Scott Fillmer » summer

Photographic Week in Review of Outtakes :: Saturday Summary

Scott Fillmer — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 16:39:20 +0000

I started thinking about all the photos I take during the week that never see the light of day. They could be photos on my phone or when I haul around my DSLR (which is most places right now until I find a suitable replacement for everyday stuff like the x100), but most get archived and are never seen from again. This odd collection of photos has nothing in common with the other except they all took place within the last 7 days. I’m calling this gallery a “Saturday Summary” and just including a hodge-podge of 5-10 photos from the previous week. These in this post are from July 2nd to July 9th, which included a weird set of images from stuff like the one rain we actually got in Auburn to the Cow Appreciation Day photos for Chick-fil-a my sister wanted of my nephews (which could be the cutest photo ever even if I do say so).

Call me strange but I love looking at the week in photos. It’s just a narrow frozen piece of time in the normal routine of daily life, something photographers rarely covered years ago, but something we now have the ability to document quickly, easily, and in great high quality. It may be the product of our age or culture, and it also may be just too much in general, but I would love to have seen photos of everyday life from my grandfather’s house, or great-grandfather.

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Southern Drought No News Wants to Cover :: Friday Feet

Scott Fillmer — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 01:26:04 +0000

We have been in this drought for some time now, it seems like years, because it has been. For about the last 5 years or so we just have not had any steady rain at all. The best evidence of the drought, at least on our property, is our pond. This is basically a 2 acre pond that is rain fed. From the feet shot you can see it is dry as the Arizona desert. From the shot of the pond area, almost the entire view of the photo should be under water, in fact I am basically standing where the water should be. Anyway, I know it’s not the most photographic Friday Feet but it’s what this summer is turning out to be like on our side of the world. We could really use an active hurricane season where we get some nice slow moving weak storms over and over again. I know the fish shot is kind of gross so I left you with my moms yellow flowers blooming like mad in this 100* weather.

Coming up soon, some uber cute shots of my nephews in their Chick-fil-a cow costume for their annual photo contest. It was quite something to shoot people in cow costumes in 100* weather. Have a good weekend.

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Summer in Opelika Leads me to Shoot the Church in Black and White

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:50:21 +0000

I finally put together everything to get a print actually hung on my wall. Amazing what a process that has become. I’m so use to posting and shooting digital that it just felt like quite a task, and took 4 years if you count when I purchased the frames, or 2 months if you count when I decided to get a print ordered. Anyway, I love the shot and how it turned out, and today it makes for the Photo of the Day.

This black and white of the First Baptist Church of Opelika was taken handheld on the corner of the block just about at high noon, when I would never seek to take a photo since everything normally gets washed out and contrast goes to nothing. In this case I love how the final result turned out, and the photo reminds me of lunch I had that day with a friend of mine, David Olive. On a side note, to me, that’s one of the great things I love about photography. This photo may just be a photo of an unknown church to most, but, to me, it’s a reminder of exactly what I was doing, where I was, and what was going on that day. I had just finished lunch with David and was on my way home and just decided to stop see if I could get anything at all in this 100 degree glaring sun. As soon as I stepped out of the car a huge cloud came over, covered everything in shade, took away all the harsh shadows, and left me with a shot I love of this historical church in Opelika.

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Photos of the 4th of July Fireworks in Auburn

Scott Fillmer — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:19:04 +0000

Yes, I know I’m a little late with the fireworks pics but oh well. The fireworks in Auburn were good as always, the only thing that just kills me every year is they don’t go high enough in the sky to get up over the power lines, and I have tried different locations every year. You can see from the grande finale shot above that Alabama Power just had to be front and center, otherwise, I love the shot. Each year they do this outdoor festival thing, which is more akin to thousands of people sitting around in the park waiting for the fireworks, but it is a great opportunity to shoot. It’s always a good show but hours of waiting and fighting the traffic afterwards for 10 minutes of fireworks has me thinking we might try a new show next year. Boston Pops would be cool.

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A Nasty Tomato Hornworm Caterpillar Closeup

Scott Fillmer — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 18:52:21 +0000

This is just about as perfect a photo of the day as I can get for summer in the south. These nasty things attack our tomato plants every year and they look so much like the plant leaves they are almost impossible to see. The only part you see is the evidence they were there (an eaten plant) and until you find them they will continue to devour everything in sight. They can get enormous in size if you don’t kill them quickly. Luckily this one was small, smaller than my little finger. The EXIF metadata is over here if you are interested in the macro shot.

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Rolling Summer Thunderstorms and Dramatic Clouds in the South

Scott Fillmer — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 12:09:13 +0000

It seems like these storms have been way to far and few between the past few years, but at least we are getting a small amount of rain. This thunderhead rolled by yesterday afternoon about 2pm and today it’s the photo of the day. Down here you see these nice little points developing in the clouds and you start to take notice. This one never picked up any rotation to it, but it made for some nice dramatic cloud shots. This image was taken just a few miles from my house when I was on my way to work, I literally stopped on the side of the road and rolled down the window to get the shot. My favorite part is how this tiny little truck way off in the lower right corner looks like it’s trying to outrun the storm like it’s the movie Twisters or something. It would be nice if we could get these every afternoon for the rest of the year.

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A Midnight Summer’s Dream in the Night Sky

Scott Fillmer — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:54:45 +0000

Ok, well it’s not Shakespeare but it is just about that time of year when the days are really long and the nights are clear and hot. Sometimes it’s hard to find new and fresh images when your routine seems to stay the same, but there is always a lot more to creation than meets the eye. Out here we actually still have a dark sky at night, most of the time. We can still see the lights from the Auburn-Opelika metro area and on the other side we can just see the glow from Columbus, GA, but it isn’t anything like what the sky looked when we lived in the big cities like Dallas. Those big cities like Atlanta and Birmingham have almost no night sky left. Luckily out here we still do… so… I’m off to try to get some shots of the Milky Way or whatever else my nephew finds while stargazing. Hopefully I’ll have something interesting to show for it tomorrow night.

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Late Evening Thunderstorm and Some Lightning Photos

Scott Fillmer — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 15:14:49 +0000

Last night just around midnight we finally had a thunderstorm go through our property. Feels like the first one that has come across our house this year, but it brought some nice lightning with it, for a very short time period. I took these shots right out my office window. I rendered the one image above both in black and white and color so you could see the vapor trail from the previous bolt that hit just prior to my shutter being pressed. Look on the black and white just to the left side of the image and you will see where the bolt that is no longer visible went through the clouds. I really love shooting lightning, wish the opportunity came about more often than once a year or so. You would think being in the deep south that wouldn’t be the case but we seem to be lingering in a 5 year drought. As usual the exif metadata can be found on flickr if you want to see how the shots were taken. This was really the last time I have been able to get some decent lightning at our place, back in the summer of 2008, see How to Successfully and Safely Photograph Lightning and Humidity, Storms, and Lightning in Alabama are Back for my last two examples.

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Summer Camp Cornerstone 2011 Gets Underway :: Photos

Scott Fillmer — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:29:41 +0000

So it’s that time of year again when all the churches in the country move into VBS mode (we actually call it Camp Cornerstone here, doesn’t sound quite as scary to me, but doubt the kids care what the name is, they always have a blast). Anyway, last night was the kick off for this year and as usually it was all hands on deck fantastic. I really doubt the kids have any idea what-so-ever how much work goes into pulling off Camp Cornerstone, but I do, and the time and effort put in by the staff and volunteers was well worth the excitement on 200+ faces last night. There is a lot planned for the rest of the week and I know they will have a blast while learning about Jesus, our faith, and how to live a life devoted to Christ. Above are just a tiny few shots from the opening set last night, others will be posted by the crew of photogs we had on hand last night. The sign of the day though goes to Mike Fisher with “Sock Puppets are Real” on his guitar… nice!

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Summer Food Photo of the Day with Red Seedless Grapes

Scott Fillmer — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:35:02 +0000

My photo of the day sorta screams summer to me… fresh fruit. I love red seedless grapes and when I picked these up yesterday on the way home from work they were too good not to shoot. These shots are never as easy as I think they are going to be but I like the way the colors turned out with this particular shot. bon appetit.