Today I got to play on the playground with my niece Abbey and my nephew Ethan. Yes, I'm 42, and yes I play on the playground with my nieces and nephews. It's awesome. My brother Joe even joined in on the fun, as did Nell. I love the look on Nell's face. Both Ethan and Abbey were nice enough to pose for me a few times. Oh, and if you look closely at the photo above, you can also see how mischievous sisters can be.
Today was Christmas with my family. This is my niece Tiffany and her baby Heavenly. I was sitting next to them relaxing and it suddenly dawned on me that this was a great photo opportunity. I took quite a few shots from different perspectives and most of them came out great. I especially like the lighting, for some reason it was perfect lighting, even though most of the room isn't lit well for photos.
For Christmas this year I got myself my all time favorite chocolate, a double dark truffle from Wilmar Chocolates in Nell's home town of Appleton. The photo didn't come out as well as I hoped, but I tried.
We were busy all day with still more family, and I was having so much fun I almost forgot to take my photo. This is a remote control car with a ton of flashing lights that jumps and spins around all crazy like. I played with the kids and these cars for a bit before I came up with the idea of photographing one. Kind of a silly photo, but oh well.
Today we did Christmas with the rest of Nell's family, and guess what? I got some camera gifts! I took this photo with a new filter that I got. It makes any light in the photo show up as a star shape. This is pretty cool, unless it is a photo of people and the star shape overlaps a face or two. Ooops. Below is Disa, she is Nell's sister, Carrie's, dog. Dogs don't like to sit still, but I manage to get this photo off just in time.
Well, it may not really be a new age, but it certainly feels like it when I drive through Indiana farmland and see hundreds of huge windmills. I like this photo, but I wish I had something in it for size comparison. These things are enormous, and if you look closely, there are hundreds of them just in this photo. Well, a lot anyway.
Yay Christmas! Here's another ornament. We've been spending a lot of time with family, thus I haven't been spending a lot of time with my camera. That's not likely to change, but I'll try to get some good photos.
Christmas Eve with Nell's family made for a lot of fun family portraits of people opening gifts. Unfortunately nearly all of those came out blurry. So here's a really cool ornament.
Today we flew to Chicago and stayed the night at Nell's grandfather's house. We were both pretty tired, but I hadn't taken my photo for the day, so I started taking photos of the Christmas tree ornaments. Nell noticed the reflection in one of my photos, so I made it my mission to capture a good reflection of her. This was challenging because I was focusing the camera on the reflection, not the ornament, and because it was hard to keep myself out of the reflection.
I found this flower down the hill the other day, but it wasn't open. I thought that it wasn't open because it was cloudy. Today, since it was sunny, I went down to see if it was open, but it was not. I wonder if it only opens at certain times of the day, or if maybe this is just how it looks. I took some photos of it anyway. I love the vibrant red of this flower.
I had some time on my lunch break today so I went down the hill to Summerland and visited the garden by the ocean. While walking through the garden trying to get more photos of the funny Dr. Seuss looking plants, I noticed this orange flower sharing the sun with this big succulent plant. I like the juxtaposition and contrast between the two plants, and the nice splash of color.
I posted a photo of one of these yellow clover flowers a while back. It was taken from behind the flower, with the sun shining through it. Today I needed a quick photo so I decided to take a normal photo of this flower.
Yay bright red leaf! These bushes next to a set of stairs where I work were lit up by sunlight coming through a tree, so there were bright and dark patches. I noticed this lone red leaf lit up and, as you can see, was really red. I took a few shots of it surrounded by darker surroundings, but in the end I liked this close up photo best.
I like color. Before we left Encino, I realized that I hadn't taken my photo, so I looked around for something to photograph and I noticed the colorful pool balls and table. Having multiple balls in the photo at different distances allowed me to play around with the depth of field. I kind of wish I'd had more time to play with this, I think I could have come up with some fun photos. I do like this one though.
Nell and I visited a friend who was house sitting in Encino this weekend at a really, really nice house. While walking in the back yard, Nell noticed this cool flower. I played around with the depth of focus a lot on this one, I wanted the green leaves to show up but not be too out of focus, yet still have the flower nicely isolated.
I found this nice orange flower surrounded by these funny stick plants. The sticks added some nice lines and shapes to the photo, so I took a few shots to try to capture this.
Today over my lunch break I went down the hill to a picnic area by the beach here in Summerland, where I discovered this cool garden. I don't know what these plants are, but they are cool. They are all over Santa Barbara but I've never seen this many together. Just for scale, these plants are 18-12 feet high. I also noticed this hungry seagull waiting patiently on a fence post near a family having lunch.
Apparently I am obsessed with flowers, and leaves. So be it. I was out walking and looking specifically for leaves that were back-lit by the sun. I only took about 70 shots of this leaf, trying to get it right. I like that the grey background makes the color of the leaf pop more. The background, by the way, is a grey car.
For our weekly photo, Maxine and I wanted to take a photo of drops falling into a cup of tea. This was rather difficult, especially since I forgot my big tripod, and the batteries on my flash were dying. After much, much fiddling, we got some photos that passed as good. I'm pretty sure we're gonna try this again.
It was a rainy day here in Santa Barbara. Lucky for me though, it wasn't raining at lunch time, so I went out for some photographering. The light wasn't very good so I had a bit of a hard time, but I think these turned out OK. The leaf below looked much cooler when I saw it in the morning, but by the time I could make it outside most of the water droplets on it had evaporated.
I almost forgot to take my photo today! In my defense, I was busy. Nell and I went with some friends to nearby Lompoc to play paintball. It was a lot of fun and I have 12 round bruises to prove it. Ouch. So when we got home late that evening I realized that I hadn't taken my photo. I looked around the house and realized that I hadn't taken any photos of Nell's super cute ceramic elephant and giraffe. She threw each of the parts on a pottery wheel, then assembled the pieces to make each animal.
In the spirit of photography, Maxine and I decided to go out before the sunrise to take photos of the total lunar eclipse. When I picked her up, even her cats weren't awake. Sooo early! But alas, taking photos of an eclipsed moon proved harder than we expected, so I failed to come up with a photo that even looked like a moon. But I noticed the offshore oil rig was lit up in a beautiful setting, so the morning was not wasted. After a few shots, the fog behind the rig started forming these nice curves. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised that the photos came out so nice. We were pretty far away so I was zoomed all the way in with my 250mm lens. I couldn't decide which of these two to post, so you get both.
While walking around outside of work today, I noticed that the car cover on the owner's Porsche had been torn by the wind and made these cool patterns. I like how the tear looks a little like a rive or maybe lightning.
While walking the trail around work, I noticed this red eucalyptus leaf lit up by sunlight. It was surrounded by shade, a glowing red leaf in the darkness. I was a little entranced, and took just over 60 photos of this leaf. I even walked away to photograph something else, then came back and took several more photos.
I'm trying to broaden my view of things to photograph. I was out at work revisiting subjects that I had photographed before, when I looked up at the brick wall and noticed this fun shadow. I can't decide how much I like it, but it's different.
First, I stole this idea from a photography book, or website or something. I read it somewhere. For our weekly photo, Maxine and I cut up some kiwis really thin, then placed them on a piece of paper on top of a lamp. This was a lot easier than I had expected and I'm super happy with the photos.
Today I walked around work looking for something different to take a photo of. For some reason there's an old Volkswagen Bug parked in the back. I took a few photos of this light on a rusty fender, trying to get different perspectives. I had to rotate this one to line things up correctly and thus lost a little of the photo around the edges. I need to pay more attention to each individual shot. I like this one though.
Today I was at a friends and noticed their back yard was full of nice clovers, so I grabbed my camera and took some shots. The clovers were thick so I played around with the depth of field to try to give the picture a feeling of depth, but the one below is the best I came up with. I stood up and noticed these crazy red flowers in a tree adjacent to their patio. I took a lot of shots, playing around with both depth of field and focus point, but as you can see the flower is very complicated and busy.
Today Nell went down to Magic Mountain with some friends, so I was home all day. I had a nice walk through the garden area and found these newly bloomed yellow flowers. I tried to get some nice macro shots, as in really close up, but the flowers were mostly in the shade so lighting wasn't the best.
I really like sunlight shining through leaves. This is a tree that I have taken several leaf shots from, but today it had only had one leaf left. The leaf was a bit low to the ground so I was able to get a dark background while the sun was lighting it from behind.
This is the bush with the red leaves where I work. I noticed the stems of these leaves make a fun geometric pattern. I tried to capture this, but sort of failed. I kind of like it, and I'll likely try to capture a better image in the future.
Since the sun is somewhat low in the sky lately, I've been noticing how it sometimes lights things up from behind if you are looking at the correct angle. Today I walked the trail around my building looking for things to photograph and I noticed how some of the leaves on this bush were nicely lit. I like how the leaf kind of glows and you can see the texture on the surface.
