Day 360- New challenge!

 

Thank you, Lonnie!!!

Look at my new toy!!! It is easy to attach to the camera and use right out of the box- but if you want your photos to look natural and not “flashy”, well then, there is a LOT to learn!!! Here’s some synchronicity- there is a Clickin-Mom’s breakout session with Neil van Niekerk on Off Camera Flash going on right now! I have started the class, even though I will be using my flash ON camera.  In the videos, he goes over the principles off both on and off camera flash, so I can learn both.

So far, I’ve taken fairly natural looking photos inside with the flash bounced off our (yellow!) walls. At nighttime, however, the flash had to work harder- and my photos look flashier.  The good thing is that a lot of wrinkles disappeared!- but the photographs themselves just look too bright and “lit.” I tried fill flash outside today- not great so far. I’m excited to master these skills, so I will have something to fall back on when I can’t get good exposure inside with the grandkids.

Learning flash is going to be one of main photographic challenges for 2012!

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Day 358- Honey, I exploded the Christmas tree. . .

 

In case you want to try this at home, put your camera on a tripod with a small aperture (like f/22) and a long shutterspeed (4 or 5 seconds), focus, and slowly zoom out.  This one was from around 50mm to 18mm.  I tried this with trees outside in the summer and remember others doing this with Christmas trees last year. I thought of it again when I saw it on Courtney’s Click It Up a Notch site (see link on side).  Fun!

BTW, only one more week of Project 365 2011!

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Day 357- To do . . .

As Christmas approaches,  the to do list is long, and the task of coming up with an idea, taking the photo, editing, and posting seems daunting.  Fortunately, the topic for today is BUSY, so this photo seems like the obvious choice!

f/1.8, 1/25, ISO 200, 35mm

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Day 356- Merry (Monochrome) Christmas

Today’s theme is symbol, and I chose to photograph a detail of the wreath (symbol of the coming of Christ) on our front door. I left the door open, so that I could get some Christmas tree light bokeh in the background.  For variation, I used a used a brown toned black and white conversion.

f/3.8, 1/60, ISO 3200! (too lazy to set up the tripod today- too much to do!), 85mm

 

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Day 355- Cold, Foggy, and Bleak

For today’s topic, transportation, my husband and I went down to the waterfront, hoping to capture tugboats escorting a tanker through the fog, or perhaps a fishing boat. However, it was such a foggy morning that we could only see the water by the shore. I ended up snapping some photos of sailboats at the marina and adding a little texture to give some contrast to this bleak image.

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Day 353- Stained

Before bed last night, I checked to see what today’s topic would be.  I groaned when I saw stain– what an unappealing topic! When I told my husband, he immediately said, “Your father’s stained glass!”  I had a good night’s sleep, knowing there would be something fun to photograph in the morning.

My father was a man of many interests- music (he played saxophone and clarinet in a Dixieland jazz group), photography, gardening, wordworking, and, in his retirement years, stained glass.  He made the stained glass lampshade that hangs in our kitchen, and one year, he made our family a set of stained glass ornaments. His example of being creative during retirement years is one I try to live up to (although I also like to chill out with a book like my mother, a voracious reader).

Here is a detail of a star ornament made by my dad.

f/4, 1/6, ISO 200, 85mm

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Day 352- Starbursts?

This was one of those frustrating photography days. The theme is through the looking glass, referring to using a door, window, or mirror as a frame.  My plan was to take a photo of my Christmas tree reflected in the mirror of my hutch- simple, right? I wanted to use a small aperture, so that the lights would show up as starbursts.  I used my tripod with a long exposure and focused on the tree. No starbursts! I tried all different exposures and focus points and would run upstairs to check my focus after every few photos. Nothing looked right, and I finally realized that the soft focus of the Christmas cards in front were detracting from the photo. I decided at that point to forget about the starbursts and go for an HDR photo.  I focused on the cards and took a series of bracketed shots.  After deciding on the set I liked, I edited them in Photomatix for my HDR processing- and discovered faint starbursts. Go figure!

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Day 351- Armed and Dangerous

We have this chair we love.  L O V E !

It is an antique, and we have had it repaired at least three times.  When someone (usually company . . .) sits in it and puts their weight on the arms to stand up, it is just too much for this dear old chair to bear. CRACK! The last time this happened, we let the chair sit unrepaired in an extra room for over a year.  We recently had it repaired again, but we just couldn’t bear the thought of an unsuspecting soul sitting in it and splintering it again. And oh yes, we would care about injuring the guest as well!

Why do we care so much about this old chair? My mother loved it- and there is a story.

When I was a child, my mother admired it so much when she visited a friend’s house that the friend finally presented it to her as a gift.  Mother had it recovered with some old needlepoint that either my grandmother or great-grandmother had done years earlier, and it was a beautiful addition to her living room.  And it remained unbroken until it came to live with us. . .

I also have some vague memory of the owner of the chair being a distant relative and have the intention of solving this genealogical mystery, but that’s another story.

And oh yes- the topic for today is ARMS!   So here are the infamous splinter-prone arms of the chair!

f/3.5, .8sec, ISO 200, 85mm

I took many photos of the chair today- using the tripod with a long exposure.  I used custom white balance (good girl!), varied angles and aperture settings for different depth of field.  I took shots where the needlepoint was in the background, either in focus or blurred. I ended up going with my first photo with no needlepoint- and then thought it looked better with a black and white action added (meaning my custom white balance was for nothing!). Oh well. . .

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Day 350- Into the Mystic

I was lucky to be raised in a house with two grandmothers and one grandfather in addition to my parents and myself.  My mother’s parents were always my role models for a long and happy marriage.  I will never forget the adoring way my grandfather would look at my grandmother, Mimi; his love for her was evident in his every action.  All of us hoped that when their times came, he would go first. We just couldn’t imagine how he would live without her.

However, Mimi died suddenly at age eighty. Grandpa surprised all of us with his calm acceptance and resilience. We would find him sitting outside talking softly to her, as if she was sitting right beside him.  He knew she was “gone”, but felt her presence with him all the time. My grandfather had been a churchgoer for most of his life, but had told me many times that he didn’t have to go to church to be with God- he just had to go outside and God was all around.

Today’s topic is mystical figure. My grandfather would never have identified himself as a mystic, but, as someone who easily communed with God, I believe he was. My photo of the day is my grandmother’s musical angel, always present in my house and a reminder of the beautiful souls who were my grandparents.

f/4, 1/80, ISO 1600, 85mm

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Day 348- Hollow

My friend and fellow photoblogger came to visit and take care of me today- which my husband appreciated as much as I did! I haven’t been able to cook more than toast since my carpal tunnel surgery, and Carol arrived with a gourmet picnic lunch including dessert! Yum!

Today’s topic is Hollow.  Carol came up with the bright idea of photographing straws, so, after lunch, we set up straws to photograph, swapping lenses between the two cameras. Our photos are of the same subject, but totally different. You can can view Carol’s photo at http://infocusdaily.com/2011/12/14/day-348-grasping-at-straws/

f/10, 2.5 sec., ISO 160, 85mm

Melinda4 Comments

Day 347- Silver and Gold

I thought of doing my hair for this challenge- silver threads among the gold- but took the easy way instead!

Having gotten married in the seventies, I always strived to have my tree decorated with homemade ornaments. I went through a baker’s clay phase that is best forgotten. And then there was felt- and crocheting.  I am sentimental about all our ornaments , handmade and otherwise (many are treasured gifts)- so many memories attached- and love decorating the tree with them each year.  But, after the children grew up, I started adding a little more glitz to the tree (and to my wardrobe, but that’s another story!).  I traded my red and white checked bows for gold and finally added gold (and some silver AND gold) balls a few years ago. Next year- maybe tinsel!

f/1.8, 1/25, ISO 400, 35mm

Melinda2 Comments

Day 346- I Heart Bokeh

Every once in awhile I look at all the photos taken these days with bokeh and wonder if, ten years from now, people will say “That would be a good photo if only the background were in focus!”  Right now there are lots of effects you can do in photography- making it look vintage, adding textures, adding sunflare, making it look hazy- not to mention tilt shift or HDR.  I just wonder if my grandchildren are going to look at their childhood photos in years to come and wonder why they are often the only thing in focus- and what are all those little circles in the background!!??!!

However, I still love soft focus in the background and bokeh! That was one of the main reasons I got my camera, and I’m not tired of it yet!

f/2.2, 1/40 (handheld!), ISO 400, 35mm

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