Abstract Macro

An outtake from the abstract macro challenge. Any ideas what this larger than life object is? I'll post the answer tomorrow.

Glow

The goal: Find something for the PaD. Anything really. And use only the new ibook for processing and uploading.
What I like best: The contrast of cool and warm colors.
What I like least: Too soft.
Goal accomplished!

Defying the Odds

This one is an old shot, originally done for a 'Shallow DOF' challenge. It is the winner today at dailyawards.com in the sports category.

For a while, I had only been submitting pictures to DPChallenge, but it's interesting to see the variance in scores between different websites that I post shots to. Some shots that have done really well in a themed challenge at DPC have done terribly at other places when they have to stand on their own. Hopefully, the reverse is also true that some of the terrible scores I've been getting lately aren't necessarily a reflection on the shot, but people's idea of how it meets the challenge.

Back to today's shot... no, I'm not talented or even lucky enough to have captured this shot in motion. The board was resting on a chair and my window sill with black felt hung up behind it (with books behind the felt to keep the light from shining through). The dart was hung from the ceiling, and after it finally stopped swinging completely I stood over it and took the picture. It was completely handheld with a little point and shoot, so it took several shots. As for the lighting, I just happened to get lucky there with a tiny stream of sunlight peeking in over the black felt and hitting the textured stripes of the dart.

Water Outtake #2

Here is another outtake from my experiments with oil, water and food coloring. For this one I poured a thin layer of oil on a white plate, then added several drops/blobs of water as neatly as I could. I then used a toothpick to add food coloring to each water blob. It's neat how you can mix the water drops and not affect the oil. I was still adjusting some colors when the one green drop mixed with the red one, so I grabbed the camera before any more drops combined.

I'm not quite happy with this shot... I feel it's a little too flat, but when I tried to boost any colors the reds (which already look orange) lost any details of the shadows, which I kind of like.

And to marc, who asked about my fingerprint shot. It's really simple to make a clean fingerprint. Scribble with a pencil on a sheet of paper, rub your finger in the lead, put a piece of scotch tape on your finger (as smoothly as possible), then take the tape off and put it on a sheet of white paper. Voila! It's a trick I learned as a kindergarten teacher... even the kids fingerprints come out clear enough for them to compare.

Water Outtake

Normally, I wouldn't post a challenge outtake/entry here until voting was over, but I had a great time experimenting yesterday and I was really happy with some of the shots I got. I will probably be posting more in the next few days.

*begin rant*
I woke up this morning to find that once again, the voters hate my image, probably becuase it's too out of the box and they don't get it immediately. Not only that, but the winner (and possibly also 3rd place winner) of the last challenge, "2 second exposure" didn't even bother to use a 2 second exposure. So sad. It's disappointing that people will submit anything that looks good to a challenge or looks like it might qualify, even if it doesn't really meet the criteria.
*end rant*

I'm just glad that I choose to follow the rules and I will continue to use the challenge topics and my PaD as a guide to try new things and continue learning about photography and post processing.

Oh, and for those of you wonder what exactly this is... I had a lot of fun with oil, water, and food coloring. I never realized there were so many ways to combine them.

Fingerprint

This was an attempt for the abstract macro challenge, but I didn't think it was abstract enough. It definately qualifies as a macro though! I like it though :)

Heat

What else should one do when waiting for dinner to cook besides take a picture of it. The pictures of the bubbles in the boiling water weren't as interesting, so here's the flame under the pan.

Someone asked what the stuff was in the back of the truck in my shot from 2 days ago. When I first saw it I thought it was a truck full of trash, but it seemed to be just loaves of bread, bags of bagels, and boxes of raisins and donuts.

Deja Vu

I took this shot over the weekend as an attempt for the Deja Vu challenge. The lighting just wasn't working right and I didn't like the glare at the top. I didn't end up using it since I did something different last night with about an hour left to go. The original winning shot that I was trying to imitate can be found here.

Ford

I pulled up to the stop light, and this was in front of me. I have no idea where they were going, or where they were coming from, but hopefully it was for a good cause. No matter what, it's certainly not a sight you see every day. As much as I love the new dslr, I still love my trusty little p&s to catch moments like this before the light changes green!

Oh's!

It was getting late last night... I needed a midnight snack, and I needed a picture to post for the PaD today. I decided since it should be pretty straightforward to take a picture of a bowl of cereal, I'd give myself exactly one click of the shutter to get a picture. I usually take WAY too many shots of anything and then have to dig through them all. So, there you have it. I cropped just a little, adjusted levels, contrast and color, resized, used the unsharp mask and saved, which was all done before the cereal got soggy! If I could change one thing? Wider dof.

Sign of Spring

Yesterday was the first day of spring, and while it didn't feel very springlike temperature wise, there were plenty of robins to be seen. But then, I noticed it on the way home. The glowing neon of the sign that tells everyone that the soft serve ice cream places are open for the season! I drove past two of them, and strangely, even though it wasn't very warm, there was one customer at each store. This is by no means a technically great shot... not even good. But as soon as I saw that neon glow, I grabbed my little p&s and stuck it up to the window as I drove by. Happy spring! :)

Spikes

So, this new camera... there's definately lots to learn. For instance, I just found out a few days ago that if I flip the little lever to manual, I can use the end of the lens to manually focus. So, I decided to play with it, along with the manual setting. My goal was a shallow dof, with something in the middle in focus, and decent lighting. I think I accomplished that. In case you're wondering what the spikey thing is, it's a cat brush.

Music

I've been doing just about everything possible to procrastinate writing report cards today... and this is what was in my CD player for a while. Just playing around trying to not make it look like a boring picture of a CD. Not as bright as I wanted it, but it's ok. Guess I need to get back to work.

Red, Green and Yellow

So, this was my idea for the 2 second challenge. Clearly I need a tripod, but it seemed unwise to stand on the street corner with a camera taking pictures of a stoplight on St. Patrick's Day when all the police were out driving around. Maybe I'll try again.

Odd Couple

I didn't even pick up the camera yesterday, and won't have any opportunity to again today, unless of course I needed more pictures from the play. So, here's an outtake from the odd couple challenge.

Dress Rehearsal

Yes, another shot from the school play. Last night was the dress rehearsal... first time with only stage lighting, and I was pretty nervous that I'd come home with a ton of horribly underexposed and blurry shots that were unsalvagable. I took 825 shots, and while there were a few that were terrible, I was really pleased with the results overall. It was a long night last night going through to dig out the best, but I ended up with somewhere around 375 pictures. I did some auto adjustments and an unsharp to this one to clean it up a little just for my PaD.

I think after last night, this is a good time to point out that I love my new camera. :)

Storm and Sunrise

Yesterday morning I woke up to a thunderstorm, and as the sun started to rise the storm clouds were just starting to pass. I decided to try a shot of the raindrops on the window, only to find that focusing on them, and getting the camera to STAY focused on them was not working the way I'd intended. I definately need to read more of the manual that came with the camera. Anyway, I somehow tricked the camera for this one shot and mostly got what I was aiming for. Oh, and this morning? Well, the sky is all grey and the rest of the picture would be all white. I'm ready for spring!

Acting - Take III

Yep, another rehearsal shot... it's pretty much all I've been shooting besides stuff for challenges the last few days.

Boston Sunrise

I had taken a bunch of shots while was in Boston the other week similar to this and when I first looked at them, I thought they were mostly terrible. I pulled this one out and decided to actually play with it in Photoshop and I think it turned out pretty good! I'm pretty sure that the squarish building on the right (that then goes across the bottom) is the Boston Public Library... but I have no idea what the domed building is. Anyone know? I also noticed that there are letters written on the top of building roof at the very bottom. N O (backwards) Z E E O U G? I'm stumped!

Flag

Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous! Warm temperatures, blue skies... ahhh! I was at the store and saw the flag flying up there in the breeze, and it seems like every time I try to take a flag picture they come out droopy. So I grabbed the camera and took a few shots. When I went to process it (it needed some rotating, as do all of my shots it seems), the roofline and the little security camera were just in the way and I couldn't get anything that looked reasonably well composed. So, I left the camera.. it somehow adds to the shot and gives some balance.

As for yesterday's belated birthday wishes... they weren't for me. They were for an online friend of mine who puts up with my constant updates of scores and rambling ideas of challenge ideas. The quote at the beginning was his comment after looking at my PaD the other day. I figured for all he puts up with, he at least deserved some virtual belated birthday Oreos! :)

Belated

"... and all I got on my birthday was a picture of a bear face?"

I would have done a candle in a mushroom, but mushrooms would be so much less fun to eat after I was done taking the picture. Happy belated birthday!

Acting - Take II

So after the first batch of shots from the play rehearsal, I talked with a friend who actually understand all these settings and numbers and we figured out what might be better settings to shoot at. For yesterdays shots I was on the little 'P' mode (programmed auto?), 1600 ISO. I ended up with a few more shots that I liked in the end, but started with only half as many. I'd say the settings worked better! Still not fast enough shutter to capture some of the fast movements, but it's probably just not possible with my equipment. Now that I've got the settings figured out, I figure it's just about time to use the stage lighting to confuse me.

I promise I'll get the camera out for something other than play rehearsal shots soon!

Acting

I spent about 2 hours yesterday taking pictures at our school's play rehearsal. I took over 400 shots, and ended up with about 30 that I liked.

Fuzzy

Just playing around with the camera.

As an FYI... the shot from 2 days ago was a long exposure of my computer screen with the screen saver. It's the one where the little ball changes color and floats around the screen exploding into a bunch of pieces and then reassembling itself.

Jelly Belly

So, there was this bag of jelly beans on my desk, and I decided they'd make a colorful shot for the PaD. Dump them out on my little table that I have set up, turn on the lights, set the camera to auto and shoot. The flash goes off and it's too bright. I actually switched the thing over to manual and managed to set my own settings for this one while still keeping in mind composition. A complete first for me. An auto levels adjustment in PS and voila! PaD shot completed!

Since I didn't get any comments on yesterdays PaD, I'll wait to divulge what it was.

However, in happier news, the folks that had the Happy Holidays sign up (as noted here) have finally taken it down! Whee! The folks down the street at the costume shop still have 1/3 of their "Santa Costumes" sign up (which now just says "San") right next to their Valent... er... Mardi Gr... erm... St. Patrick's Day signs. You'd think at SOME point they'd have managed to remove the Santa sign completely since they were working at that window!

Colors

Oh, the things I can do now that I couldn't before! I woke up and realized I needed a shot for today, and considering the number of experimental pictures I've taken in the last day and a half, I had a remarkably small group to choose from. So, this was shot 25 off the camera, but I think it's pretty neat. Anyone care to take a guess at what this one might be? I'll post the answer in tomorrows PaD!

Painting with Light - Yet Again!

Ok, so now that I can set my own shutter speed, I wanted to try this out again. I liked the way this shot had the cloud shape but yet the middle was empty. I also zoomed the lens out while it was taking the shot to get the depth.

DSC_0001

Yep. 0001. I'm the happy new owner of a Nikon D50 with a Nikon AF 28-80mm f3.3-5.6 lens. Once the battery FINALLY charged, this seemed like the best picture to take. My cat hanging out in her little cave with her catnip cigar. I have almost no idea what I'm doing with this camera and I'm taking lots of not so great shots. But I'm having a blast playing with it! Whee!

Flags

I went to a teaching conference in Boston today and we were at the Prudential Center. This shot was taken from the Hynes Convention Center after I'd gotten out of a workshop that left out a few minutes early. I didn't get many decent shots from the trip (*muttering something about using a tripod next time*), but I like this one and it's straight from the camera (well, rotated and resized). It was really windy and I like the way the flags just lined up perfectly. Looking at the full sized version (which was way too big to put here) you can see all the white taxis lined up, the workers in their bright orange shirts, and all of the people just going about their day. It's almost like one of those Where's Waldo puzzles.

Anyway.. after a long day, and a lot of driving, it's nice to be back home. Even nicer was finding I had at least one shot I could just post without fixing. :)

Ice

The longer this PaD goes on, the more I realize I'm terrible at landscapes of any kind. I just cant seem to make any of them capture what was really in front of me. The ice in this creek was really neat looking, with lots of layers of melting and freezing, icicles dripping, water rushing underneath, and lots of little holes and lines where you could catch a glimpse of what was underneath. Sadly, all of the pictures lack any focal point (even if I tried to catch one), are sort of bland, and either are too dark to catch the details or are overexposed in areas of the really bright ice. Out of about 20 shots, this was the best one. But, as I tell my kindergarteners all the time... practice!

I'm heading off to a conference in Boston, so my PaD for tomorrow will be really late (or even posted on Saturday), but I promise it will be there!

Fashion Outtake

I have no fashion sense in me at all... I'd much rather curl up in jeans and a comfy fleece with some fluffy warm socks, but I attempted the fashion challenge anyway. This was the toned down version of my duotoned fashion shot, with the more photoshopped/neat imaged version that I entered here. Apparently I missed what those DPC voters were looking for again, but I was proud of myself for at least stepping in front of the camera again. Besides, I think it makes a better picture for my profile page anyway. (Oops.. when I put it there it squashed it into a 120x90 instead of keeping it a 90x120. I'll have to figure that out later)