Day 2 of 365

I had to scramble this morning to get out of the house before it started raining. Thankfully I only live 5 minutes from the location I wanted to use today. The shot location is a raised platform about 5 feet high with stairs leading up past the first aid cross. The platform has a railing all around it so there was some difficulty keeping the rails out of the shot as I leaned into the platform to take the shot. I was hoping for a little more bokeh blurriness between the boots and the red cross but I was using my kit 18-55mm lens that doesn't have a very low f/stop rating. I'm looking at getting a 50mm 1.4 (maybe) or 1.8 (most likely) here soon which will help with the look I'm going for in this shot.

Lesson learned:

• I'm not sure if it was the white balance (I used the cloud setting) or I needed to work with my shutter speed as the shot seems flat.

Day 1 of 365

I've set a goal for myself to take at least one photo a day for the entire year of 2009. This was set in motion by a conversation I had on Twitter recently. I've had my Canon 30D since October 2007 and have read tons of book, subscribed to several magazine, read blogs, listen to podcasts but feel like I never take as many photos as I should be taking. Using the tips found on Jason Webber's blog I will post one unedited, straight from the camera photo per day. The only changes I will make is saving from RAW to JPG.

This blog will undergo some changes as I go so what you see today is just a rough draft.


I live on Ft. Ord, an old Army base decommissioned back in 1992 and now a college campus. There are several old military buildings still standing so I decided my theme, initially, would be taking advantage of the setting. I served in the Army for several years and while I don't really think about it all that much these days the concept of using my old Jungle Boots as a prop intrigued me. My daily shots for now will be my concept shots for a larger project I'm brainstorming.

Lesson(s) learned

• Instead of pulling out my tripod I can adjust ISO to increase shutter speed
  
• I don't have to make drastic ISO changes...start at 100 and move it up until I can safely shoot handheld...in this case the ISO only needed to be 250.

Equipment

• Canon 30D
• Sigma AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Macro