Day 120 of 365

Today marks the end of April or for me 120 straight days of taking a photo a day. I have to say I'm pretty happy with making it to this milestone.

Day 119 of 365

Back on Day 28 I posted a shot of some overhead lights in our new library. Today I was in the same conference room and was waiting for others to show up and while sitting there I looked straight up. Kind of reminds me of looking down the barrel of a campy sci-fi movie laser gun...

Day 118 of 365

So another day of doing self portrait and trying to learn how to light better. Since I don't really like being photographed I figure I should try having a little fun with it.

Day 117 of 365

I was able to get my wonderful wife to model for me this evening so I could try this again but behind the camera. I have a project I need to do for my ASL course and I wanted a photo that included an ear to use in the Powerpoint. Since I wanted the ear to be more of the focus I worked it until I got this shot. Much easier to focus and work with the flash when you aren't your own subject.

Here's a shot of my wife being silly.

Day 116 of 365

So I was sitting in the garage trying to come up with today's photo and started thinking about the things I haven't tried yet. Self portrait is something very very low on my list of things I wanted to do but as I was running out of day I decided to just get it over with. First...it's a pain focusing on yourself. I had to turn on a bunch of lights and sit down so the camera could auto focus. Then had to get up to turn off all the lights and hope I sat back down in the chair the correct way so the light hit me right. So here you go...the obligatory self portrait shot on black with side light. Yeah me...

Day 115 of 365

I decided to go with something other than flowers today. I took several shots of wildflowers but they all pretty much looked exactly like every other wildflower photo I've taken the past month. I did find a place that I want to see what I can do with another time. I had explored the old Army training area near my house via Google Maps satellite view and noticed what looked like a trench and foxhole complex out in the middle of the woods and sure enough it was . It was in pretty bad disrepair but I think my boots may have to visit.

Speaking of Google Maps...not a bad way to explore before heading out. The satellite view is pretty cool as you can find things you might miss from the ground. The trench area I found wasn't visible from any of the nearby trails and I didn't actually see it until I walked right up on it after heading off the nearest trail.

Day 114 of 365

This is the same shot I took a few weeks ago but instead posted a photo of a small backlit flower. I decided to reshoot the tall grass since it was the same windy conditions like the last time. I didn't feel like dragging out my tripod and using a ND filter to get motion but was happy to see that even with a shutter speed of 1/320 second I got the appearance of motion.

I finally got around to setting up my Google Reader so I can follow other blogs easier. I don't know why I didn't do it earlier, well I do, sheer laziness but I did finally do it. So much easier to be able to see everything in one place and see when a blog has been updated. So please link to or send me an e-mail with your blog address if you'd like me to check it out. I really really really want to get into the habit of looking at and commenting on other photographers work.

If anyone is interested in a little photoshop project I did for a class I'm taking you can check it out on my Flickr. The project was to create a collage or composite so I took a few of my photos worked with them. I used Day 42, Day 40, and Day 32 and several different layer adjustments and layer blending modes later ended up with the final project. I went for an Asian look and think it came out better than I expected it too.

Day 113 of 365

I was inspired by Celina of Cel's Project 365 who did a very nice, I believe, Cherry Blossom photo today. I would like to have been able to crop out the errant branches and make it less pinkish but I like the minimalist feel to it.

Day 112 of 365

This is me being silly...not on drugs...just silly. I didn't get a chance to take any photos outside today so after class tonight I went out into the garage and sat there for a few trying to think of something to shoot and saw my old friend the burned out light bulb. I find myself holding onto items that may be of interest later down the road...not good when you have a mild case of packratitis (my new made up word of the day) to begin with.

So I'm sitting there looking around for something to shoot and grab the light bulb and my small flashlight. My initial concept was to see if I could make it glow on the inside but while playing around noticed the shadow. Along with the shadow there were circular lines. This is a 2 second exposure with just a small amount of light from a flashlight. As you can see I didn't paint enough of the area so part of it was excluded but I decided to not sit out there for hours trying to get the perfect one as this was more for fun and to get me thinking outside the box a little. This may not be a great shot but who knows...how I did it may come in handy sometime in the future. Now is the time to experiment...

I'll leave you with this...

"There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes"
Richard Buckminster Fuller (US engineer and architect, 1895-1953)

Day 111 of 365

Decided to use some natural light today. Took the lilies I had photographed previously outside and in between wind gusts snapped some shots. I also played around with framing my shots differently. I'm finding my compositions to be consistent, which isn't a bad thing really, but I'm trying to think and see differently in the hopes I can bring my skills to a new level.

This shot probably isn't very different from most of what I've done previously but it's a baby step for me. Instead of zooming all the way in and just making it about the curves on the flower I backed up a little and moved the flower to the side so some of the green leaves could bring some of their own curves into it. Does it work?