Baskets

Baskets in our living room used to collect the kids' errant toys.

Manual setting: f/4, 1/4 second, ISO 100

All the pretty horses...

My daughter's carousel...

Manual setting: f/5.6, 1.3 seconds, ISO 100

Frozen creek

It was a pretty nice day today so I went to a local park to see what there was to see. And this is what I saw...

Manual setting: f/14, 1/60 sec, ISO 100

Snow

Snow mounded on the back deck...

Manual setting: f/9, 1/100 sec, ISO 100

It finally snowed here!

We had some snow last night - not a LOT, but enough that school was cancelled. The kids spent some time outside, and these poor Army guys were the unfortunate victims of, well, Luis...

Manual setting: f/9, 1 second, ISO 100

Black bean & quinoa chili

Luis came upstairs while I was making dinner and asked what he smelled. I told him it was the delicious aroma of his mother's love. I don't think he believed me... It was actually the black bean & quinoa chili I was making for dinner - yummy!

Manual setting: f/9, 2 seconds, ISO 100

Crazy lights

I've been wanting to do something with my daughter's Lite Brite since she received it for Christmas. For my first foray into LB-land since childhood, I simply (and purposely) randomly stuck the pegs in the panel without any plan for or thought of color arrangement. I used a zoom radial blur filter in Photoshop to create the headache-inducing effect. And this is it...

Manual setting: f/9, 1/13 second, ISO 100

I actually ventured outside today!

But it was still really cold so I didn't stay out for long... This photo was shot at a local park, and the stones are part of a pillar at a shelter there. I changed the photo to black-and-white, added a lot of contrast, and sharpened it like mad. My purpose in doing that was to create visual interest with the contrast and a "craginess" with the heightened sharpness to add even more interest to the photo.

Manual setting: f/8, 1/60, ISO 100

Espresso cups

One of these days I'm going to run out of coffee-related subjects and then I don't know what I'll do - use my imagination?

Manual setting: f/11, 8 seconds, ISO 100

Lamp and shadows

This is a lamp in our living room with the sun shining on it through a south-facing window. I love the shadows created by the sun coming through the plantation shutters.

Manual setting: f/3.5, 1/30 second, ISO 100

Tres cafeteras

It seems like, in addition to a "daily life" theme running through this blog, I am also churning out quite a few coffee-related photos. Hmmm... At the end of the year I'll have to compile them all into a "Coffee Chronicles" set... I like the subject of this photo, but I think I'll have to reshoot it at some point under better lighting conditions - this was shot with just the overhead light in the dining room on, and it created quite a lot of reflection that I don't like...

Manual setting: f/3.5, 0.8 seconds, ISO 100

Daily life

I expect there will be many days throughout the year that I will end up looking around the house for ideas for a photo, and I'll end up shooting a random "this is part of my daily life" scene - much like today's photo... This is what my kitchen counter looks like most nights - dishes that won't fit or shouldn't go in the dishwasher air-drying on the counter after having been hand-washed...

Manual setting: f/10, 1.3 seconds, ISO 100

Toothpicks

I will be so happy when warmer weather arrives! In frustration after a long day, all I wanted to do was throw in the towel. Instead, I threw some toothpicks on the table and started shooting.

I don't normally like to Photoshop the heck out of images, but my photos of a pile of toothpicks were pretty boring so I started messing around with them in Photoshop. The end result is a black-and-white photo with a "poster edges" filter applied. In the filter screen I used an edge thickness of 6, an edge intensity of 2, and posterization of 3. And this is the final result...

Manual setting: f/5, 1/4 second, ISO 100

Fading Apples

Mario and Norma (my mother-in-law) both didn't care for my photo from yesterday - they said I look anguished, and they don't like to see me look that way. Truth be told, after I posted the photo I, too, felt it evoked a sense of despair... In actuality, I was simply trying to hide my face in the self-portrait - there are some days I definitely prefer to be behind the camera!

So tonight I wanted to continue with my low-light/bulb exposure experiments, but I thought I'd try a different subject. I lined up five apples on a black backdrop, and every 5-6 seconds for the first 24 seconds or so of the exposure I removed an apple from the row. The apple on the left remained in place for the entire exposure time. And this was the result...

Manual setting: f/22, 47 seconds, ISO 100

Low light fun and a self-portrait

I've done a few low-light experiments in the past - one in high school using a flashlight in a totally dark room and one similar to this where I produced a ghost-image of my feet. I want to try more of these - I'm not happy with the composition of this one - but it's late and I'm tired so it'll have to wait for another day...

Manual setting: f/20, 30 seconds, ISO 100

Miriam

I convinced Miriam to be the subject of a photo shoot today by playing a bit of dress-up and putting makeup on her. It was really cute to see her walking around after her makeover - I could tell she felt very grown up. I reminded her (several times) that today was special and she can't wear makeup outside the house or to school until she's in high school. I then had to reassure Mario that his sweet little 5-year-old daughter would NOT be wearing makeup regularly or participating in any beauty pageants...

Manual setting: f/5, 1/6 second, ISO 100

My desk

This is my mess of a desk. No wonder I can't concentrate - it's total chaos! Hmmm... looks like my photos are crooked, too...

Manual setting: f/14, 2.5 seconds, ISO 100

My bookshelf

Whew! Just made it today! 11:30 PM, and I realized I hadn't taken ANY photos today... So here it is - for what it's worth... A partial view of one of my bookshelves.

Manual setting: f/14, 8 seconds, ISO 100

I bought a lot of canned tomatoes today

Red Gold tomatoes were on sale when I was at the store today so I had to buy a bunch... For some reason, I find something comforting about the label of this particular brand - the colors always stand out to me, and I get a feeling of... warmth and, in a weird way, security when I see them in the store. All that from a can of tomatoes...

Manual setting: f/4.5, 1/6 second, ISO 100

Bubble wrap and Christmas lights

Enough said.

Manual setting: f/5.6, 1/8 second, ISO 100

Splish, splash

I've wanted to try photographing water splashes for some time now so I figured today would be as good a day as any to do it. Plus, I went to the Action/Abstraction exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum this morning - which featured works by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and other abstract expressionists - and I got all splashy-inspired!

I set up my shot in our kitchen where we have a north-facing window that lets in some nice, softer light throughout the day - thankfully today it is sunny outside so the light was stronger than it has been lately. Unfortunately, there wasn't quite enough light, given the faster shutter speed I needed to use to freeze the splashes the way I wanted to, and I had to set my ISO at 1600, creating quite a bit of noise in the photo. To create the splashes, Miriam dropped frozen peas into the bowl of water from about 18-24 inches up.

I think I'd like to try this again sometime. Next time, I'll either set up outside or use some lights, and I think I should also use something heavier to create bigger splashes... Maybe a strawberry or cherries... Miriam suggested an apple. :)

Manual setting with manual focus: f/4.5, 1/400, ISO 1600

It's cold and yucky outside today...

...So I'm feeling totally uninspired by anything... except coffee! Yum! Look at those dark, rich beans!

Manual setting: f/5.6, 4 seconds, ISO 100

"Wood, Jerry. Wood."

Our neighbors' woodpile...

Manual setting: f/5.6, 1/10, ISO 100

Identity crises

Our house is a veritable chop shop for Lego kits. They get put together. They get disassembled. The parts and pieces get mixed up and used to build little spaceships or crude guns and blasters. These poor little Lego guys are suffering identity crises...

Manual setting: f/20, 3.2 seconds, ISO 100

Another last-minute shot...

Damn these cold, short days! I just can't bring myself to go outside to shoot when it's cold and windy out... Mario's running hat hanging on the lock of one of our doors is a bit of a fixture in the house so I thought it'd make as good a subject as any...

Manual setting: f/4.5, 4 seconds, ISO 100

This is a collage of four photos I shot for Mario for a presentation he's giving tomorrow night.

All were shot on manual at f/7.1 and ISO 100. Shutter speeds ranged from 1/3 to 1/2 second.

Boxes galore!

Every year it's the same after Christmas - the recycling center is inundated with everything, especially boxes. This year is no exception!

Aperture priority setting: f/16, 1/25, ISO 100

Day 4, and I'm already slacking

So it was around 5 PM today, light was fading, and I needed to get started on dinner... and I hadn't taken any photos yet. Quick look around, and this is what I came up with - magnets on Luis' chore chart. I phoned this one in today...

Aperture priority mode: f/5.6, 1/20, ISO 1600

Today's photo - I like coffee...

And I really like our heavy red coffee mugs and saucers!

Aperture priority setting, taken indoors with natural lighting: f/5.6, 1/15, ISO 800

2nd photo - A chase scene

Again, a lazy day with the camera set on Auto: f/9.0, 1/320, ISO 100

A photo a day

A portrait photographer I really admire, Jan Scott, joined a group on Facebook called Project365. The idea is to take a photo a day for the whole year. Easy enough, right? Hah! Mario and I decided to do something similar to that when our children were born - a photo a day. The duration? It started out being "until it gets tiresome". Then we thought, "Maybe just through the first year of the baby's life." But I enjoyed taking the photos so much, and our families and friends enjoyed seeing the photos so much, that we ended up continuing our little project for the first FIVE years of each child's life! By the time Miriam turned five, I had just about had it. Luis was always pretty complacent about having his photo taken, but not Miriam. For probably the last five or six months of her project, Miriam would run in the opposite direction whenever I pulled my camera out. I begged, I pleaded, I bribed, I threatened, I pleaded some more... Then I just started counting down the days to her fifth birthday... I've hardly picked up my camera since that joyous day in November so I figured I needed something to motivate me again to get out there and shoot, shoot, shoot. And this is it. Rather than join a Facebook group - there are so many to choose from! - I decided I'd go the individual-blog route with my little project. And thus begins "My Project 365"...

A note about my equipment... I have a Canon Digital Rebel which was purchased in January 2004, looking to upgrade it SOON! I pretty much exclusively use a 28-135 mm zoom lens. And that's that.

Here's the first photo of 2009 - taken at Kirkwood Park, feeding the geese before the kiddos began to get too crabby because they were sick. Feeling lazy, this was shot with my camera on the Auto setting: f/8.0, 1/250, ISO 100.