"G" Day

Gloves on motorcycle tank
Originally uploaded by Chris in KC

I needed something different, so today was "G" day (just a letter chosen at random). I promised myself I would take at least 5 pictures (it started as 10) of anything that started with G, was shaped like G, etc. This was harder than it sounds, but it did stretch me to think about my subjects differently.
The nice thing about this exercise it is gets me out of the mode of judging which subjects are photo worthy, and encourages me to shoot subjects I normally would overlook. The picture of my motorcycle gloves are a great example. I use these gloves every day, yet it never occurred to me to take pictures of them. I like how they turned out on the tank, however, so I am glad I did this.
I doubled up this creative exercise with one of the technical exercises from my previous blog entry. I used an f1.8/50mm prime so all zooming had to be done with my feet. This definitely takes some getting used to and forced me to move around and find the right angle and the right distance for each shot. This can be especially challenging with a 50mm lens as I found I need to get a long way away from my subjects. In some cases I simply could not get far enough away and wished I had brought my kit lens for its wide angle ability. However, I think it is also important to learn to operate within the parameters of the equipment I have on hand, so technically this exercise was also a success.