Day 141: Locks Worker

This is a picture of a very cold worker at the Sault Ste. Marie (that's pronounced "soo-saint-marie" ...go figure)Locks. These locks provide passage from lake Superior to Lake Huron. I like this picture because it really describes his job. Just walking back and forth from the warmth of the break room back to outside where he helps reign the ships in while the water level falls.

Day 140: Leaning Twins

This was taken on the road yesterday about two or three hours before we arrived in Escanaba. I like how it's tilted, it just gives it a unique feel despite being one of 1000's of other dairy farms in Wisconsin.

Day 139: Light House

We arrived in Escanaba, Michigan today. It's a beautiful town right on Green Bay, part of Lake Michigan. We're staying in a little cabin overlooking the water that goes straight out to the horizon. It's absolutely mind boggling. This is where my father grew up, he graduated high school here and went straight to the Air Force. When we arrived we decided to take a quick drive around before the light completely went away, and it faded pretty quickly. Luckily I got this picture just as the sunset got most amazing. It's the silhouette of the Escanaba marina light house against a really brilliant sunset.

Day 138: Leading Lines

Turns out this is where my dad used to work after he got out of the armed forces. It's a 1st National Bank of Omaha building. I like the lines and the way they lead to one point. I remember learning that rule for drawing 3D shapes in art class.

I like road trips because it gives you time to think, and trust me, I have had a lot of that. I spent all day after our little exploration of Omaha just enjoying the open road. There was a beautiful sunset too. This is why I love being on the road. Nearly unlimited time to do what I love (that's photography, in case your a little slow), and time to think and contemplate too.

Day 137: Upstroke

Well here I am. Sitting in a hotel room in York Nebraska. It's a tiny town and it just happened to be appropriately placed along out trip route so we stopped here for the night. We had Applebees for dinner and we had a nice family chat. The road trip thing as a whole has been a bit stressful for us all, but it should be fun. Omaha is the next stop tomorrow, the town my parents met and got married in.

This was taken yesterday, and seems to be a good completion of yesterday's picture. I like the down/upstroke theme and i didn't really take more than about 10-20 pictures on the road today. Nothing interesting. I promise something amazing for tomorrow though! OMAHA! I love old cities so I plan to take mucho pictures. Cya then.

Day 136: Downstroke

This was taken in my backyard today, I went upstairs and Mom pointed out the multitude of Magpies. I've always wanted to get a picture of a magpie. I mean a decent one, not like a snapshot of one pecking the ground. I think i did that here. They keep eluding my autofocus whenever I visit Garden of the Gods, so when they finally decided to visit my back yard, naturally, I took a few pictures, went out on the deck too. Surprisingly, a few turned out really good. I chose this one for the detail in the wings and consistency of the background.

Today is our last day at home before the big trip! I'm off to Michigan tomorrow, and we'll be stopping in a few cities along the way. We're driving all the way so it should take about 3 days. We arrive in my dad's hometown, Escanaba, on thursday and I should be able to get some interesting pictures on the way.

Day 135: Thunder Birds

The USAF Thunder Birds were out practicing today for graduation Wednesday. Unfortunately we won't be here then, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a picture today. Because of this I was late to church. I stopped right along the road to church, just after the exit ramp and took about 200 pictures. Later in the day I took 300 more pictures of a car show and some trains. And I squished about 20 more pennies. It's been a good sunday. I can't wait to see if I'll really be taking 500 pictures a day all summer. My hard drive is going to hate me.

And "mad props" to Laura, she noticed this day didn't have "day" in the title. None of you other people did, includng me me( *gasp* I know). Good job Laura!

Day 134: Season's Greetings

We wish you a merry summer, we wish you a merry summer, we wish you a merry summer, now won't you take down those lights!

Yes, our christmas lights are still up. As are 3 other people's in out neighborhood. The funny thing is, we turned them on when it snowed in april. I'm sure our neighbors liked that :p :P This is a picture I took last night just before I ran downstairs to eat dinner and watch Water Horse the movie. I would recommend it. It was very good.

Day 133: Sunny Sadie

The name is a take from Day 39: Snowy Sadie. I love this picture (it's definitely worth the full view), I think it really captures sadie perfectly, her whole personality in a picture. It's my dream to be able to do that with people portraits, but humans tend to be harder subjects. Either way, I think the lighting and her expression turned out beautifully. Shortly after this picture, she started scratching her neck, and then she threw up. That's Sadie for ya.

Day 132: Cave of Cloud

This is about the oddest weather I have ever seen. There is no editing here, I only cropped and resized it. We had rainy weather up at our house, and down in the springs by Cheyenne mountain it was perfectly sunny. I guess this is the result. Ya don't see that every day!

Day 131: Photosynthesizer

Today I didn't have much time to take pictures with finals being today. I mean, I got out early because I only had one final (bible), but I have Math and Biology tomorrow. I suppose this picture is fitting for my biology class :) I know, this is going to be the last picture of this tree, i hope. I just love that the flowers are dying and the leaves are coming out. Also, we suspect this might be a peach tree. Here, compare the flowers from Day 117 and this peach tree flower.

Day 130: Cotton Candy Clouds

I know this is another cloud picture, but these are just AMAZING! I spotted these driving home today, and the moment I got home I ran inside and got my camera. I took so many pictures, but i think this one is best. I love these type of huge tall fluffy clouds. They look so happy and are once again a reminder that summer is on its way. I promise that the first thunder storm we have this summer, I'll take lots of pictures!

Day 129: Out of Use

I have recently formed a habit of stopping by the train tracks in monument ever 1 or 2 days and putting all the extra pennies we have on the track, and pick up the ones i put there last time. I arrange them into patterns and watch them get squished together. I think I'll make a jar of the squished pennies and when it's full, it can be my picture of the day. But back to this picture, I was putting pennies on the track and the train came by, i got a few pictures of it, but none that were too good. After that I started walking back to the car, but i noticed how cool the old worn out tracks looked. the new ones are all shiny and look like they were flawlessly placed by a bunch of robots, but these had character. These old tracks were put together by men, railroad ties, steel, everything. It's awesome to look at how they have aged, and I like this picture because of the character of the tracks that it portrays. You can see the bends in the steel, and all the plants that have grown up around it. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Oh, and let me know if it's too dark and I'll brighten it up. It looks fine on my LCD panel, but for others of you it may be a bit dark.

Day 128: Summer

Summer is on it's way! it's the 18th and I get out of school the 23rd!!! Mom and I took a drive around old Monument today, and as we drove I noticed this tree above my dentists office (go figure). The blue sky and green leaves and fluffy white clouds reminded me of the long vacation I'm about to have soon.

Day 127: Encircled

Once every year, I try to go out to my back yard and check out the spring flowers. This year there weren't many that had bloomed yet, and in fact this was one of the only fully mature bluebells that i found on our whole property. I suspect I might go back out in a week or so to see how things have progressed! I like how the bluebell is outlined by a dandelion in the background. It's really a shame that dandelions are such pests when it comes to gardening, because they are so beautiful when they are flowers!

Day 126: Shades of Grey

This was taken as I followed a 3-legged deer down the road we live on. I love the different shades between orange and blue in the sky just as the sun went behind the mountain.

Day 125: For the Birds

These are the birds on the mantle above our fireplace. I turned one around so it looked like he was paying attention, and fired the in-camera flash to give a sense of depth with the light falloff. I think these guys are positively cute. We've had them ever since my dad became obsessed with "for the birds" which was a short film by Pixar that showed in theaters right in front of Monsters Inc.

Day 124: Face

This is the second picture of me in 124 days, so I think its about time :) I ripped apart my disposable camera from Day 123, and soldered the stripped wires from an old pair of headphones to the leads for the flash. The end result is that when i connect two of the bands on what used to be a normal headphone jack, by plugging it in, or using tin foil, the flash goes off. This means I can now trigger it from about 2 feet away because of the length of the headphone cord I used! I had a ton of fun with this, i did self-portraits, stopped nerf darts in mid-air, and all kinds of other things. This is my favorite, it turned out pretty well. The flash is held by me left arm about 1 foot above and to the left of my head, my right hand triggered it while my D80 was on long exposure in a dark room. This was the result.

Day 123: Shining Star

No, this was not intentionally named after a song. This was taken by taking an old disposable camera I found around the house. I tore it apart, discharged the capacitor (this is important cause if you don't you can get badly shocked and burned) with the metal end of a pencil. From there I pushed the two metal leads that fire the flash closer together. This way, when i drop or even lightly tap the camera on a surface, the flash fires. So I timed my 1/60th of a second exposure on my D80 perfectly with the flash after about 20 times.... it was tough to get that flash to fire right within a 1/60th of a second window. I increased the contrast, and tweaked the brightness a bit to get it to "pop" and what you can see now is the white outline of my hand holding the camera, and the bright star-looking bit is the flash itself firing.

Day 122: Nature's Lens

This was taken outside in the backyard after running the hose on full for about 5 minutes while getting some flowing water pictures. The whole water-out-of-hose-frozen-in-time idea turned out ok, but these macro pictures I took with my dad's 5MP HP that our family has had for 3 years turned out mucho bueno! That camera is the only one with the "super macro" function so I use it for a lot of close-up stuff. I don't have a real macro lens for my D80 yet, and they're so expensive I won't be getting one soon, but boy would I love to have one. Well, overall I think I did good on my promise to bring everyone a better photograph today!

I love how the Water droplets have in-focus details of the background, hence the name "Nature's Lens"

Day 121: Mothers Day

This is one of the flowers in the bouquet Dad and I got Mom for Mothers Day! Admittedly, we got it at noon, but mom's Ok with that as I was really sick and couldn't get out yesterday. I'm still not quite well today, but I promise something better tomorrow...

Day 120: Lighting Through Steel

Boring pictures 101: take a picture of a Thermos.
Trying to make otherwise boring pictures interesting when your really sick with the cold 101: add flash.
Yes folks that's right. I was sick today. Very very sick, with a cold that has been trying to kill me since 5:00 yesterday. I hope it gives up soon :( Anyway, this was taken of Dad's thermos right before I went upstairs to get some sleep. I know it doesn't quite live up to my other pictures, but at least it's still interesting...

Day 119: Wilting

This one was taken in the light box as well, but exactly 23 hours 15 minutes after Day 118. This is what happens when you leave a flower in a cold dark room after baking it for 15 minutes under 1500 watts of lights from home depot.

Day 118: Flowering

This was taken in my light box, its a flower from the tree featured in Day 117. It is set on a black piece of polished ceramic. I do hope you like the 3rd in my impromptu flower series!

Day 117: Bumble Bee

This was taken about 2 feet from my front door. This tree just bloomed yesterday, so I was outside taking some macro pictures of the flowers, and I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. You realize your a photographer when you see and recognize the most massive scary looking bee you've ever seen and instead of freaking out and running away, you take one step back, zoom all the way in, and take 200 pictures. That's just what I did :) 194 to be exact. This was the closest I dared to get (it was probably about 3 feet away from the tip of my lens) It's zoomed in all the way, and cropped to about 50% of its original size. I like that he's fuzzy :D

Day 116: Abstract Expressionism 2.0

Well, it turns out that Abstract Expressionism was a Post WWII Movement, which means that I really feel like I'm part of something now. Here my friends, is un-edited proof that it doesn't take a special camera to get a great picture. Especialy when your trying to mimic a Post WWII Artistic Movement. Also, as you may have noticed, the picture features the great talents of not only the boots from Day 31 but also the hand and foot from Day 61, the original Abstract Expressionism. My friends are pretty abstract and it's pretty schweet. So my personal thanks to Romulus (the hand) and Crackers (the feet)... and my boots. Now, don't forget to check out EiP for more abstractness just like this.

Sorry about the lateness with todays, I was in a hurry when I posted day 117, so I didn't get to upload this one.

Day 115: Stop On Flashing Red

"Stop on flashing..... woa..."

I'll bet thats what you thought when you saw this.
"Jeez, egotistical much Steve?"
...no...

So, this took about half an hour of post processing, and boy did I have to fight with it to get it to do what I wanted. You see, the trees were under-exposed, and the road was over-exposed, but i wanted the road dark, which made the trees go flat black. So I finally just separated the two and edited each individually and VIOLA!
"It's 'voila' Steve..."
no. It's Vuahlah!

Oh, and isn't the fact that the school bus is being towed kind of funny? This was about a quarter of a mile from our house. Basically just down the hill to the east, the same place I took Day 80 (but at the end of the curve). Now I can say "I once had a school bus break down near my house!" How many of you can say that huh? Yeah, that's what I thought. It was pretty awesome. So, check out the full view, it might be worth it... maybe you'll spot an editing mistake!

Day 114: Happy Clouds

This is a tribute to Bob Ross, the famous tele-painter who recently (within the last year) had his painting show reruns cancelled FOREVER on PBS. We will miss him, his white-guy afro, and the way he used to refer to lightly-painted clouds as "happy". He was just a mortal and thus died on July 4th, 1995 at the age of 52, but the legend of Bob Ross will forever live on in our hearts...

Check out the full view for more of the "painted" effect.

Day 113: Sweet Iced Tea

Fact you don't know about me: I like love tea!

This is sweet iced tea. It is the best kind of tea. Colorado McDonalds' recently released Sweet Iced Tea. It's been available in more south eastern states for years, but i guess they finally decided us Coloradans deserve the best sweet tea on earth just as much as the southerners do! I encourage you to get it the next time your near a McD's because it may be unhealthy, but IT IS WORTH IT. I admit it. Im addicted, but its 32 awesome ounces (as illustrated by the narrow depth-of-field in the picture) for 1 dollar. Yes just one lonely little dollar, or four quarters. or one dime 3 nickels 25 pennies and a Kennedy half dollar. So go get it. You will not regret it. I promise. Oh! and get me one while your there. I haven't had my tea fix in nearly a half hour (seriously)!

oh, and do they have this delectable delicious sweet tea from Micky Dee's anywhere else in the country? If you live anywhere other than Colorado (*cough* laura *cough*) then do speak up!

Day 112: Wrinkles

Today was another half day. Everyone went home early but me. I ended up waiting in the car. I took pictures of my jeans. Here is a close up of jeans. I sincerely hope you like it. They're new :)

Day 111: Locker

This was taken at school today. It was a half day so I had to wait around for about 3 hours for german class to start. I was just waiting around with Steph and Trevor all day...