005:365:2014 crystal and wood
I need to find my tripod and get practice using it, and some lights. Had my camera propped on books and long shutter speeds to get this shot in my dim lit apartment. The overexposed shot of this 3 photo HDR took forever it seemed.
004:365:2014 Any Port In A Storm
“I’d rather be beside you in a storm, then safe and warm by myself.” – I’d Rather by Luthor Vandross
Saw this sad pair of pigeons huddled under the eaves for shelter on my way home from work. Not really my style of music, but the Vandross quote was just too appropriate to pass up.
Yesterday in Denver, CO it was in the 60’s and I actually wore shorts for a while. Today, 4-5 inches of snow. Tomorrow they are saying the high temperature will only be 19 degrees with a low of -1 degree. BRRRRRR!
003:365:2014 Red Tail Hawk Collage
Gorgeous day out today. I still had not taken my 365 photo of the day when I went for a run after work at the local green belt. Don’t normally do this, but I decided to wear a backpack with my SLR in it — just in case.
I had almost completed my entire exercise without being inspired, (tired, but not inspired,) when far across a field I saw a big hawk in a tree. I got my camera out and made my way through the field trying to get some good shots. What followed was a hop scotch from tree to tree, with the hawk hunting some in between each. I took a bunch of shots, but picked only some near the end of my “hunt” which was the closest I got (which was still pretty far off). When I first saw him I was pretty sure he was a red tail which these photos have pretty much confirmed.
Finally I had considered taking a photo of my bird book & binoculars at some point if I couldn’t come up with an idea some day this year. Guess I just blew that by deciding to include it in this collage.
002:365:2014 Footprints Triptych
Footprints at the Park: Goose, Squirrel, Dog, Human
Took these while taking a walk in the park this morning with the thought that I might use one of them as my 365 pic of the day. Wasn’t sure I’d use any and I changed what little idea I had on their use after taking them. As such I wish I had composed a couple of these differently. Specifically I wish I had shot the geese prints differently. And I didn’t initially notice the dog prints next to the humans, so I would have better centered the side by side prints.
Finally, got to be a better way to compose a triptych in Elements than the manual method I used. I always seem to spend WAY more time messing with the digital images than I ever get to do using the camera.
001:365:2014 – Windshield Water Drops
Had taken my camera out for a bit of quick exploring. Stopped at a store for a quick errand and as soon as I was ready to head out to take some pictures than a flash snow storm blew in, dampening my car and my spirits. Sitting in my car, the snow flakes melting on my windshield caught my eye. While trying to lean in and capture them I accidentally triggered my windshield wipers and had to wait for them to accumulate again.
I played around with this a lot in Elements trying to get the lighting I liked and decided to add a vignette to give it that tunnel vision effect which I think makes it seem like you are looking up through ice. The dark angular shapes near the bottom are actually distant pine trees, but it kind of looks like ice melting.
As the most “out of the box” photo I managed to take today, I think I have to nominate this as my 365 Days Project ‘photo of the day’.
One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to take at least ONE photo every day (even if I have to take a quick pic with my phone). I will then post it (hopefully the same day) and mark it Day 1 to Day 365. I’ll be posting these “photo of the day” pics to this blog and tagging them “2014 365 Project”. I’ll also be posting them to a “2014 365 Project set” on my FLICKR account.
As it is New Year’s Eve day, I figured I would post the photo below today as kind of a prologue and public commitment towards my new resolution.
The photo above was actually serendipitous as I was originally trying to take the photo below; which, while interesting, was a fairly standard picture of a starling sitting on the power line outside my apartment window singing to the rising sun. To my surprise as I looked through the viewfinder, the geese happened to fly into the background, so I quickly recomposed and shot. Since I was at 200mm and not set up for any kind of depth of field the geese were of course out of focus, but I think the blurred silhouettes add to the look; particularly when I dumped all the saturation for a more “artsy” black and white photo. If only the starling had looked to his right (towards the geese) just at that moment, it would have been perfect.
