Day Five: So close, but so far

Scrabble has recently become one of my favorite games. It started with playing the facebook version last spring and has evolved to laying as many tiles as possible. Unfortunately, I have yet to be victorious in a game of actual scrabble; I often pull ahead by taking calculated risks that always seem to end up falling on the wrong side of my calculation. Last night, I played the word "walker", scoring 30 some points, but leaving the "w" to be the fourth letter of a triple word score. Normally, I would not have made this move, but it was near the end of the game and there aren't THAT many words that the fourth letter is "w". Much to my chagrin, Pete had the letters "V" "I" and "E", played them to earn about 30 points and once again take the lead, quashing my dreams of Scrabble victory for about the 7th or 8th time.

This is the first picture where I've used the flash. Normally I don't like to use the flash...it creates a sort of "un-natural" look about photos (I'm talking more artsy photos like these, not necssarily snapshots of people. The flash definitely has it's place...I just dont' like to use it a lot), but this one turned out pretty all right. It may be clear by now on the fifth day (or at least clear to me becuase I see ALL the pictures I take, and not just the ones that I post) that this sort of rack focus shot-- where either the foreground is clear and the background fuzzy, or vice versa -- is one of my favorite shots. Two thoughts immediately emerge from that statement: 1) you'll probably see that sort of shot a lot, and 2) I need to push myself to see things beyond the "rack focus world." So while some shots may not be as pretty as a rack focus shot, I'm going to use them to try and expand my abilities as a photographer.

Have a great day!