• home
  • |
  • galleries
  • |
  • services
  • |
  • about
  • blog
  • |
  • contact

 
DailyPhotos > Kerry Ellis  > Galleries > Word of the Day
I've seen, and been inspired by, many "photo a day" projects, so I thought I'd try one myself, with my own little grammarian spin: create a photo using a Word of the Day gadget on my Google homepage for guidance and inspiration. And what better day than January 27, my thirtieth birthday, to begin such an undertaking? (Okay, maybe new year's day, but I was too lazy to bother then.) This project is also to help keep me thinking and creating images the way DGrin's Last Photographer Standing contest has challenged me to do--a challenge I've found really enjoyable and creatively stimulating. Wish me luck (and perseverance) in this endeavor!
Gallery pages:  <  1  2  3  4  5  6  >  >>
< Prev 20 of 187 Next >
Kerry Ellis > January 2, 2009 (Day 342) Xanthous: yellowishI just don't know. This is what my head came up with. The only thing I can think of is my subconscious interpreted "yellow" as "cowardly."Creeped me out working on it, regardless. I can't sleep with doors open, or at least appear to be open from my vantage point on the bed. Makes me think things are preparing to leap out from the dark, gaping maw the open door creates. I've never outgrown this fear.Didn't use the new camera because I needed a wide angle lens, and currently my wide angle is a DX lens. Saving up for new glass this year!
Kerry Ellis > December 31, 2008 (Day 340) Ultimate: furthest or highestFirst off, I hope everyone is enjoying ringing in the new year. :)Now, have you clicked the info button? Notice anything different? My parents—wonderous, amazing, spoiling parents that they are—bought me a Nikon D700 for my Christmas/birthday present. I had no words and actually cried from the surprise and shock. I know it wasn't in their budget anymore than it was in mine, but they have always stood behind my pursuits 100%, even when I decided to first be a theatre major back in college.I spent four hours just reading the manual and customizing buttons, menus, and anything else I could to get my shiny new toy up and running. Today I tested the awesome interval feature. This image is a blend of five images shot five seconds apart on a very, very windy day today. I love this camera!Mom, Dad, I know you pop in here every so often, so thank you, thank you, thank you again. I love you both so much. Thank you for supporting my wild, crazy, and eclectic pursuits.
Kerry Ellis > December 4, 2008 (Day 313) Curio: something unusual that is collectedMy father has been Indiana Jones for much of my life, right down to the trademark hat. By day, he is a meteorologist, but during his off hours in summer, he has been an archaeologist helping excavate Mayan ruins in Belize. He had participated in local digs around San Antonio when I was a child, and I remember accompanying him on a couple, digging up my own arrowheads. So he shouldn't have been surprised when I grew older and started asking to accompany him on his digs in Belize. But he never took me seriously until I pressed him on it, and last year I finally went.I spent a week excavating a fascinating site, then my mother came down and swept us away to resorts for a week of recovery. During that time, we visited many other Mayan sites, including Lubaantun, famous for its supposed discovery of a crystal skull. I didn't realize that until we had arrived, and the site keeper gave us a fantastic tour of the grounds and told a wonderful story about the scandal of the skull. Afterward, we followed him and our guide from the resort back to his small office where he showed us a collection of clay whistles he had made, replicas of Mayan artifacts. We'd had such a great time, and his whistles were actually very well made, that we each purchased one, mine being this lovely turtle.As we left, my mother asked if I would remember how to play it, to which I replied, "Of course, you just blow into its butt." My father couldn't conceal his snort and chuckle. :)
Kerry Ellis > December 1, 2008 (Day 310) Incursion: entering another's domainIt's Monday, but I'm using Sunday's word and an image from Saturday. Sue me. :PThis weekend I made an onerous drive to shoot a wedding with expert Lynne Hulbert, encroaching upon the world of wedding photography. I had 98% certainty before making this journey that I never wanted to make a living shooting weddings. I'm now 100% certain. It was much harder than I had anticipated, and I'd anticipated something pretty grueling.Lynne was a great sport letting me tag along, despite my non-smiling demeanor because I was so exhausted after the 10-hour drive and a restless evening before the wedding due to an amorous couple in the room next door. Once I got this shot, I assured her it was all worth it, every minute. And I still believe that. This shot makes my heart melt.I like to learn from all walks of photography, and I was able to learn a lot by observing Lynne and helping her however I could. I'm so grateful to her for the experience.
Kerry Ellis > November 26, 2008 (Day 305) Emollient: cream or something which softensIs it stretching the definition too much if I say, "he softens me?" :PI feel horrible that I've been so lax with this project. I love doing it, and I'm so annoyed with myself for not keeping up with it now. I'm afraid I won't be improving in the near future, either.I'm taking a road trip this weekend to visit the fabulously talented Lynne Hulbert. This wonderful woman has crazily agreed to let me be her second shooter at a wedding on Saturday. I just want to try it, once. And I figure I should try it with one of the best! It means a 10-hour drive for me, but I'm still so excited.P.S. Thank you to everyone who viewed and commented on my portfolio. I sincerely appreciate the time you took. I was still torn down like a rickety old house of outdated design, but there's nothing like building yourself back up again. :)
Kerry Ellis > November 12, 2008 (Day 291) Soiree: nighttime partyAnother old shot reprocessed. Sorry about that; a little overwhelmed with things at the moment.If any visitors have a moment, I'd love your input on my portfolio. I'm having it reviewed by a pro this Saturday, and I don't want to waste his time. He shoots landscape, fine art, and commercial photography. Let me know if there's anything I should cut or, if you're familiar with my work, anything I should go back and include.Thanks in advance if you give it a go. :)
Kerry Ellis > November 11, 2008 (Day 290) Sidereal: pertaining to stars, constellationsTired of all these normal landscape shots yet? :)The stars out here suck, so here's one from Moab. Yay, today's word forced me to process my second picture from the Shootout! I need all the motivation I can get.
Kerry Ellis > November 10, 2008 (Day 289) Intimation: indirect suggestionNot only did I leave my house today to take pictures, I did it in 40 degree weather during rush hour. In the wind! I spent about an hour silently willing people to move so they wouldn't be hidden behind light poles or would better balance my composition. It didn't work.
Kerry Ellis > November 9, 2008 (Day 288) Cenotaph: an empty tomb; a sepulchral monument erected in honour of a deceased person whose body is elsewhereStill recovering from the conference and business travel, so I snagged a photo from two years ago and did a quick reprocess on it. This is the tomb of Abelard and Heloise in Père Lachaise in Paris.The movie Being John Malkovich came out while I was in college, shortly after I'd finished reading The Letters of Abelard and Heloise for my medieval lit class, which made the opening marionette scene HILARIOUS for me. But then, I've always found medieval lit very humorous, particularly the Icelandic sagas.Yes, I've admitted it before, I have a very strange sense of humor.
Kerry Ellis > October 23, 2008 (Day 271) Plenary: full; completeNot a photo from today, sorry! :) I got too wrapped up in cooking (butternut-acorn squash soup and pumpkin bread) and processing my photo for DSS 11, so you get this photo from the Moab shootout.I've noticed that after some challenges/workshops/shootouts, my faith in myself as a photographer is renewed because I'll come home with "the one" picture I feel represents everything I've learned from experience and others as a whole. Previously, it was a B&W shot of the building museum in DC; more recently, it was a shot from the Scotland workshop. Today, it's this image from Moab. It's a culmination of everything I've managed to learn, and I hope I just keep growing. It's been an amazing journey.
Kerry Ellis > October 22, 2008 (Day 270) Nihilism: the delusional belief that the patient's self, the outside world, or parts of either have ceased to exist or to function Dictionary.com failed to provide a new word for today, so the OED it is! This is, of course, just one definition of many for this word.You think you're all alone in the world, and then you discover your black cat made it through with you. ;) Best Halloween prop ever.My original idea for this word was a good, depressing B&W nude study, but I was not about to cross that line and, unfortunately, have no nude models on speed dial. :)
Kerry Ellis > October 21, 2008 (Day 269) Synecdoche: figure of speech I've mentioned my penchant for purposefully taking things literally because I find it humorous, yes? My sense of humor is skewed, I know.This was adapted from a photo of my little model figure. The text is a favorite of mine from Boccaccio's Decameron.I wasn't actually satisfied with this truncated definition ("figure of speech" is so broad, after all), so I clicked through to Dictionary.com to see the full one: "a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole or whole for a part or general for the special or vice versa." Clear and simple, right? o_O Thankfully, the first example was something we could all relate to:"Photographers had to resort to visual synecdoche, hoping that a small part of the scene—a wailing child, an emaciated mother, a pile of corpses in a freshly dug trench—would suggest the horrors of the whole."   – Paul Gray, Looking at Cataclysms, Time, August 1, 1994
Kerry Ellis > October 20, 2008 (Day 268) Malfeasance: wrongdoing, misconduct, or misbehavior After being called out (very gently) by Gail for my neglect of this project, I made it a point to take a break from work today and hack this image together. :)This also gives me a chance to share some awesome news: one of my photos has been selected as a finalist in the FotoWeek DC contest and will hang for a week in Georgetown. I won't know for another month if I won anything or not, but the local publicity alone is going to rock. I'm thrilled!
Kerry Ellis > October 15, 2008 (Day 263) Waylay: to ambush or accost My P&S failed me yet again, so I present to you Monet cat. Argh!Back from Moab and have many photos to process, though nowhere near the volume I had from Scotland. Red rocks just didn't capture my imagination as much, I suppose.
Kerry Ellis > October 4, 2008 (Day 252) Volte-face: an about-face I know this image may make no sense with this word, but trust me, it represents the word—and my day—quite well.I went in to my fav camera store today to see about trading in my still-pretty-new P&S for one that wouldn't piss me off quite so much. (I currently have a Nikon Coolpix P5100; believe everything you read about the slow focus. It's irritating.) Unfortunately, they didn't have any Canon G9s, or the new G10, in stock. Yes, I'm a Nikon girl, but none of the Nikon P&S cameras shoot RAW. WTH?So I went in to buy a camera that worked better...and I left buying two cameras that didn't work at all: this Brownie and another Kodak with a bellows. I love old cameras, and I've long been in love with the Brownie and the way it looks. I may not have a better P&S to take with me to Moab for back-up, but I'm a happy camper nonetheless.
November 26, 2008 (Day 305)

Emollient: cream or something which softens


Is it stretching the definition too much if I say, "he softens me?" :P

I feel horrible that I've been so lax with this project. I love doing it, and I'm so annoyed with myself for not keeping up with it now. I'm afraid I won't be improving in the near future, either.

I'm taking a road trip this weekend to visit the fabulously talented Lynne Hulbert. This wonderful woman has crazily agreed to let me be her second shooter at a wedding on Saturday. I just want to try it, once. And I figure I should try it with one of the best! It means a 10-hour drive for me, but I'm still so excited.

P.S. Thank you to everyone who viewed and commented on my portfolio. I sincerely appreciate the time you took. I was still torn down like a rickety old house of outdated design, but there's nothing like building yourself back up again. :)
Kerry Ellis > November 26, 2008 (Day 305) Emollient: cream or something which softensIs it stretching the definition too much if I say, "he softens me?" :PI feel horrible that I've been so lax with this project. I love doing it, and I'm so annoyed with myself for not keeping up with it now. I'm afraid I won't be improving in the near future, either.I'm taking a road trip this weekend to visit the fabulously talented Lynne Hulbert. This wonderful woman has crazily agreed to let me be her second shooter at a wedding on Saturday. I just want to try it, once. And I figure I should try it with one of the best! It means a 10-hour drive for me, but I'm still so excited.P.S. Thank you to everyone who viewed and commented on my portfolio. I sincerely appreciate the time you took. I was still torn down like a rickety old house of outdated design, but there's nothing like building yourself back up again. :)
November 26, 2008 (Day 305)

Emollient: cream or something which softens


Is it stretching the definition too much if I say, "he softens me?" :P

I feel horrible that I've been so lax with this project. I love doing it, and I'm so annoyed with myself for not keeping up with it now. I'm afraid I won't be improving in the near future, either.

I'm taking a road trip this weekend to visit the fabulously talented Lynne Hulbert. This wonderful woman has crazily agreed to let me be her second shooter at a wedding on Saturday. I just want to try it, once. And I figure I should try it with one of the best! It means a 10-hour drive for me, but I'm still so excited.

P.S. Thank you to everyone who viewed and commented on my portfolio. I sincerely appreciate the time you took. I was still torn down like a rickety old house of outdated design, but there's nothing like building yourself back up again. :)
Camera: Nikon Corporation (Nikon D80) |
more details: exif |
original size: 3799px x 1520px |
Current: 600px x 240px |
Other sizes: S • Medium • L |
Keywords: warm dssmc
Gallery pages:  <  1  2  3  4  5  6  >  >>
< Prev 20 of 187 Next >

Comments

| hide gallery comments |

New comment: Requires approval

Name: Email: Link:
Connect  Connect with Facebook


Comment on: | Rating: stars
To foil spammers, enter this code: copy this text in this box: Code unreadable?

Add Comment Cancel


All photos Copyright © Kerry Ellis. Images may not be used in any way without express, written permission.
Powered by SmugMug | Login | Shopping Cart | Contact | Help | Portions © 2010 SmugMug, Inc.
Show FeedsAvailable Feeds | What are feeds?
Gallery Photos:
Atom FeedAtom | RSS FeedRSS