A camera lens, right, stands upright on yellow paper. On the left of the frame, other shades of paper are roughly ripped.
Taken on 2026-03-07. The waste of construction paper to set up this shot was worth it.

Day 30: Top-Down Camera Lens

2026-03-08

Hello! It's been thirty days of managing a blog, and I still know nothing.

Well, that's not true. I've made myself some personal goals and guidelines for this website — the important one being to focus on having fun taking photos.

Apologies for the seven-day basketball streak; I scheduled these posts in advance to dedicate time tinkering with the website. You won't see many of those changes, since they're about how I publish and find personal inspiration.

For example, this photo! I caught myself wasting time on YouTube, and my mind drifted to Game Changer, the panel game show. I've said before that I think color is weird, but I associated their bright and saturated color scheme to the neon pop of the 1980s.

I intended to imitate that photo today. It's clear that I haven't succeeded at that goal, but I plan on trying a second time!

To get this photo, I looked in my house for some construction paper with vibrant colors. I wanted to have a bunch of saturated stripes around some object (I was first thinking of a face or something), but I couldn't find any construction paper besides these three shades: yellow, green, and darker green.

Although not what I was hoping for, I can work with three colors. I didn't want to buy a new packet of construction paper, even if the blues and pink-reds were the point. I started ripping through what I thought was a clean and sharp fold, but it went off the path right as it started. Oh well.

Pre-constructed photos at home were a common occurrence back when I texted friends a photo of the day last year. Keeping up with school obligations and keeping a year-long media journal forced me to compromise and think quick. I hope that I won't succumb to crunch mode as often this time, but we'll see.

Thank you for visiting this blog! Special thanks to the newsletter subscribers; you get this photo a week before the internet does :-).

Cheers,
David

Technical info, for nerds