Rather than being inspired by new or different scenes, I seem to be stifled by them. It is the familiar and everyday where I find my best photos.

I'm disappointed that I didn't get something better at Crossroads Park, although it is mostly just open grass. The thing that always strikes me about the park is not in the park itself: it's the huge green water storage containers across the street. They seem to loom over it and menace it as they hide, unsuccessfully, behind the trees.

I have tried to get pictures of these before — have tried to convey what I feel when I seem them — but I have always been unsuccessful. Today was only slightly better, and that because I decided to do the obvious: make them big in the frame. I've not yet found a way to include the context of the park and show their size. It may require a series of photos rather than just one. I will return to this subject because the challenge intrigues me: here's a clear emotion I feel but I have been absolutely unable to communicate even in spite of how clearly I understand it.

29 Frames, Day 8

Part of 29 Frames for 29 Days.

I missed my 29 frames yesterday. It rained all day and I guess I worked harder this week than I thought because I had no energy for photography when I got home. I tried to make it up today by shooting twice as many frames as required. I missed by a bit (only 54 frames rather than 58) but I'm pleased with what I got.

Maya is my favorite subject and I photographed her two different times today (although she was in the same place for both series). I also experimented with the shadows cast by a fork and spoon. I used a halogen work light from the hardware store to generate the shadows. I would have liked a crisper shadow from the utensils. If I had a softbox, or perhaps even a diffusion screen, I would have gotten it.

I am increasingly developing an affinity for black-and-white. Much of the attraction lies in the way it simplifies the composition. Color can be incredibly distracting. That may seem obvious, but it has taken these experiments with black-and-white to make the idea stick in my head. I'm drawn to colors, but somehow I'm not content, or I'm not able, to let that marvelous color stand on its own. I am always compelled to include it in a broader context, and then I'm left wondering what compelled me to take that shot.

My favorite of the day is from my first series with Maya. Its effectiveness is all due to her expression, but that doesn't make me like the photo any less. I've presented it here as it came from the camera, uncropped, but it's probably more pleasing as an 8x10. I made an 8x10 of it by trimming from the left side.

29 Frames, Days 6 and 7

Part of 29 Frames for 29 Days.

Today I'm happy. Today's pictures are gloriously about color encased in frost. It's unfortunate you can only see them 800 pixels wide. They should be big. Even though I was operating hand-held in overcast conditions, I caught detail that I have rarely seen from my D30. Even the pictures that I didn't get so sharp are better for being somewhat soft because they become that much more otherworldly and take on an air of real beauty.

Pardon my gushing, but after days of frustration (months, in fact, considering all the gray dark winter), these pictures thrill me.

I awoke to heavy fog. I was happy about that because I intended to photograph some of the trees near my building in the fog. As I got closer to work, the fog disappeared and I thought there would be little to shoot.

Then, as I turned onto the road leading to my building, I saw frost on all the plants. I saw reds and yellows framed in white. I knew taking the photos would make me late. I considered going in and checking on things before coming back out to shoot the frost. Thank goodness I didn't.

It was just a degree above freezing and I still had my backpack on, so it was tough to stay steady. Again I used my trusty 17-40mm f/4 L, but this time I took excellent advantage of both ends of its range.

I could have kept shooting all day, but I stopped after 35 frames and about half an hour. Everywhere I looked through the viewfinder seemed to be a new magical world.

Days like this make it possible to bear all the others when there's no inspiration and every shot seems tired and flat and proof that I should just put the camera away.

29 Frames, Day 5

The sun came out for about an hour this afternoon and I got a chance to take advantage of it. I loved the color of the light mixed with the wood of the picnic tables and the green of the grass and the trees. Why, then, did I end up displaying all the shots I selected from today in black and white?

I realized that the lines and contrasts between light and dark were the powerful part of my pictures, no matter how much I liked the colors when I saw the scene in real life. If the colors were what I liked, I need to do a better job focusing on that.

I again shot with my 17-40mm f/4 L. Four of the five picnic table shots were at 17mm (the other was at 40mm). The close-up of the magnolia (or rhododendron?) was also at 40mm.

I felt an enormous freedom and expansion of my photographic creativity when I first got that lens. Previously, my widest lens was 28mm wide which, on the D30, was the equivalent of 45mm. The widest I could go was essentially normal viewing. I have said many times that I see in wide angle and that's why the wide angle lenses suit me so well.

I finally realized that the reason I like wide angle shots is precisely because I do not see in wide angle. I see with the angle of view of a telephoto lens. When I look through the viewfinder with "normal" lenses (around 50mm effective) attached, the scene feels much wider than it looks when I see the scene. It seems to me that one of the essential traits of a successful photograph is its ability to present the scene in a way that is different from the way you would see it with your own eyes. By the nature of photography, that's going to happen since it represents the three-dimensional world in two dimensions. But it needs to go beyond that. I don't have the words or the conscious understanding of this to explain it well.

The ability of the wide angle lens to easily present scenes in an obviously false way is at the heart of much of their appeal for me.

And yet the more I look at my photos, the more I see that I am not handling the wide angle well. I have heard it said that painters create by adding paint to the canvas while photographers create by subtracting elements from the frame. I'm terrible at subtracting from the frame and a wide angle lens makes it even harder.

Yet I do not want to produce standard "postcard" photos. This list of tips almost reads like an example of the things I try to avoid when I'm shooting. That may be my very problem, of course.

Dale Cotton describes this as eye candy and says he wants photos with staying power. "A sailboat alone on a still water at sunset may make an eye-catching composition. Ten days after hanging it on your wall you barely notice it. In twenty days it has become invisible. On the other hand, visitors to your house are more likely to notice the sailboat with delight than the less flashy image the endless detail of which keeps amazing you with something new."

Now if I can just learn to produce those kinds of images....

29 Frames, Day 4

For those of you anxiously await the report from the fourth week of dance classes, you'll have to wait until next week. There were no dance classes this week.

And we decided not to go to the Impulse Ballroom this weekend. We were both tired and it just felt like a good night to stay in and watch Amadeus.

Another day of poor results. Some of us went for lunch today to a dim sum place and I intended to take pictures there, but I decided against it at the last minute. I now wish I had taken my camera since, if nothing else, they had a bit of an Asian-style garden in the back that might have yielded a nice picture. I probably couldn't have convinced everyone else to wait on me, though.

I decided to take some pictures of Dawn's pencil sharpener collection. I got lazy, though, and made a host of mistakes. Don't let anyone ever tell you that still-life photography, or even catalog-style photography (as I was sort of approximating here) is easy. It isn't

Let me catalog the mistakes.

1. Aperture too wide for the angle at which I was shooting.
2. Bad angles for most of the sharpeners. I should have changed the camera height and angle to suit each sharpener. In some cases, I could have put a bit of putty under the bases to lift the sharpener to match the angle.
3. The shooting surface wasn't clean enough.
4. The pencil sharpeners weren't clean enough — ordinary dusting doesn't get it at this kind of magnification. This demands cotton swabs, cleaning solution, and tweezers.
5. Not enough work to control highlights on these very reflective surfaces. I combined two different exposures in most cases to minimize the highlights, but I still left areas that were blown out. That would never fly in a good catalog.
6. No other interesting "scenery" to go with the pencil sharpeners. This is usually the job of the art director on a real catalog shoot, but I could have done much better.

I'm happy with the quality of the light, though. It was a single halogen desk lamp, with white foamcore providing reflection just outside and above the right side of the frame. I also left plenty of space for text in many of the shots.

This kind of shooting is surprisingly tiring. Part of this is due to my lack of a proper shooting table, so I'm always working at odd heights with reflectors balanced precariously. It's technically demanding, too, since I always shoot with mirror lock-up and the self-timer. Framing needs to be precise (or should be — I was careless tonight). Again, since I do not have a proper studio, the tripod is often on carpet rather than a hard floor and it's hard work to change the exposure settings when planning to combine without moving the tripod at least a little. I don't have spikes for the feet.

29 Frames, Day 3

I went back to the store today to get the Kodak Ultima paper without the ColorLast logo on the front. The catalog number is the same on both (CAT 811 0579 for the 15-pack of 8.5"x11" High Gloss). Before I bought it, I looked on the back for the Kodak EasyShare software code. The Ultima paper with ColorLast is paper type UPP-4-A, but the Ultima paper without the logo is UPP-3-A.

Finally, I found a difference.

I decided I wouldn't bother with the older Ultima since I have read reports about problems with it on DPReview and on the Profile Prism and Qimage mailing lists.

I found a 25-pack of the paper at the Office Depot in Issaquah (we were at Costco, so I dropped by to check). They carry the Ultima Satin, but they don't have the ColorLast version yet.

I do wish Kodak had changed the part numbers so that I could reliably order some of the Satin.

I knew today would be tough, but I made my quota and I got some ideas for scenes I can shoot in the coming days after I get home from work, even though it will be dark.

No pictures from today thrill me. I took most of my shots around a stand of trees with white, flaky bark. They strike me every time I see them, but I was not able to capture what I feel with the camera. One of the hardest things for me to do is to see photographically. I often see only pieces of the whole scene and focus on those pieces that I like, conveniently ignoring all the other elements. The camera is not so selective.

I didn't quite take my requisite number of frames with the trees. So tonight, after we returned from the store where Dawn got some Kookaburra Licorice that she has been craving for a couple of days, I decided to take a picture of some of the licorice. I think I captured it, but the pictures are still uninspiring.

I have again included a selection of shots in both color and black and white. The more I practice with black and white conversions, the more I find myself thinking about the composition as black and white before I take it. I have a terribly long way to go, but it's rewarding to feel those first stirrings of learning.

I don't know what my best shot of the day is. None of them is good, so I'll leave today's choice blank.

29 Frames, Day 2

A few days ago, Kodak announced a new Ultima paper with ColorLast technology. This paper supposedly absorbs the ink differently than other papers and Kodak claims 100 years of print life, even with dye-based inks, whether protected or not. This is the first time I have ever seen claims for longevity from a paper manufacturer for unprotected (as in, not behind UV-blocking glass in a frame) storage: "Photos last no matter how you display them – in a frame, photo album or on a table at home."

That's exciting, but there's one snag: this is Kodak paper. In the past, Kodak paper has been one of the worst performers in the high-end photo printers from Epson and Canon. Ink would pool on the surface and the paper would still be wet 24 hours later. The Printers and Printing Forum at DPReview is full of stories from people who have had disastrous results with the Kodak paper.

I had to try this new formulation anyway and I was lucky to find it at the local Circuit City. There may be something fishy going on since the part number for the Kodak Ultima High Gloss (they didn't carry the Satin finish) is the same whether the ColorLast graphic is on the front or not. That makes it particularly dicey to try to order it online. Or is it possible that the paper formulation hasn't changed, but Kodak has gotten these new results from their testing lab? Since Circuit City had a package of the Ultima High Gloss without the ColorLast graphic, I will go back and buy a package and see if it prints any differently. I don't have the ability to test its lightfastness, although I may make prints on both papers and expose them to what little UV light we get this time of year for a couple of weeks and compare the results.

About the printing – fantastic! I printed the target for Profile Prism around 1:00PM today and let it dry for nearly 8 hours. The profile came out great. The histogram was the best I've seen. The dynamic range and color space coverage numbers were slightly below the Canon Photo Paper Pro, but just barely. Although I haven't tested a range of scenes, I have printed a photo that needs a lot of ink and the results were completely different from anything I have seen from Kodak paper in the past. It was dry to the touch when it came out of the printer and I put my straight edge on it and cut within minutes of that and had no smears, no stickiness, no problems.

The High Gloss is not nearly as glossy as Canon's Photo Paper Pro or Photo Paper Plus Glossy. It also cuts much better than the Photo Paper Pro (the PPP tends to chip at the edges as you cut – it's essentially impossible to trim a photo with no white border).

One more bonus: I don't get the microbanding-like columnar dot arrangement on this paper, probably because Kodak recommends using the plain paper setting on the i9100. Luckily, the i9100 still lets you pick the highest resolution even when plain paper is selected (something that the Epson 1280 driver wouldn't allow). I'm getting great-looking prints and I'm probably using less ink.

There are only two problems with the paper: it's expensive (nearly a dollar per 8.5" x 11" sheet after taxes at Circuit City) and it doesn't come in any sizes larger than 8.5" x 11". Oh, how I wish this was available in 13" x 19".

Anyone know the Kodak equivalent of Robert Scoble? I want to bug him about some bigger sizes of this marvelous paper.

I got my 29 frames today, the first day of the 29 Frames for 29 Days project. I actually shot 40 frames in my walk around the neighborhood and got 17 worth processing. Two of those 17, though, are black-and-white versions of color photos (or are the color photos versions of the black-and-whites?). You could say I got 15 if you wanted to be stingy.

I was surprised how hard it was to just go out and do it. Once I was out there, though, things started flowing. But getting started was tough.

I'm glad the first day was on a weekend since it meant I had my choice of daylight. Tomorrow will be more difficult. That's OK. This project is about overcoming the difficulties of shooting in the winter.

What did I learn today? I used my 17-40mm f/4 L but I spent a lot of time at 40mm. Six of the 15 frames I selected were shot at 40mm and only four were at 17mm. The other five were between 25mm and 33mm. Petteri Sulonen is right: wide angle is hard to use. Even though I love using it, and it's the way I tend to see my photos, I kept reaching for the long end of the lens today. Part of that was the intimate nature of the shots I chose — I wasn't trying to capture vistas or even place my subjects in an identifiable neighborhood. I was simply looking for good photos.

This is Dawn's favorite picture, but mine is below.

29 Frames, Day 1

I'm clearly not the only person frustrated with the dark gray light of winter. Steven Vore pointed out suggestions from the December issue of Outdoor Photographer magazine. They're excellent ideas, and most of them apply to any time of year. I've got an additional, or slightly different, problem – it's not that I don't think there are things to photograph, or that I mind the weather (although I wouldn't mind the wet weather even less with a 1D Mk II), it's that I can't rouse the emotional excitement to find good photos. Everything looks bleak and gray and uninteresting.

So today, on Mark Goldstein's always-excellent PhotographyBLOG, I read about 29 Frames for 29 Days. John Yuda recognizes the winter malaise and proposes that photographers pledge to take at least 29 frames a day for the 29 days of February. He encourages us to keep a journal about it, too.

I'll be keeping track of my progress (along with links to my daily 29 frames) in the 29 Frames category.