norman hammer dot com

I mentioned in a previous post that in an effort to shoot more I was going to assign myself weekly "assignments".  Last Saturday, for my first weekly assignment I took the subway to Union station and walked around the surrounding area including Olvera Street and Philippe's.  Over the next two hours I took approximately 75 photos, most of them of the architecture as I wandered around.

Once I got home I made quick work disposing of the poorly exposed and blurry photos.  When I reviewed the remaining photos I quickly came to notice a common issue with a majority of the remaining photos.  The shots lacked any real subjects. 

I had very obviously just pointed my camera at things as I wandered by them, spending very little time thinking of framing or composition.  The pictures were pictures for the sake of taking pictures.  They told no story and had nothing of interest.  Looking at them my eye did not know what to look at, leading it to wander the shot.  I do feel I got a handful of decent to good photos.  Some I adjusted to black and white or performed some other act of pixel pushing, and this improved them a bit more. 

I have created a new section of my gallery to house the "picks" from these assignments.  The gallery will have additional photos that do not make it into my articles.  Below are my two favorite shots from the trip.  For the next assignment, I am hoping to make it to Descanso Gardens.