Chocolate

Mmm. Chocolate. So this was basically a silly shot so I could play with my new tripod and the little table I have set up for white background shots. Studio is far from what I would call it. The tripdo has a 2nd mount under the center column, which seems awfully strange. So I wanted to see how it worked out. I got the shot, but it was less that comfortable trying to figure it out. Anyone care to shed some light on this 2nd mounting thread for me?

Below is a shot of my camera on the tripod (upside down) and my makeshift "studio". Basically a little end table with a sheet of posterboard curled inside it, a sheet draped over the outside and a desk lamp on either side. My white balance preset it set up for this lighting so it's pretty simple to take a quick shot of small objects with it.

Oh, and the chocolate was yummy!

Good Night

Yikes! I usually post my PaD early since I know I'll forget if I don't... today is proof that I need to continue doing that! So, I finally got myself a tripod today... one of the reasons that I wanted one was to do star trail pictures. I figured that until I get the remote thinger it would be impossible to really get any kind of trail in just 30 seconds (as long as the shutter goes without a remote), but to my amazement you can actually see some movement. I took one picture and it was, well, dull to say the least. But since I live right under the approach pattern for the airport, there are always planes flying overhead. I didn't have to wait long for one to show up... so I took one more shot.

So, all in all, not a very exciting photo. But, I got the shot in for the day, I got to use the tripod, and I learned that you really can see the stars move in just 30 seconds! Cool :)

Good Morning

One of the worst things about winter is that it's still dark when I wake up. I love being able to wake up and peek outside to see the sunrise. This was yesterday's sunrise... and about a minute later the sun was hiding behind those clouds and when it finally peeked back out, it had lost that warm orange glow. This is one of the first times when I've wished I had a wider lens than 28mm so that I could have captured more of the clouds that thinned out to the left of the shot.

And as a follow up to the shot of the mama dove in the nest the other day, the eggs hatched a few days ago and my dad sent me a picture of the baby birds in the nest. So cute! Thanks dad! :)

Complementary Colors

I was attempting something for the complementary colors challenge with the purple flowers in my flower box and the yellowish buds on the tree in the background. I didn't think the editing I did here wasn't legal within the challenge rules since I made the yellow a little more yellow and the purple a little more purple. I also lightened the inside of the flower a litle so it wasn't a dark blob.

Tunnel

One last shot from the Union Canal. I had to learn some new Photoshopping to get this one to turn out ok. I took a few shots here, and either the light areas were too light, or the shadow areas were too dark. So I used layers to make both parts more look more the way I wanted.

Self Portrait #3

So a group of folks from DPC have been doing the 30 self portraits in 30 days, and while I'm nowhere brave (stupid?) enough to believe that I'd be able to come up with 30 self portraits that I like... 30 days in a row even, I figured maybe I could try a few, especially after seeing so many creative ideas that people have come up with. So I took this shot a few days ago on my way to work and decided I needed a break from all the nature shots in my PaD. Speaking of work... I guess I need to get myself moving so I can get there today.

Landing

Taken a few days ago. I couldn't decide if I liked it or not... the wings and the reflection are neat, but it's just not very sharp... he was too far away and the quality isn't great. I couldn't figure out how to crop this one, and overall it seemed very dull. By the magic of photoshop and some contrast masking (which I now know how the steps to do, but still don't really understand what I'm doing besides making the picture prettier) it looks good enough to post.

Dove

Ok, so this shot wasn't taken by me... I was too chicken to get that close to a mother dove sitting on her eggs. So I handed the camera to my dad and he took it... and he did a great job too! I tried to clone out that light, but it was too hard. Besides, those lights take a lot of effort to get on that pine tree every year since it's getting so tall. So if leaving them on all year means that there will be a lit up tree in front of the house next year, then I'm all for it!

Anyway, ya did a good job, dad! Thanks for taking this one for me.... and Happy Birthday! :)

And here's a bonus shot for the day. Another view of the puffballs from a few days ago with a grassy background instead of the sky. It's currently being used as my desktop picture.

Chocolate Cake

But not just any chocolate cake. It was made from scratch and completely done in the microwave (syrupy topping and all)! I of course didn't have a microwavable 8 in. square pan, so I had to use a round bowl, hence the strange shape and ridge in the top. And the topping should probably be a tad thicker. But amazingly, it tastes pretty good.

"Rubber meets the Road"

This is another shot from geocaching the other day. For anyone unfamiliar with geocaching, the basic premise is that someone hides a container of some sort somewhere... anywhere. In this case the container was hidden off of a walking trail in a little park. They post the coordinates of where it is hidden at geocaching.com. Others then visit the website, get the coordinates of the cache, and use a GPS to help them find the container out in the middle of nowhere. This particular cache was a multi-part cache, so it had a few different clues along the way before the final location. One clue was about "where the rubber meets the road" and the clue (the next set of coordinates) was actually written on the bottom of this tire swing in white lettering. When I first took the picture, I didn't realize it would be the clue.. I just thought it was a neat picture. The shot is straight from the camera.. well, resized.

Flower Box

I'm not a gardener. I can hardly keep plants alive. But I still like having window boxes outside my window to perk things up a bit. So today I stopped and got plants and potting soil to fix up the little boxes again. One box has rosemary, lavendar and thyme... the other box alyssum, osteospermum, petunias and dianthus "neon star". Apparently I was in a purple type of mood at the store since almost everything has purple flowers of some shade. Anyway, this is a picture of the osteospermum... it's some kind of daisy. Now if I can just keep all of these little plants alive! :)

Tulip Triptych

Guess it's pretty obvious from the last few days of pictures that spring definately here! I kept taking pictures of the same tulips a few days in a row to try to capture enough different shots for a triptych. I didn't like the side shots, since the background wasn't great, and was definately less than consistent. I didn't really think about the fact that I was taking these shots at all different times of day, with different lighting, so the colors aren't very consistent. I did the best I could to even them out and get the sizes in perspective though.

Canal

This is a shot of the Union Canal taken while I was out geocaching this morning. As an extra shot for today, a dandilion puffball thing. I've always liked these shots, so I tried one of my own. I don't know if I like the ones with the sky or ground as the background better.

Tulips

Tulips. I had to clone out a few roof lines on this one. It's hard to get the camera all lined up without looking through the viewfinder!

And, to continue the string of birthday wishes... Happy Birthday Melissa! :)

Sunset

Took a drive to a local wildlife sanctuary yesterday. Got a few pictures of the geese, but they mostly needed cropped and a little fixing. This shot is straight from the camera (well, resized to save my own sanity trying to upload it). It's a picture of my mom who was taking pictures of the sunset and the lake. I don't know how I got the star pattern around the sun, but it's neat :)

As for yesterday's flowers, they are cherry blossoms.

Happy Easter everyone... and happy birthday mom! :)

Wary

I'm visiting family for Easter weekend (so if my pictures aren't up right away the next few days, I'll add them once I get back home). We went for a walk this morning and as we were walking back the trail, there was a mother squirrel scurrying down the tree into a hole. A few seconds later, this little baby squirrel started peeking out. He looked pretty scared and wary of coming out of the hole. Eventually he just went back inside.

And just because it's pretty and springy, an extra flower shot for today. :)

Clouds

I like clouds... the way they come in all different shapes and forms and colors. Yesterday the sky had so many types of clouds all at one time, I figured I was bound to get something interesting if I took enough shots. I tried getting the big puffy clouds, but there were always trees in the way. Some of the clouds were just muddled thin clouds that weren't very shapely or interesting. Some looked like interesting shapes, but I know that just because I think the cloud looks like a gigantic elephant with a toucan beak and giraffe legs, most people will probably just think I'm crazy (and no, I wasn't lucky enough to find any in that shape).

Anyway, I decided to go with these clouds for my PaD. I like the darkness contrasted with the bright clouds, the sun just barely peeking out, the deep blue sky, and the whispy shapes. Unfortunately, today will probably be filled with a lot of drippy rain clouds while I'm driving. Oh well, I guess we need those too so that there are plenty of flowers to shoot for the next few months of the PaD! :P

Day Into Night

Was driving around and the sunset reflecting on this building looked neat, so I got closer to take a picture. As I was driving by (in an empty parking lot thankfully) I noticed the moon reflection in the side of the building. So I backed up to get a shot. I bumped the colors slightly in photoshop to bring out the red/blue a bit on each side.

Chrome

The latest challenge at DPC was chrome. I knew there was a cute little diner with lots of chrome, so I waited til a little before sunset to hopefully get a neat reflection off the building. There wasn't really any good spots to take a picture since it's on a busy road with lots of power lines, signs, and dark boring trees. I got home and was disappointed with the pile of shots and since I couldn't do much editing to it, I decided not to enter.

But, I can edit as much as I want for my PaD! So I got rid of all the trees (except the one in front of the building) and added a new sky into the picture. No, its not perfect by any means. You can junk leftover around the top of the building, and there's half a tree on the right that got chopped off. But it's not often that I do something like this in PS, so it was good practice. The original crop/edit is below.

Focus

Ok, so after 100 days, it's getting harder to find inspiration for a picture. Yesterday was one of those days to go to work, come home from work, and keep working on work. So, here it is. Documentation of something I do every day, almost without thinking about it.

But, consider this. The world pretty much looks like the background when my contacts aren't in. Both contacts and my glasses are in the picture, leaving me unable to see anything through the viewfinder when I took this picture... I had to rely on autofocus and hope for the best. And, I had to hold the camera with my left hand (not an easy task) since my right hand is in the picture. Considering all of that, I think the shot came out pretty good.

#100

In honor of 100 days of doing my PaD... Easter peeps! My very first day was a Christmas tree peep, so this seemed appropriate. I didn't really think I'd make it this far, but peeps seem like a yummy reward. I wonder what peeps will be available for day #200?

Congrats to all the other PaD folks who have also made it to day #100! :)

Catnap

A lazy Sunday afternoon... well, for the cat anyway. I'm busy doing school work. The sky outside is a beautiful shade of blue, but that didn't show up in the shot, so I tried to boost the color a bit. Oh, and this is post #100! But I posted a shot on Dec. 31, so it's really only day #99.

Ahh well, back to work for me!

Blue

Ok, I actually shot something new today! I was going through the results of the abstract macro challenge and found lots of cool things I wanted to try. One entry was created from staples (not standard size though from what I can tell since they made squares) and was lit by two different color lights to make some neat designs. Well, I didn't have the big staples, and I didn't have bright enough lights in different colors, so I made a fancy pyramid of staples and lit them with my regular lights. Edited some in photoshop, then added a lighting effect to make it look like it was lit with blue. I know I like seeing before/after post processing shots, so here's the original (only resized).

Twenty

A twenty dollar bill... VERY close up.

Flame

Just a candle.

Abstract Moss

Yep, one more picture from the weekend hike. This was some really neat mossy stuff, with short crinkly leafy shapes at the bottom and tall stems with little pointy leaves. But with the lens I have, I couldn't get quite close enough to make it a really cool macro. So... I played with it in Photoshop and added a filter (nope, I don't remember which one) and ended up with this.

Looking Up?

Yep, another shot from the weekend. I like landscape shots, but I'm just not good at them... I look at them when I get home and feel like they're bland, boring, uninspired, and usually lacking a focal point. So when I saw this strange looking tree trunk, I thought I'd give it a shot and see how it came out. I followed that good ol' rule of thirds, took a few shots, and moved on. When I got home, I was kind of happy with the result... but maybe that's just because the logs look like a turtle to me, looking up?

Shelf Fungus

I was trying to come up with an interesting shot for "Textures" while I was out hiking yesterday. This one took a few shots to get since I had to basically hold the camera up next to the tree and hope for the best... if only I was a few inches taller! When I got home, I realized I forgot to take a picture of the bottom... I'm sure it was a cool texture under there and it would have had a very pretty blue sky as a background. No post processing done to this one.

Spring!

So I actually DID go out hiking today, with the D50, which is working perfectly fine. For those of you who didn't catch the very very VERY end of yesterday's post.. go take a peek. I will say though that I was reaaaally careful hiking today :P

Anyway, so I guess I always just thought that pussy willows were something that everyone put on their desks when spring came around. Then a few years ago I found a bush in the middle of the woods. So I went back to it today to check on the status and see if spring really had arrived yet. I have no idea what the thing is on the end, but I know that since the little furry buds are blooming, spring is officially here!

Back to P&S

*sniffle* This is the best I can do for today with the new D50. It's currently back at Ritz camera, heading on it's way to Nikon for repairs. So for now, I'm back to the little point and shoot camera. Two things to be thankful for today... warranties and back up cameras.

So.. it all happened like this.

It was a beautiful day yesterday. 75 degrees and sunny. Flowers starting to bloom.. the perfect day to go out for a hike. So I get home from work, grab my camera and my pack, throw on some sneakers and head off to do some hiking and picture taking. All is well. I got some great shots of new buds, colorful flowers, and yes, even a few bug shots. Things couldn't have been going any better. Until.... that little patch of mud.

I was on my way back down the hill, enjoying the blue skies, the warm weather... and not watching my footing. The next few minutes were a blur. There was some mud, and my foot slipped, and I lost my balance. And... and... the pack hit the ground. I got up, brushed myself off as best I could (mud doesn't brush easily when it's wet) and took a minute to steady myself. I knew my camera was back in the bag which was inside the pack, and I figured it was probably ok with all that padding, but I figured I'd better check just to be sure.

So, I took out the camera and it looked fine. I turned it on and it didn't sound quite right, but it came on. I figured it was just me being paranoid. But, then I tried to take a picture. I can't begin to describe how many settings I tried changing, and how many pictures I tried to take. But every single one of them that it did shoot, came out dark and blurry. The autofocus thing-a-ma-jig wouldn't work at all. I was shaking, almost in tears, and still had to make it the rest of the way down the hill, which seemed almost impossible at that point.

So, I finally made it to the car, found a map book to sit on so I didn't get the car seat all muddy, and drove myself home. I changed out of the muddy clothes, found the receipt for the camera and made my way back to Ritz. And just as I'd suspected, it wasn't something they could fix for me. So my Nikon D50 is somewhere in a box on it's way to Nikon to be fixed, and I'm left with this one last shot I tried before I left for the store and my little point and shoot camera. It's amazing how quickly my perfect day went right downhill, literally.

As for yesterdays picture.. the abstract macro.. it's actually a pistachio nut. Here is a not-so-cropped version of it. Oh....
... and did I mention... April Fools! :)

(The camera and I are both fine... there was no mud involved, just a nice walk around the neighborhood after work. But that really IS a pistachio!)