Puzzling Pieces

On a scavenger hunt to find tips for a different blog post, I came across something called "joiners photography". When I first looked at joiners photography, it looked so fascinating. I immediately thought I should try something like that, but how? After some thought, I realized it's very easy to produce. It is just a mumbo-jumbo of smaller pictures making up a scene. Not exactly like a collage but like a puzzle. There are small pictures, like puzzle pieces, that make a picture like an entire puzzle. So you know how in puzzles, the lighting matches throughout the picture? In joiners photography, that's not necessary. lighting can be different from picture to picture. One picture can be darker than its neighbor, in my opinion, it looks cooler that way. I googled some more examples and alot of the images look so cool. I recommend you look some up now to get an idea. 

This picture is an example of joiners photography, taken outside of the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. The Rodin Museum has all these different statues inside, but I didn't go in there. I just looked at the museum from the outside. The statue outside, sitting in the middle there, is called, The Thinker. It was sculpted by the Frenchman named Rodin. The sculpture standing there is not the original, just some random replica, so it's not valuable. I believe the original sculpture is in a museum dedicated to Rodin in Paris.

 

How do you do joiners photography might you ask? I'll tell you how how I did the Rodin Museum one down there. So I stood on the road opposite the museum and took pictures of each section. What I mean by that is that I took a picture of each individual area moving from up to down, left to right. So I took seperate pictures of the road, the sculpture, the lamppost, the bench, the buildings in the back, the trees, etc. I made sure I covered the entire area without moving from my spot. Once I got home, I connected my camera's memory card to the laptop and opened up powerpoint. I located the pictures of this scene and just copied it into powerpoint. I'll tell you now that powerpoint is not the best way to join pictures together, but it works for me. I'm sure there are softwares out there that make this process a whole lot easier, but PowerPoint seems simple enough. 

Sitting at the top step at the art museum on the edge is so cool. You just sit there at the top and stare out into Philadelphia, observing every little detail on the Ben Franklin Parkway. The people walking on the sidewalk, the constant traffic of cars passing by the lights. It's quite a sight. You can also see every building in the distance from your perspective.

 Along with that, I took this in joiners photography form because the scene was too wide to take just one picture of the entire view. 

 Another thing is that it's important to make sure you take lots of pictures when you do this project. As you can see in this picture, there is one hole and a lot of gaps on the edges. That's because I don't have a picture of that part. So it's important to take a picture of the entire scene because once you move out of your spot, it's almost impossible to get the same scene in the same angle.  

Tips: 

Take a picture of every little detail. Don't miss a spot, otherwise you'll get a hole. 

Joiners photography is great for taking pictures of a wide-spread area, like a panorama. You can even make an artsy creation of a person. 

Have fun with it!

The 5-minute Rainbow

Finally!!! I found the rainbow!!! It was in prefect timing too. We were driving home and I see this huge, dark rain cloud, only on top of our development. It was pretty cool. As we were driving into the community, I was waiting for the moment when the cloud would just spit out. We got home, parked the car, and I went inside to put my bags away when I hear the rain pour! Our house was on the edge of the rain cloud, so I wanted to see if I could see the edge of the rain. (weird wants). But I couldn't find the edge because it was POURING too hard! It poured with large quantity and bad quality (because it was destructively heavy). So after the rain started gushing, I grabbed an umbrella and went outside for fun. It was rainy and sunny... which meant... sun + rain =rainbow! I decided to find a rainbow, and there it was! I made a split second decision to get my camera, and I came back out with the umbrella to take a picture. Pretty cool huh?

This was under the rainbow under the umbrella. Those black dots are the design on the rainbow and you can also faintly see the rainbow back there too. I took this picture with an art bold effect, meaning that it made all the colors more vibrant. Which is why you can see the sky a lot brighter than it is in the previous picture. 

It's funny to see how fast these rain storms come and go. Well, they aren't even storms then because they're so short. This one lasted literally 5-10 minutes. It spanned from the time I got home, run out with an umbrella, run back out with a camera, to the time I finished taking my pictures. By the time I was done, the clouds were almost gone! It was like it never rained, (except there was obviously rain on the ground).

It's Raining, It's Pouring

"It's rainin', it's pourin', the old man is snorin'" and I can't remember the rest of the nursery rhyme. Oh well, children are going to forget about nursery rhymes soon enough. Nevertheless, it was a Friday and super sunny Friday. Probably the hottest it has reached all year at a mere 92°F . The sky was insufficiently cloudy and soon enough, it looked heavy. The clouds then broke loose and it was pouring for a good half hour, but only a half hour. It poured and poured, and it was still pretty sunny too. The sun peeked out a couple times and sun + rain = rainbow. I searched left and right and went running around the house, but couldn't find one. Maybe it was really faint or I just wasn't looking in the right places..?

I went ahead and took some rain pictures without researching or knowing how to focus on the rain. It was tough because the camera had to be in the right setting to see the drops. I still have to find out how to do that because it's obvious I didn't get it right in this picture. For my camera to focus on some rain, I had to be in the rain. So I took an umbrella with me, quickly hopped outside and took a couple pictures. . The only way you can tell it's raining is by looking at the rain pound on the deck. Which meant, I had to crouch down with the umbrella to get the deck in focus. 

The sad part was that I couldn't find a rainbow! If you check this picture out, you can tell it's pretty sunny and rainy. And I looked hard to find a rainbow, but nothing but clouds and sun. Anyway, these are the droplets hanging off a table. I'm not really sure why this picture was intriguing, but I can talk about it's depth of field. The DOF here is pretty good because the table is in focus while the background is blurred. It makes the droplets standout. Another important element is the light here. The sunlight is shining specifically on two droplets, which is the reason you can see them clearly. 

This was the umbrella I was under to take pictures in the rain. You know, I wonder how the professionals do it... do they have an umbrella, or a waterproof camera? Oh yea and you can see the water droplets on the umbrella too. See? It was rainy and sunny, so there should have been a rainbow.. but nothing was visible!

These are called lilies, or scientifically, lilium. These flowers bloom pretty late in the season and don't stay long either. I took this picture right after it finished raining, and all the water droplets were just sitting there. I would have liked to zoom up furthermore, but I'd need a better lens for that. Here's some easy science for you: the water sticking together to form droplets is an example cohesion (like molecules sticking together). The water forming spherical shapes is an example of surface tension. And lastly, the droplets hanging on to the flower is an example of adhesion (dissimilar molecules sticking together). 

This is the same lily flower. I personally really like these flowers because my name means lily flower. So these are one of my favorite flowers, and they totally look cool after some rain. The color of this flower looks really cool too. There are so many versions of the lily: red, orange, white, pink, yellow, and then all these mixed colored ones. In this picture, the stamens (the brown parts at the top) are the main subjects in focus. Those are the first things that the eyes go to because its centered and focused. 

There was a quote that I came across recently and it basically says to observe the world more so that you don't need to take pictures. In more words, you should be able to remember and enjoy the beautiful moments and not need anything to remind you of it.  "At some point in life, the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough." -Toni Morrison. Well despite that, take lots of pictures so you can remember those forgotten moments.