My phone woke me up at 5:00 am this morning (notice that class was canceled).  That kind of bent me out of shape at first, but since I had been awoken I decided to make use of the situation.  So I put on my cloths and headed out into the bizzard (did I mention we are having a big snow storm?).  So I made it to Red Rocks Amphitheater pre-dawn for the cool sunrise on the snow.  But of course it was still snowing, so there was no sunrise.. Only white out.   Nonetheless, I managed to get a few decent photographs of the amphitheater and surrounding area.  

Then I went to Heritage Square (a weird little deserted entertainment place… no idea how to describe it),,,  but it looked cool in the snow…  All old school western looking (well, except for the kiddie rides),, but they look cool too.

I was just going through my photos from Cambodia tonight and spent some solemn moments viewing my photos from the S21 Prison and the Killing Fields. It's some very heavy material. 

Many of these photos are simply photos OF photos..as such I've never shared them; but it occurred to me that as a collection they really hit hard.. and might encourage people to bother to take a few moments to read about this catastrophe which so many Western countries swept under history's rug.

A new Google Plus (G+) daily photography theme.
#WorldCultureSunday

I really love cultural photography. So I thought I would be well suited to curate one of the photography theme days that are so popular here on G+. Since there seems to be nobody else doing a culture theme, I'm jumping in. I can't wait to see the photos which the G+ community will bring to the table. 

Eleven photographs which represent my best efforts in 2011.

It's been a busy year of photography. In part due to a new camera, in part to lots of travel and also due to an urge to simply improve. I can say with pride, that my photographs are getting better each year.. When I look back on photos which I thought were great five years ago,,, well, the subjects are still cool, but I needed work. In any case, I'm glad to see improvement since as you get older it seems a whole lot harder to improve at anything. (Getting ahold of Silver Efex this year didn't hurt… man I love that thing).

After plowing through the approximate 4,000 photographs which I kept this year (amounting to maybe 1/5 of what I actually shot), I came up with the following eleven images which I feel are my best of the year.
They don't make a great collection really. They are too different and have no rhyme or reason,, but that's to be expected since they come from all manner of locations and subjects.

I've never actually turned the camera on myself before.. and since it's all cold and snowy outside today,, I figured I'd just hang out and be a narcissist for the day and practice taking self portrait photos. 

The whole process took quite a while..  I had to go through an awful lot of photos just to get a few that I didn't hate…  Then there was doing post on the ones I could live with,,, and finally a little montage layout which takes a while (if you've ever done layouts,, you know it's oddly difficult for what seems like such a simple task).

I just used an empty wall in my office for the backdrop since I knew I was going to go black and white anyway.  And the style I used of burning out the edges of the photos makes the background irrelevant anyway as long as it's plain.  

The hardest part is focusing since you can't focus on yourself while taking the photo.  Basically I focused on the wall first.  Then went to manual to bring it in a bit (since your face is actually closer to the camera then the wall).  I just shot and then checked and then shot and changed again, until I got it right.

I used natural light from the window (blinds down to prevent hard hot spots) and used a strobe (nikon SB600) off camera pointed at the celing coming from the same direction as the window.  I used no "filler" light because I knew I wanted a hard shadown effect from one side.

Post was done in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro.. (love that software).

Anyway,,  here they are..