(c) Brian E. Miller Photography

He’s a friendly guy, this guy, with the blue eye.

My sister-in-law inspired me yesterday to dig through my archives to discover any hidden gems that might be hidden there.  Here is one.  This was shot in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico over a year ago.  The churches in the old section of the city are just beautifully lit in the evenings and the parakeets singing in the trees in the squares make walking around a wonderful experience.

(c) Brian E. Miller Photography

Just a little something to keep things going.  I don’t know why I like this image, it has just pleased me since I took it.  Maybe it’s something to do with the textures, or the colors, or the remnants of a meal.

I went for a little walk through the archives tonight and came across this one that I had passed over before.  Shot in Chinatown in San Francisco in 2008.

Well, welcome to my photoblog.  I’ve played with the idea of starting a blog rather than simply keeping all my images over at my Flickr feed (viewable to the right) because I’m not fully satisfied with the presentation on Flickr.  I love the socialization aspect of Flickr, but just not happy with the way that it presents the images.  There appears to be too much clutter for my liking.  So, I hope to find a more presentable format here.

In addition, I hope that this more open format, not requiring any membership, will allow more people to comment on my posts and give me feedback.

This has an element of fear in it.  I’m not sure if this is going to work, and I’m migrating away from a forum that has supported my photography for some time now.   I feel quite like a chick leaving the nest, forging into the big, overwhelming world on my own.  How will I do?  Will I survive?  Will I stay motivated?  I guess that all remains to be seen.

The image above has no specific meaning for a first post on a blog.  It is an HDR image I took at dawn a couple of weeks ago when I managed to get up early to go photograph something.  While there I had fun shooting some long exposures and bracketing images so I would have more options once I entered the digital darkroom.  The church in the scene has a fence completely surrounding it and I spent quite a bit of time making sure to shoot over the fence for some “clean” shots.  However, after a time, I became frustrated with the limited vantage point this afforded me and then, as I bent down to test out some different points of view, I was struck by the irony of a church, a place of  sanctity and refuge, fenced in to keep people out.  Indeed, the fence did have a “keep out” sign on it as well.