hello 2025.

This may come as a shock to you, but I haven't posted in a while.

A lot has happened since my last post, but I won't bore anyone with the details.

Happy New Year.

it's the little things.

 

a day at the lake.

 

When I was younger I had to ration my memory card space, so I took all of my photos in the highest quality JPEG it could instead of RAW, knowing that was the way to go. As an adult with adult monies, I can now afford all of the memory cards that I want in any size I want. This means I now have the space to accommodate for not only all the pictures I take, but to take them in RAW + JPEG. 

I've been spending my free time going on strolls around the city, just snapping away. I'm glad I can take as many photos as I'd like, but I now have so much to go through lol. As I'm going through pictures, comparing the RAW from the JPEG, I'm kind of torn between images. 

This is a RAW image I took while I was at the lake. I tried messing with filters and individual levels and colors, but find myself coming back to the original. I thought it would look better with lighter, more saturated greens, specifically in the grass, and maybe a pop of highlight, but found that the shadows frame the image quite nicely. When lightening up the trees and grass, it kind of flattens the image in a way so the trees and grass blend in with the sky and lake and nothing really *pops*. I feel like when I leave the image like this, you focus on the girls sitting by the lake and the sailboat out in the distance. 

I don't know why I just wrote that blurb like a description in a textbook, but lately I've been finding a lot of photos I've taken over the years and wanted to know more about why I took a photo in particular. I have a story behind most of my photos, but then there are some like these where I wonder, "Do I actually know these people or are they random people hanging out by the lake?" 

The answer is I don't know these people. I liked the sailboat in the distance, I like how the girls are sitting in the sun, between the shady areas of the tree, and how the shade of the tree, leaves, and branches frame the subjects quite nicely.

wrigley field then and now.

 

2006

2024

you don't really notice how much something changes when you look at it every day.

I went for a walk the other day.

I went for a stroll through the cemetery the other day and took a few pictures of nothing in particular. I had never been to graceland and am usually pretty spooked by cemeteries, but since I'm going to see a concert in a cemetery later this year, I figured I should start getting used to them. 

After my lengthy stroll through graceland, I walked by two other cemeteries, but it was almost closing time. I'll just have to pop in another time.

I made a few edits in adobe lightroom to make the colors *pop* a bit more.

mirror selfies through the decades.

 

2006

2006

2006

2007

2010

2024

2024

this is what I look like behind every photo.

hello again.

I'm surprised I didn't make something of this during the covid times, but that's ok. after six years, I am back... again. this time I'm going to use this space to post pictures from no particular moment in time or with any particular theme. I like to take a lot of pictures and especially of things I like. sometimes I like to share those things that I like. maybe I'll come across a forgotten photo that will make me feel some type of way. maybe I'll see what kind of unholy creation I can make AI come up with. either way, I'll never run out of content to post. in fact, I might post a lot more than I used to.

recently I had been inspired to buy a canon rebel xt, just like the one I had in high school through college, off of ebay. he was $70 and works just like I remember. this is a photo of myself, through a series of many, trying to refamiliarize myself with the manual settings on the canon rebel. (I have a beautiful sony a6000 and have some idea of what I'm doing, but the canon rebel xt is a 19 year old camera and has limited settings compared to the sony a6000.) during my limited free time, I have been trying to go on more field trips with my canon rebel to capture the world around me and to improve my photography skills. some pictures may have edits, and some might not, but I'm very transparent when it comes to my photos, as you will soon find out. 

this photo was not edited in any way, except to add a wee watermark. as I was testing the different settings on the camera, the sun was setting behind my building and reflected light off of a window from a building in front of me. I did not enjoy the bright sunlight shining right into my eyeball, but I do enjoy how the photo turned out.

dan is the man.