Photography

hi, this website exists to go through my history with photography, revisit different points in my life, and to answer the question "am i actually any good at taking pictures?"

earlier days

I've enjoyed taking pictures since i was a kid. I started with a Nikon Coolpix S200, which i still have to this day, and a iPhone 4 that i borrowed on occasion

unfortunately most of my pictures from back then are lost to time (or to the iPhone's dead battery), but it's something that always facinated me.

i mostly only allowed to use the camera on trips, so there aren't many pictures left from that time

here are a few interesting ones i've been able to salvage from old rips

not a very good wide view of the city, but i remember going here. i've long forgotten the name by now, and i was only 6, i remember having to drive up a very small road with no railing, where it was not very difficult to drive off and crash off the mountain. terrifying drive, okay village.

a picture of my grandmother. i don't remember taking this but when i was looking through i found the angle interesting and worth taking. a lot of photos that i like from this time are made by dumb luck.

i have NO clue how i could have taken this picture. if the date is to be trused i was 8. i vaguely remember this parade in boticas, mostly cause my mother made such a big deal about it, but i don't know how i could have gotten close enough for a shot like this.

from a museum in ottawa, i wish i had centered it so the bulb was move visible :/

it was very difficult to take a picture of this light. if i remember correctly it kept flashing and it was difficult to focus, added with the terrible shutter speed of the digicam.

another nice picture taken by coincidence, i have no clue how i kept doing these. this was a different museum in ottawa during a school trip, i can barely remember it, all i remember is that they had a stable with horses in it.

this one was worth including, i can remember if the shine was an internional part of the picture or not, but i think it gave an interesting quality to it, unfortunately it's very blurry so i wouldn't call it a "good" picture.

i can still recall, our

last summer (2024)

at the end of the school year i decided to bring back the digicam, in order to try and take pictues again

i then took this on my unfortunate trip to portugal, which was miserable, but i got some half decent pictures out of it.

when i was forced to make an instagram i decided to dump a few of these pictures into a post, seen below

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A post shared by ann (@guyistaken)

i plan to do more posts like this in the future, recently i've been taking more photos without having the time to look back at them

here are a few more photos from around the time that didn't make the cut

a little photo against the water, taken while bored and not wanting to talk to the people i was with, a common theme with my photography

a random sign i had found. for some reason i found it amusing that the letters were missing

you might recognize this one as the background on my laptop, a photo i'm proud of, but also one i had to go out of my way to get, at the dismay of my mother. The digicam wasn't the greatest at getting the fine details, so not a photo you should zoom in on.

taken quickly when going to see family. we only stayed at the house for around 20 minutes, maybe less, but i got this one right before leaving.

back as the same place at sunset, blurry and unremarkable, but an image i like.

hey little buddy!! I love animal photography, i always take my time around animals to try and build a sense of trust so they'll let me take pictures, and you'll see more of this when we get to squirrels, my favorite :)

very polite little cat, sat there for hours and didn't move when people came to pet her.

the three pigeons lined up perfectly near my grandfather's grave, an unfortunate place for him to rest. it was a remarkable thing to see in the moment, i fear the picture dosen't do it justice.

back on the island, the camera has a really bad shutter speed at night, and i always liked to play around with blurs to see what i could male

after this, college had started so i started taking pictures as a part of class, it was fun to have an excuse to take photos.

here are some stand outs from that time

part shutter speed experiment and part just a good location, although it is out of focus :/

another shutter speed experiment, i really enjoyed doing these

i was really proud of this angle. at the time i was dissapointed that the sign had been cut off, but today i'm moreso dissapointed that the digicam dosen't really do the vanishing point justice here. a lot of photos at this time are held back by the camera i was using

this picture is a tragedy, i like it a lot and when i got my current camera i wanted to go back to this scene to get a higher quality picture cause i thought it was such an interesting scene, but when i came back the car had gone missing :(

i misremembered this image, i always thought it was Sw!p3R, but it's actually Sn!p3R

i don't remember taking this picture, apparently it was off the digicam but i have literally no recollection of it, but it's so pretty :)

one of the first photos i took with my camera, an interesting sky scene taken while a kid was out with their kite, i found the contrast made for an interesting scene, unfortunately it would take a while before i learned to properly focus with my camera

another shot of the same scene, this time incorperating the grass

another from the day i got the camera, this time in the cemetary, i took a few photos of the statues, which are just slightly out of focus, but still good when downscaled.

another statue, although i would say this scene is a little too busy and takes away from the subject.

i really like slamming down my white balance and taking pictures of lights, it makes for some interesting darker photos, a photo like that is used for my web2 banner.

one of the only times i've used the flash on the camera, i took one without the flash and it was way too dark to properly see the statue, so i took a chance not expecting anything good to come from it. i'm quite proud of it :)

now (2nd semester)

Photography, as i do it today, is a newer thing, since i only got this camera a few months ago, so i don't have many examples, but i've more or less learned how the camera works and how to properly use it's settings and focus the lens to get what i want.

this dark shot with a lit window just bearly showing a staircase. i do love taking darker pictures such as these, and you may see more random lights in dark places. i think it provides in an interesting contrast well having a very simple subject

a simple shot of the eaton sign with some buildings visible. the compression does not do this image any favors, but it's not half bad

i took this one in a rush, and forgot to put the white balance down :(. it could have been so nice...

taken on new year's eve, a shot of one of the buildings around the idea with light strips on them. nothing too notable here, you'll notice a lot of my photography still start being just random things i find. i may call this "experimental", but i only mean that in the context that i am experimenting with trying to take a half decent photo (and not doing a great job.)

taken on new year's day, compression unfortunately does this image no favors, but i took a few shots of the crowd. the police luckily provided some interesting lighting, and i thought the big crowd, fog in the distance coupled with the low shudder speed turning some people into a blur. a lot going on here that i enjoy, which combines to make an interesting piece, which is really all i can aim for with photography.

taken on the part of campus between maine and n. i always find the cemetarys there to be a nice interesting view, and it is interesting that they are visible from all classes. this one is edited in lightroom to provide it a blue tint, which would otherwise make it uninteresting. it adds to the cold feeling of the graves and is a technique i used for a lot of the winter.

this one is pretty random, just the snow covering the window of the du college metro. this one could have benefited from a better angle, as i think the random house's windows distract from the composition of the image and distracts you from the metro sign or bus stop.

another light blue tint, although here the blur makes the snow look like rain so it loses a lot. i do not know what my facination with streetlamps is, but i always tend to take a lot of photos of them, as i'm sure you've caught onto looking at these.

this one i'm pertecularly proud of, as you might be able to tell. it is my banner for web2 and i will likely use it more in the following years as it is 1920 x 1280 and i will not allow it to burn a 5mb hole in my server for nothing. it's one of my favorite images, even for being so simple. i did use the same blue tint that i mentioned earlier, which i believe adds a lot to the atmosphere of the image.

i'm starting to think compression was a terrible idea. taken on the same day of the blue light this was another "experiment", which is code for bad. truthfully i don't know why i included this one, it's very loud a populated. in a perfect world there would be less branches everywhere, but in a perfect world this image would not exist to begin with.

this shot of the church in the snow, i think i was just getting some of the pictures of the area out of the way. after taking good pictures of the surrounding buildings i simply stopped taking any of them because i had felt i wouldn't take a better one (at least until the seasons changed)

i really like this picture. I wish i had found a more interesting way to use the stoplight, but it was taken while i was waiting for it to change. I think the blue tint against the orange light really helps it contrast from the rest of the image, plus the fresh show and falling snow add help to the atmosphere of the photo.

I walk past this tree often on my way home from school, i always found the way this neighbor places his charger to be amusing, as if he is almost charging the tree. unfortunately i think the building and lights in the background distract from what should be a simple subject, paired with the dark environment taken after sunset. unfortunately, with the angle that they place their charrter, it is harder to get a better angle

final thoughts

i don't find my photography pertucularly good. I think i try out more concepts and try and find more interesting shots or little techniques, but i can't call it any more than experimental, and i can't call that experimentation any more than amaturish. but really, that's not the point. i don't take photos to have something to look at, jeez i never look back at my photos. i take them becuase it's fun. it's fun to go around and find interesting little things, it's fun to see something line up just perfectly for you to get a shot, it's fun to experiment with the settings or to tweak things in lightroom. and in the end that's what it's all about.