Project 365

I have decided to start Project 365, so what is that you ask?
Project 365 was born when Taylor McNight decided to take a picture a day for 365 days and post them to chronicle his life during that year.
This past year I've developed a desire to be a better photographer and taking a picture a day will force me into not only thinking about taking better shots, but learning how to get them on my blog for others to view. If you would like to start your own Project 365, check out Photojojo.com for some tips to get you going.

So now I'm going to cheat a bit. I'm going to post a few favorites from December, to get me on track.

365/1 Sydney on Christmas Eve. I just love black & white photography.

In My Own Backyard!

Okay, getting close enough to photograph twin fawns may be an easy task where I work (at a nature center), but this is in my own backyard. These fawns have not been hand raised, nor should they be used to humans.

How'd I do it? Patience is a virtue! I started right by the house, snapping a picture-taking a step; snapping a picture-taking a step. I managed to get pretty close before they stood up and starting heading towards the wooded swampy area (due to all the rain we've had).

Although, I get plenty of opportunity to see deer in our area, these two little guys/girls were so darn cute I had to try to get a picture. It took me forever to post them because, I wanted to try out some features of Photo Shop Elements 6 on them, but just don't have the time right now, so finally decided to post them as is.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

Before and After images of Lily. With Photoshop 6, I was able to take the toy out of the picture that appears in the background of the first shot. I also shapened the image a bit. While it's not perfect, being my first attempt and all, it is pretty amazing. It's a learning process, so I'm sure to improve as I continue to use the program. There is so much to learn and it's a bit overwhelming, but I'm so geeked about photography at the moment, it's creating incentive for me to keep attempting new projects.

The Missing (lines) Photo

This is the second lines photo that I posted and then lost while trying to edit. I thought I'd try to post it again. Let me know which one you like the best. I love to read the comments.

The bridge is near G.T.'s house and he loves riding his bike across it going as fast as he can. He also likes to stop in the middle of the bridge and look below at a small stream running underneath it. Water is so fascinating to autistic children. It goes above and beyond the normal "love to splash in the puddle" kind of thing.

I Was in the Right Place, at the RIGHT time!

There I was out in the yard with my dog and my camera and these hot air balloons came right over our house. I tried taking different types of shots, but really what can you do with hot air balloons? Change my perspective? How in the world would I do that? Then these geese decided to take flight from the neighbor's pond and I caught them as they passed the balloons in the opposite direction. Cool Huh!

Panning

"Panning is a technique that can produce amazing results (if you perfect it…. or get lucky) but is also one that can take a lot of practice to get right. The basic idea behind panning as a technique is that you pan your camera along in time with the moving subject and end up getting a relatively sharp subject but a blurred background. This gives the shot a feeling of movement and speed. It’s particularly useful in capturing any fast moving subject whether it be a racing car, running pet, cyclist etc."

Okay, so I decided to try panning. Danan, was my object, but I didn't get anything worth posting. In other words, I did not perfect it or get lucky.

I also tried motion blur, while photographing flowers. I had a little better results in that department. These are the directions I used for motion blur: "You might want to do this simply by selecting a shutter speed that is slightly slower than normal and moving your camera during the exposure. In fact with even just slightly slower shutter speed than normal just trying to handhold your camera while taking your shot will probably give it the effect that you’re looking for. "

Instead of the flowers blurring though, my background looks like it is in motion. I'm sure it's some subcategory of motion blur. Please don't ask me how I did it, I probably couldn't replicate it if I tried. The flower in case you're wondering, is from a butterfly bush in my backyard.