 1am on January 18th Molly 1am Sarah 1am

Sarah, Molly and I have started a new photo challenge for 2014. It's been far too long since I posted on the blog and used my DSLR, so I'm excited to do this. For our theme this year, we came up with A Moment in Time. We'll be posting 24 images, one for each hour of the day, taking a new image two times per month. I've also decided to post all black and white images, to connect back to what first interested me about photography when at 13 I received my Pentax SLR and started developing film and prints in Junior High. I hope you enjoy the series. To see what Sarah and Molly are up to, here are their blogs. I've also included their images below. Sarah: http://murofiore.blogspot.com/ Molly: http://www.mollyfast.com/ Midnight(ish) on January 1st. This is Lizzie a few minutes after midnight. I didn't happen to catch a New Year's toast photo, so I captured this sleepy image of Lizzie as I returned home and prepared to get up at 5:30am to walk the s...

And, done. I have now completed all photos for this year's challenge of 52 Crayola colors. Thank you to Molly and Sarah for playing and inspiring me all year.