Day 202: Michael

This is one of Michael Garmin's Sculptures. Our family has 2 of them. He's very good, and has a gallery in Manitou, a touristy city just west of Colo Springs and "at the base of Pikes Peak." My German foreign-exchange nanny-babysitter person, Nelly, (my mom was full-time teaching at the Academy, so I was with Nelly much of my very early years lol) was actually offered a job there to be apprenticed by Mr. Garmin himself, but she refused... don't really know why anyone would refuse that...But I don't remember her. Hope you enjoyed my little family story there. This was lit with the Vivitar 285HB a few inches above the sculpture. I am particularly fond of the depth of field and clarity of the detail aparant in the picture.

Day 201: A New Perspective

This was taken looking at the view of the mountains from the front of my house. The circle that has things inverted is the stack of +1, +2, +4, and +10 diopter close-up filters. They're really just big magnifying glasses attached to rings so they can screw onto the lens. Let me enlighten you: if you put a magnifying glass against (touching) the front of YOUR camera's lens, you can get the same* effect I get with close-up filters, that is to say, you too can have super-macro coolness on your camera!

*Effect may be lesser than what is demonstrated on this site, just because no reasonable household magnifier is as thick as all four of these things stacked.

I have always liked the upside-down-ness off magnifiers held at arms length. For some reason I am always perplexed by it, so I am glad this picture captures it so well. I used to have a ball-bearing sized sphere of glass that entertained me for hours on end. That's neediness at it's best right there.

Day 200: Milimeters

This is another really macro picture. It's the millimeter measure of a ruler. I'm still impressed by these close up filters I have. I'm sorry I wasn't able to do anything spectacular for Day 200, but it's just another day eh? Spectacular things to come later on though, I promise. I'm not quite sure about the lighting here... It was lit with my flash just to the left and for some reason it kind of freaked out lighting-wise. I suppose that's what happens when you light reflective objects...

Day 199: Circular

This is a manhole. A very special one at that, for this manhole resides on the United States Air Force Academy. Here's the story: As you know from yesterday's picture, I was with Trevor most of the day yesterday. When his parents got home, we were free and I led the way over to the Air Force Academy. When we got there I realized I didn't have my tripod, so none of the pictures turned out great. I did however have my flash, so this one in particular turned out pretty cool. I like how only the manhole and a little grass around it is lit. Next time I go to the Academy, I plan to have more to show for it.

Day 198: Lazy Summer

This is Trevor's new dog. It has an odd name, which I'm not going to waste the mental capacity trying to waste at the moment, but it is a very cute dog none the less. I went over to Trevor's for the first time in awhile today, and we had a blast. This dog was very attached to a certain $2.69 bouncy beach-ball I happened to have in my trunk. Kudos to Trev for the freshly mowed lawn.

Day 197: Summer Snack

This is my (very very late) entry for the Summer contest... I know I haven't updated in forever, but this was taken on time, just not posted. I hope to catch up with my pictures here in the next few days, currently it's August 11th... so I'm quite a bit behind. Look for more to come soon!

Day 196: Hidden Forest

Wow. Tonight was... interesting. I realized at 11:47 that it was almost to late to get my picture (and I misread, thinking it was 11:57, so I thought I had 3 minutes. I ran from the couch, ripped my camera out of its bag, grabbed my flash and the triggers and ran upstairs. I turned on all the outside lights so I could see my way around, and sprinted outside. I took a few pictures outside on the rock, and then headed to the east side of the house by some baby scrub oaks. I got the idea for this picture a few months ago and didn't remember it until then, at which point I realized I could make it alot cooler with the flash. Hence this picture. The other title might have been "Hidden Light" but at the risk of being too cliche (note: I know, the current title is also cliche, but not as much) I went with this one. Note the post date and time, exactly 10 minutes after I realized I needed my picture, BAM here it is. Fastest picture of the day so far! No editing other than crop.

Day 195: Passing the torch

This was the torch that was passed to light the big torch to begin the official State Games of Colorado. The kick-off even was in the world arena, and Rachel (who also danced in the Light the World Parade, part of the event) invited me to come. I had a great time, and there was some pretty cool stuff, so thanks Rach!

Day 194: Looking into the Future

Wow, almost day 200. This year is going way to fast. This was taken downtown at night. It's the mural on the Colorado springs bus station. I first noticed this when I was scavenger-hunting downtown with 3 of my other friends. It's very cool and basically depicts transportation in the Colorado area over the last 200 years. It was commissioned in 2002 and painted by Steve J. Wood. Another great work, by another great Steve. Oh, and the guy Isn't really looking into the future... he's looking at what will eventually be named Pikes Peak.

Day 193: Candy Treats!

This picture really seems to me like it would make a cool computer background. I resized it to 1024x768 (monitor size) for those of you who want to use it... feel free. Thanks to Jordan for the idea, although I changed it up a little. I like the colors and the vibrancy of this picture. I put my Vivitar 285HV just off to the left by a few inches for lighting.

Day 192: A Pound of Macro

This day has some significance to me because I was born in 1992, and today is Day 192, so I think that's pretty cool. The title is kind of random, but it refers to the fact that this is a macro picture of an English Pound (£). Get it? See, now it all makes sense. I am really having a lot of fun with my close-up filters, and I figured out that if you stack all four, and set the focus out to infinity you can get pictures even closer than with the focus set to close-up. It's really amazing. Oh, and thanks to Trevor for the pound... which I still have because I failed to give it back to him after he let me see it. Rest assured Trevor, 'tis in save hands.

Day 191: Desperation

This is my first picture of the day every taken with my iPhone. It was taken during Ron Luce's sermon at Desperation. They really go all out with lights and decorations. It was an amazing time and yesterday was the last day. God is good, 7000 kids & youth pastors from 30 different states turned out.

Day 190: Lone Meter

This was taken yesterday, on the roof of the same parking garage. It was just after a concert of the Kingston Treo that I attended as my birthday present to my mom. We (my family) all really enjoyed it. I stayed for about an hour after the parking garage emptied out and got some great pictures of the city at night. This also might have been my monochrome submission, I really went for the olde-timey sepia film look. Too bad i was just minutes late, but hey at least I'm honest right?

Day 189: More Bars

...in more places.

Yes, that's the whole theme of this picture. The bars are the stacks of smoke coming out of the power plant, if you didn't catch that already... I know its cliche, but I haven't done it before, so that makes it fun. This was GOING to be my monochrome submission, but it's 12:24AM on Monday as I post this, meaning i am a half hour late for the deadline. Boo for procrastination eh?

Day 188: Appearances

This was taken in a bank parking lot while waiting for my mother. Accidentally.
Minimal Editing.

Day 187: iKon

Now that i am past the halfway mark in my Project 365 I feel much better. Knowing that I have less days to go than I have already tackled is quite relieving. Technically the exact middle mark was... *pulls out iPhone calculator* Day 183. So here is my lens cap. It's a little worn, and I like this picture because it shows that my lens cap is well used. I also like how it reveals exactly how much distortion is involved when you use all those diopter close up lenses stacked together. Affordable macro comes at a price people! :D

Day 186: Air Candy

Haha, this was taken at 5:38 AM this morning. Good times man. There's nothing like standing outside just at sunrise and jumping up and down repeatedly and firing the flash while your neighbors, who are TRYING to walk their dog, are watching you wondering "What exactly is he doing?" I'm glad I could make their day just that much more interesting. Anyway, I swear to you the whole Air Walk thing was only noticed till AFTER I took half of the photos. I was tiring out after jumping for 30 minutes and suddenly it hit me "DUDE! MY SHOES SAY AIR WALK!!! HOW COOL!" I knew it was perfect for the shoot, but I changed my goal. The original idea was to get a good picture of the feet of me being abducted by a mysterious alien force. The whole lifting off the ground thing was turning out well, then I noticed the name on my shoes... and decided to go with a "walking on air" theme. I really like the results, and you can see more over at the latest post on EiP.

I've really wanted to try the framed look for awhile now. It was a challenge as my editing program has no sensical way to add a frame of any sort. My editing wizardry was no match for its incompetence though. I really like the frame thing, and because I love it almost as much as I love you, dear viewer, I have given you the gift of a larger full view. 1700x1000 this week. Full view thankyouplease.

Day 185: Exalter

This is a miniature of the big Exalter statue at new life. I got it as a birthday present a couple of years ago, and it has been sitting on my dresser every since. I'm really liking getting to play with my new flash and colored gels.

Day 184: The Word

This is a cool picture. I've seen it before and this time I decided to use a bible as the book background. No editing tricks, this is just the way light works. The bible wasn't on any specific page when I took this, i just looked for uniformly worded pages. I really hope you like it. I guess if you want to deeply evaluate it you can come up with some correlation between the Word and Gods love for us with the heart and all, and the fact that the ring says "uplift" and make me look all deep and thoughtful... all the better for me no? I used an orange gel on my Vivitar 285HV to make the light look a little more sunset-ish and inviting. And thanks to mom for holding the flash while I took the picture. Haha, i just realized the text has a bunch of angry stuff in it. How funny! Props to anyone who can tell me what passage this is.

Day 183: Pencil

I chose a simple name for today because the picture is pretty simple. It's a pencil, but it's bigger than you've likely ever seen one magnified. This was taken with my new Macro Filters, specifically with the +10, +4, +2, and +1 diopters stacked on top of each other to enable the closest possible macro.

Day 182: Photographer's Eye

First of all, this is my eye. I know, I know, it's all magnified. My close-up filters for my D80 came in today, which means I can zoom in insanely close on everything now. And hey! It's just in time for the macro competition. This is my submission. It was taken with the flash off to camera right about 2 feet away, and my face pressed against the lens of the camera. No editing other than desaturation of my irritated red eye, and levels editing, and of course a nice cropping. It was taken yesterday.

Day 181: Sunrise on the Peak

Today I was up for sunrise. I stayed up all night and saw sunrise. I Then went to bed and woke up around 4PM. My current schedule makes for pretty interesting days, and awesome photo opportunities! This is Pikes peak about 10 minutes after the sun first hit it in the morning. This is kind of a summer version of Day 7.

Day 180: Remote

My New Nikon AF NIKKOR 50mm 1:1.8D Lens came in today! I would like to thank my various relatives who gave me money for my birthday for contributing to the new lens, as well as a spare battery for my D80. I took a whole lot of pictures to day. I kept 304 of them, so I probably took about 400, considering how many pointless pictures I delete when I'm shuttering randomly. I really enjoyed my day, day 3 of my effort to completely rotate my body clock. I woke up at 2:45PM, and plan to go to sleep at around 7:30AM tonight...er...this morning. As i write this it is 3:50AM July 10th, but this was taken on the 9th. I'm not really drowsy so I figure it's time to post eh? This was taken of our Tivo remove upstairs. I resisted the temptation to edit it in any way, it is not even cropped, just resized. I chose it due to the fact that it shows off the whole f/1.8 part of the lens which means EXTREMELY shallow Depth Of Field (area that is in focus)and it is very fast (lets in a lot more light, faster shutter times). As you can see both sides of the remote are blurred, and really only the select button is in focus. I love the calm, smooth background. If that was in focus you would see a sliding glass door, but because of the beautiful bokeh of this lens, you see only a nice highlight in the background. I'm loving' it so far, and I can now say that i have spent a whole day without zooming one bit! 50mm all the way Oh, and the cool thing about the 50mm lens for my D80 is that if you look through the viewfinder and keep the other eye open, the images match up, making it look like your covering everything but the frame in your left eye. That only happens at 50mm from what I can tell. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Day 179: The Forgotten

Wow. I just realized yesterday (the 11th) that I had forgotten the 8th! And nobody caught it! how surprising. Well, here it is. I guess I had thought i had posted this but I didn't. I didn't many picture on this day, and it was my parents 27th (!) wedding anniversary.

Update for Rachel: It's the steps, zoomed in looking down at them from 3-4 steps up.

Day 178: Moonlight

This was taken outside under cloud cover, no natural light was involved in any way. I achieved the "moonlight" effect with a blue filter on the flash and what is called a snoot. A snoot basically limits the directionality of the light coming out of a flash to a very narrow area, hence the black background.

Day 177: Exit 161

I decided I haven't had enough practice with night pictures, I've really just scratched the edge of what you can do with night photography. Tonight I seized a perfect night, no traffic, no clouds, no nothing. perfectly peaceful. And of course, that's not what you want for car photography, so I went to the only place in the small town of monument that actually had a decent amount of cars and that was the interstate. This was taken from a McDonald's parking lot.

Day 176: Palmer Lake

This was taken about an hour after the fireworks at Palmer Lake ended. This scene is about 90 degrees to the left of yesterday's fireworks picture. I chose this for today because I just couldn't pass up the chance to post a picture I have personally wanted to take ever since I got my D80, one with a lake and reflections of lights. This just turned out to be perfectly framed with the mountain so I consider myself lucky. The exposure was 258.4 seconds, or 4 minutes and 18.4 seconds long and I had the camera set at ISO 100 and f/3.5

Day 175: Fireworks

I think today's title was a given considering yesterdays title... and yes, I did plan that ahead. Happy 4th of July everyone! This was taken at the Palmer Lake Fireworks show. I got there 2 hours early. It took me 20 minutes to find a parking place close to the lake, another 30 minutes to walk around the lake and find a place to set up the tripod. I took 99 pictures in my hour or so before the 'works started, 176 during the show, and 81 afterwords. I waited around with mom (who showed up 10 minutes before the show) for about an hour and a half, and then we finally left. The traffic was still backed up to dead standstill when we got out of there. I would wager at least 5000 people packed into that little town, if not more. Anyway, here is my picture, it was taken about 3/4 of the way through the show. I chose this one for the clarity of the firworks (I had to manually focus every picture... auto focus isn't friendly with firworks.) and the reflection in the lake. I think it provides a good overview of the whole scene.

I'll post links to everyone else's pictures once we all get them chosen and posted. Check back tomorrow for more, or while you wait, check out my other fav's from tonights fireworks over on the latest post on EiP.

Day 174: Waterworks

Today it rained in Colorado. This was taken during that five minutes. Sometimes I wish it would just pour, but it never does... If one was say, trying to sing in the rain, you would only have just enough time to get your shoes, coat, and parasol. Then maybe get in half a song before the rained stopped. Either way, the rain makes beautiful patterns in the water on my deck, and that is just what this picture is.

Day 173: Super Macro

How long do you think this phrase will remain on our money? To imagine that there were days when prayer used to be led by teachers in public schools, and now there is debate over whether the word "God" should even be used on our money is simply saddening. But that's enough of my reflections on the moral compass of America. This picture has no major editing other than levels, removing a few distractions, cropping, and resizing. This is what happens when you point a Nikon D80 at a microscope, the picture was in no way faked. I got the microscope in 7th grade after being enthralled with all the cool stuff we saw in Life Science class. The quarter is from 2000, and the lighting is from a desk lamp just out of the right side of the frame. Check out the full view for the detail on the quarter.

Day 172: Couch Curve

This was taken of our couch in our living room around noon. We had just finished cleaning the house for my grandparent's arrival, and I decided to play around with the black and white function on my camera. Not much editing, levels, cropped, and resized, pretty much straight from the camera. I decided to post after reading up and realizing this picture kind of fits the golden rule which all photographers should know.