Bottles

This isn’t even my photo. Sure, it was taken with my camera, from about a foot to my left, but I didn’t direct it, frame it, shoot it or compose it in any way shape or form. That credit goes to my girlfriend. I have, however, posted it to my blog. Because I like it so damn much.

Cool Hand

I guess it’s possible I didn’t take this picture. Sometimes, I pass my camera around, and my girlfriend or other people snap a few shots. I think this particular night (also the Yakuza fight night) was one of those where my girlfriend was shooting a lot. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the photo, and check out her blog, Kurumi Photo.

Rust

Ever since I took a summer photography class, shooting slides with my Dad’s old Olympus once a week for a month between years of middle school, I have always loved shooting textures. I still remember a photo I took from that class of a checkerboard arrangement of small baskets of raspberries and blueberries at the farmers market that crops up on Wednesdays in the south Park Blocks in downtown Portland. It is with that joy that I present this exploration of rust, something I’ve also loved for it’s rich color and random patterns. I hope you enjoy it too.

Flicker

Again, shortly before the yakuza fight, my friends and I were bar hopping, and we finally found our way back to a bar that’s location I had thought lost forever: secret bar. Another foreign friend in Kyoto a couple of years ago had taken me to a bar so dark, then entire thing was lit with fewer than 10 candles (not that it was that big, anyway). He called it “secret bar”, but after I saw a sign outside, I ended up calling it “Downbeat”, which seemed to fit. I was wrong. Apparently, the bar has no name, and is still dark as ever. Please enjoy a picture of one of their candles.

Apparently I shot this with the Lensbaby. I had forgotten until I went to look up the exif data and it didn’t have anything for aperture.

When Pigs Fly

This photo was taken late one night walking down Oike street in Kyoto. The kitchenware store the pig was inside was closing down, and I captured this (hopefully whimsical) shot.

Lensbaby Oranges

Sorry for the unexplained, week-long absence. This week was silver week, which afforded me the opportunity to not take many good photos, but visit Himeiji Castle, Universal Studios Japan and get in a fight with Yakuza (a few hours after this picture was taken, actually). Regular updates will continue!

Lensbaby Freakout

Wrapping up my unofficial “lensbaby week” (of course there will be lots of Lensbaby shots in the future — don’t fret) is this bizarre shot. Needless to say, a normal camera perspective was NOT used to capture this. That’s one of the main reasons I like it.

Lensbaby Cosmos

More lensbaby fun. I hope you aren’t tired of them by now. The reason I post this one is mainly because I like (and do not fully understand) the ghostly texture of the bokeh. The flower itself is very pretty, and I like how not even it’s stem is in focus, but still the bokeh intrigues me.

Lensbaby Bloom

A third lensbaby shot. I should add, I performed no color correction on this one — the candy like translucence of the petals is completely natural.

Lensbaby or Bust

As promised more lensbaby goodness. I had a lot of fun with this lens, as you can see. Normally the lensbaby is pretty sharp, but to give this photo a little bit of a dreamier look (I haven’t bought the optics kit for the lensbaby yet, so I’m still using the double glass optic) I took the clarity down a little in LightRoom.

Someone brought to my attention that my photos were not watermarked, so from here out they all will be. If you have been using my photos commercially know that they are copyright Elliot Aughenbaugh — even the one that haven’t been watermarked.