Yuck!

The kitty and I were playing with a ribbon, and I figured since I didn't have a shot yet for today, why not take a few pics. I don't know if she didn't like the ribbon, or if she was mad at me for the constant flash going off in her direction. Not the most photographically perfect shot, but it was just too silly not to use!

And so, that ends month #7. Five more to go folks! :)

Nestled

Playing around with ideas for the Zen challenge. This was the best I came up with so far.

Albany at Night - Take 2

Just another version of yesterday's shot, taken a few minutes earlier.

Albany at Night

So when I bought my camera at Ritz, I got coupons to go to some of their classes. Now, most of the classes are set up where any monkey could probably read the book and click "next" on the slideshow and run them. But the instructor at this particular site is fantastic. I don't think he opened the book once during a class, but mostly he just talks about real stuff and real situations and you can tell he knows his stuff and has a genuine interest in what he's doing. He also scheduled excursion classes (yes, there is a point to the rambling), and tonight we met in downtown Albany for a class on night shooting. This is one of those shots looking across the plaza. I did some perspective stuff to it so the buildings were more straight and desaturated a bit (yeah, WB was set wrong). I think you'll get a different view of the same building tomorrow since I couldn't decide which to post.

Crayola

Blogger seems unhappy and doesn't want to put up a picture... but I do have a picture for today! I'll edit it in once Blogger gets over it's hiccups.

Edited to add... YAY!! Finally! :)

Cemetary

One of those "oops... I almost forgot to post a picture today" days. So here is an older one of the cemetary with some neat lighting at dusk.

Ice

Ok, so this was a failed idea for abstract food... but I didn't have anything else for today. Strawberry frozen in layers of ice.

Stones

As I was taking pictures at the waterfall, this group of people came along and started swimming in the water. So much for the nice waterfall shots. So I was looking around and saw all these stacks of stones. And again.. tripod, tripod, tripod. I really need to just take it with me always. All of the shots were blurry... this being the best of the bunch (though not compositionally the best of the bunch). Anyway, seems I'm just a bit early for this weeks challenge topic again... Zen Photography. Oh well :)

Webby

So it's drizzling, has been all morning. We come to this cool little bridge, and there are oodles of cool spiderwebs. I only got 2 shots (one was really blurry) before I felt it better to put the camera back in its bag. And there it stayed for the rest of the very wet trip.

Waterfall

Took a bunch of pictures of this waterfall between the intermittent raindrops... but by the end of the day hiking, we were completely drenched. Too bad to, because hiking to the top of the bigger waterfall would have made for some incredible photos. But, the camera gear stayed mostly dry, so the raincoats did a tiny little bit of good.

Lulu #2

Just another shot of Lulu. For anyone who is commenting, I had to turn the verification on for the comments... I had 28 spam comments in about 5 minutes earlier today, so I figured it was a quick fix to enable that. I'll turn it off again soon.

Apple

This was one of those attempts to recreate something that I thought looked cool. Unfortunately, I only took a few shots until I got distracted with the fact that I have some dust in my sensor and it didn't turn out the way I hoped it would. Anyway, I tried using alfrescos soft blend spot technique with limited success. I must have not have read the rules correctly. The spots look a little better though.

Dinner, Day 200

This is one of those dinners where I wandered through the store, picked up some ingredients, came home and hoped for something edible in the end. So, if it needs a name, I guess its Tomato, Garlic and Basil Linguini. Anyway, it seemed healthier than cupcakes to celebrate day #200 of this Photo-A-Day thing, and besides, it's too hot to bake. Maybe I'll go get some ice cream later. That's better than cupcakes anyway :)

Congrats to all you other PaD'ers who've been sticking with this up to now! I love looking at everyone's pictures, even if I'm not commenting every day! :)

Indigo Bunting #2

Technically this is post #200 for my PaD since I posted one shot on Dec. 31. But for the year, it's only 199. Still, I can't believe I actually made it this far. Yay!

Gold Line Food Abstract?

I was originally playing around with the Abstract Food idea for that challenge, which turned into playing around with all of the lines and reflections for the Lines challenge, but this goes beyond the basic editing. So after I decided that it would just get a spot here, what challenge comes up the next morning but Gold!

Middlecreek

This shot was taken at Middlecreek Wildlife Center in PA. Here's the before shot... I'm a sucker for those before/after things!

Leafy

The only bad thing about taking so many pictures, is dealing with them once they're on the computer. I took this one with a lovely vison of a leafy green deskop, only to find out that there was some worse then terrible purple fringing all around the leaves and stems. The small branches were completely purple. So, this shot was more of an attempt at figuring out how to deal with purple fringe than turning into a lovely desktop. I still like the lens :P

Serene

A scene from the other day. I liked the shot, but didn't like that it was so busy with leaves and branches. So I used a simplifier action on it.

And, it was requested that I note the distance at which yesterday's shot was taken... it was taken from .6 miles away. ;) And I wouldn't necessarily call it a "fun" ride... it's not one of those where it takes you to the top and then drops you down. It's a simple, air conditioned ride that takes you to the top and turns you slowly around so you can get a 360 degree view of the area. The a/c does feel good though on those hot summer days!

The Kissing Tower

Yep, it's really called the Kissing Tower. It's a ride at Hersheypark in Hershey, PA. Hence all the little Hershey Kiss shaped windows and lights. Took this one while waiting for the fireworks to start on the 4th. I had another shot that was clearer, since it was taken with a bit more light, but the flag was droopier.

Shadows

I was walking across a bridge, and looked down and the leaves were making a neat shadow on the mossy log. So I took a few pictures of it. Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I like it and that's what matters, right? :)

On another note for those of you who are doing this Photo a Day thing... every day I click the little box to "use these settings every time" so it uploads a large, centered photo. And it only seems to keep it for that session that you're logged in. Anyone else sick of clicking those little dots every day? Or did you find a secret way to keep them checked?

Lightning

It's 5 a.m. and I'm sound asleep. Then I hear the KABOOM that wakes me up. I knew there was a line of storms with lots of lightning heading towards me from watching the news last night. So I get up, stumble and get the camera and tripod, and somehow manage to remember to set all the settings right off the bat. I took 99 shots over about 45 minutes, and got lots of bright flashes, but this was the only zigzag of lightning that I got. It's actually in focus, and I like the way it mimics the tree line. Bumped the colors around a bit and cropped just a smidge. Yay! I finally got one that I like :)

Yellow Springs

Took this shot while out geocaching the other day. Ahh, relaxing :)

Lulu

This is Lulu at a year old, laying on a lid to a catnip container. I took some pictures of her last year around the same time, including one that I entered at DPC. What a cutie!

Blue Berries

Found these strange blue berries and started taking some pictures just so I could look up what they were when I got home. But I kind of liked the abstract background with the colors. Still trying to find out what these blue things are!

Tiger Swallowtail

Went hiking today and at the end of the hike came across a field full of flowers and butterflies. They were much more interested in the flowers than us, so it made for some easy picture taking. This one didn't even get any post processing besides a resize.

Flying Overhead

When the planes are flying really low over the mountain, and you're standing in a clearing at the top with a 300mm zoom lens, you can almost check the altimeter on their dashboard. Well, not quite. I went to edit this one and couldn't even crop it since there was nothing to crop off. Pretty cool :)

As for the fireworks settings from yesterday, I think I was shooting at ISO 200, and 2.5 second exposures. I'll check on the rest of the details on them later.

Kaboom!

Craters

Just testing the 300mm zoom... yep. It works.

Pondscape

Ok, so maybe I made up the word pondscape, but it sounded more interesting than landscape. This is looking down the edge of the pond where the frogs were. Just played around a bit in Elements to fix it up.

Rrrrribbit!

Semi challenge spoiler...


Found these little guys at the pond... most of them posed nicely for me. Was shooting with the idea of entering one of them in the 48 hour speed challenge where no post processing is allowed. This little guy needed some photoshop help though. And below, some yummy raspberries. :)

More Critters

Just a few more critters from a drive last night. I really want to clone out that weed coming out of the bunny's nose, but forgot to before I uploaded it. Oh well, he's still cute :) Oh, and a correction on yesterday's bird picture. It's not a bluebird (well, it IS a blue bird), but instead we're pretty sure it was an indigo bunting.