cooper has a friend on the beach that we call “kissy face” for obvious reasons. i’m not sure if she’s in love with cooper or just wants to know what he’s been eating, but she’s awfully persistent – and thorough.
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| cooper puts on his scary face and acts like he’s just tolerating the attention, but somehow i get the feeling he actually likes it. | ||
this past week (2-8 january), abby and i went to the chennai open, the largest atp tournament in asia. it was a week of some amazing tennis. the finals came down to the 1st and 4th seeds, janko tipsarevic of serbia and milos raonic of canada (pictured in that order as they entered the stadium). tipsarevic was the better all-around player; raonic had a lot of trouble placing his shots – i lost count of the number of unforced errors he made – but he also had a killer serve that was almost always unreturnable. each of the three sets ended with tiebreaks, and raonic finally wore tipsarevic down to take the final tiebreak 7-2.
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the competitors enter the stadium. tipsarevic definitely had the intensity, but not the brute strength of raonic, whose 35 aces often left tipsarevic in the position shown in this last photo. (note the speed: 225 km/h)
it was not easy shooting from the stands, especially with a slower lens. watching the guys courtside, i definitely had lensvy.
i’ve just signed up for some online courses with an outfit called “the compelling image.” for their sample lesson, i was instructed to take two shots that incorporate various described compositional techniques to create images with visual impact, rather than the equivalent of snapshots of uncle fred by the side of the house. i didn’t think it right to submit shots i’d already done, so i went out today and grabbed a few shots. compelling? who knows. it’ll be interesting to read the professionals’ feedback.
happy new year.
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i only had to submit two, so i didn’t include the third one, but there’s something about the girl’s face and the boy’s body position that interested me so i’ve included it here.
for the past two days, we have received increasingly frantic warnings about cyclone thane, which at first was heading straight for chennai: charge our phones, fill our gas tanks, stock up on milk and water, and so on. yesterday morning, however, the cyclone veered south, straight for pondicherry; bad news for pondicherry, but this downgraded our expectations to just heavy winds and rains.
this morning, we looked outside and saw that there indeed had been heavy winds overnight (leaves and branches down), but no real damage. i took the dog down to marina beach, despite the driving rain, to shoot the impact of the storm with a holga plastic camera and a roll of 120 mm film. it was a lot of fun, and even cooper, who hates getting bathed, was happy to run around in the rain.
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the holga is a clumsy camera, but sometimes it gives you exactly what you want.
COHN17 