Day 313: Best Friends

This picture is a portrait of one of my favorite stuffed animal friends as a small child. I'm pretty sure I spent 80% of my very young developmental years with this guy. His name is Echo, and as you can see he's a dolphin. His dad, whom I adopted about a year after I got him at the same chocolate shop in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, is an Orca, also known as a Killer Whale, who's name I do not think was ever assigned. Anyway, I figured I'd just get a good picture of a fond childhood memory for today.

Day 312: Needless to Say, I was Stripes

Haha. I kinda just had this idea spontaneously as I was shooting yesterday's picture. I think I captured the idea pretty well. Basically skunking someone, but with just one pocket. That would be very cool. Oh, and thanks to Trevor for the title.

Day 311: Play the rainbow

Yes people, these are pool balls. I REALLY seem to like photographing billiards of late. What can I say, nothing like spheres of color and a little wireless lighting to bring out the creativity. It's just a pain to get these things aligned. This is my favorite shot from today. I'm really starting to like bouncing flash off the ceiling more often. It's a great defuser.

Not to sound too completely vain, but I really think this is one of my best shots all year. It's very... well it kinda leads the eye down the row I guess. Definitely a favorite out of the recent pictures.

Day 310: Miniature Mini Cooper

This is the close up more-detailed shot of yesterday's subject. I didn't take a picture today. Darn School. This'll do tho!

Day 309: Mini Cooper

I think I'm getting carried away with these simple black (and sometimes white) backgrounds... It's a little over the top, but I'm having fun experimenting with my flash. This is a Mini Cooper remote-control model sitting on a stool. I very well-lit stool I might add, which looks a bit like some sort of rained-on cobblestone street in London. At least, that's what I'd like you to imagine.

I got the Mini Cooper for some holiday a few years ago, the remote for it is actually a wrist watch, very James Bond.

Day 308: Auditory Enjoyment Providers

Yup, that's short for "headphones"
Anyway these are my iPod/iPhone headphones. Most of you don't know this but I have them on me almost every day, along with my iPhone, Wallet, Chap Stick, and occasionally a few quarters... Odd I know, but that's my daily set up. So this was my attempt at some more abstractness with one of most people's every day accessories. Maybe a little bit of a comment on society as well, but I'm not one to talk there ;)

Day 307: FireFox

I'm sorry. That's probably a really cliché title, considering it's what 51% of you are probably using, but it fits right?

Anyway, I was out joyriding around my neighborhood today when I saw this guy walking along one of the roads, unfortunately I was too stupid to think ahead and bring my camera with me, so I ended up having to pretty much race home, grab my camera, and race back out to find him. Luckily enough I did, but most of the pictures turned out blurry because it was nearing the end of daylight hours and I was too thoughtless to crank up my ISO speed I guess... I still like the picture :)

Day 306: Welcome to my Humble Abode

Oddly enough, the first time I recall hearing that phrase was in one of the early Lara Croft: Tomb Raider video games...

Anyway, this is a mouse...er...maybe rat... that Mom found in our garage trashcan today. I spend an hour or so trying to take his picture and feed him some cheese and bread crumbs. He wasn't much for eating so I left him out in the field once I was done. Didn't have the heart to make him spend the night in the trash can I guess... Anyway, some of you may find the picture revolting... Or if you're really scared of mice you may just scream and fall out of your chair, but I thought he was pretty cute.

Day 305: Over the Hill

...and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go! ..wait. wrong song... sorry

Anyway, Today of all days is my own fathers 53rd birthday? Can you believe it? I know. Crazy. This was his cake. I know it's not very artistic, but to be honest I was a lot more focused on eating it than on photographing it at the time.

Day 304: 3 Laws to Rule them All

Actually, I believe that's not how Newton put it, but that's pretty much what they do. This is a Newton's Cradle, and it demonstrates some of those laws which I'm a little reluctant to describe at 1:48 AM.... So I'll leave that up to Wikipedia! (It's a reliable source! Take it from me, and tell you're school librarian to stop with the misinformation, because you know she's just trying to make things harder) Note the cool animation that shows you what exactly this cool contraption does. Te be honest with you all, I'd wanted one of these my whole life up until I got this one. I really don't know where I got it from though, and unfortunately it's a very cheap unbalanced one too. But it works... sometimes, and everyone knows untangling these things is half the fun right?

My fondest memory of the Newton's Cradle is that it was seen in the intro-music-scene to one of my favorite childhood shows, Popular Mechanics for Kids, or PMK for short :)

Be quiet. I know I was am a nerd.

Day 303: Whichever way you put it, it's the same!

303 is such a wonderfully reversible number. I actually typed it backwards in the title, but you can't tell can you!?

Moving on, this picture is of ice. I took the ice bin out of our fridge, ran some cold water over most of it in a light spray to get it to stick, and was able to lift this massive chunk out. I then took it downstairs and proceeded to practice my creative-lighting technique :)

Day 302: Blazing Part two

How fitting that part two is on Day three-oh-TWO.

This whole thing works because when you break a bulb's outer casing off it burns out a lot faster. Filaments oxidize as they burn, and become weaker. To combat this there are special gases in each bulb that slow the filament's degradation. When you remove the casing, by the methods which I detailed yesterday, it just gets really old really fast, and basically burns out in about a second or maybe two depending on the thickness of the filament, which is directly proportional to the wattage of the bulb. There ya go, this science lesson brought to you by SM Photography. Thanks for tuning in, and make sure to check back next week for a special editorial piece we call "Why is Steve so behind on his blog?"

Day 301: Blazing Ideas

I actually googled "fire cliches" for that title. I'm loosing my edge I think.

Ok, so here's how this works. Disclaimer: I say "you" in the upcoming instructions to refer to the experimenter. Please do not take this to mean you should try this at home, I am a trai-...er...well-studied professional, and you're not. So don't do it.
Here goes:
You take pliers and squeeze the glass nearest the metal part of the bulb, preferably in a plastic bag. It'll implode and you'll get glass everywhere if you're not careful. Then put the base, with filament hopefully in tact (if not try, try again). Then take you're power strip and flip it on and if you've hooked everything up logically, the light should flip on and you can go off taking as many pictures as possible in your one second. If you have a slower camera, or if you want to try something different, I have been told that if you flip the power on and off very fast and take the picture some time in that process or shortly thereafter, you will be able to see the filament better, and the smoke will be prettier. I think it's all about luck and timing in terms of the smoke, but you can find out for yourself. By that I mean, "please don't tell anyone I was the one who gave you this idea, and for gosh sakes don't set your house aflame."

The reason today and tomorrow's pictures have more visible filaments is because they were taken as the filament burnt out and broke.

Day 300: It's Back

Wow. My third Century mark! That's what the title was referring to, how the century is back...of course I completely spaced and did nothing special for it. Great. Well here's that other bulb picture I referred to two days back. This was my second choice for what I planned to enter in the challenge. I checked with Maddie and Trevor, and I think they both said this one, but I went with the other anyway, which you can see here. It secured my highest score yet on DPChallenge, and got 21st place in the challenge, which is also an accomplishment in a competition of 105 other photographers from all over the world, so I'm quite happy my efforts payed off. I'd encourage other photographers to join in the fun of DPChallenge, it's a great way to find inspiration during those times when you just can't think of what to photograph.

Day 299: Betrothal Band

That means wedding ring in "Alliteration," which is a language English teachers like to quiz you over on a final exam that was just stupid. Wait, I digress.

This is my mother's wedding ring to be quite specific, and she loaned it to me for the "Elements of the Periodic Table" challenge on DPChallenge.com, which was very generous of her. Anyway, my idea of fading into the background for the ring did in fact work out, but because I had to use my one light source for the background, I had nothing to light the front of the diamond with to make it sparkle, which gives the image a very unique and uncharacteristic flat, un-shiny diamond feel. It's still pretty though. I cranked up the contrast to get as much life as I could manage with out damaging the picture too badly. It didn't work.

Day 298: A Bright Idea

That's a pretty predictable title huh? And it's punny too! Well, anyway, around this time in good 'ol November, I got to thinking about the fact that I've had a DPChallenge.com pro account all year, and haven't used it much. So I looked at the challenges available and whadya know, a smoke themed challenge in progress. So I whipped out my trusty lamp, power strip, and boxes of various cheap $1.89 per set of four 100 watt light bulbs and got to work! It's a method I'll explain fully later, but for now this picture was taken with the original clear bulb from the lamp still in-tact. It's a little dusty because the bulb is some years old now, but it made for a very cool picture with the help of my trusty off-camera flash...

Day 297: A Big Bite

This is actually a pretty small bite, out of a Lunchables burger, but if I hadn't told you that you would have had to think that up all on your own. Which you never could have done because this picture kind of sort of looks like a normal sized burger! Take note of the hour I'm writing this: 1:02 AM

I'm getting a little loopy. I've done far too much sifting and editing today.

Day 296: On a Pedestal

I'm having a lot of fun with light lately. This was an experiment in having a big diffuser off to the side and playing with angles and odd shapes... it was kind fun, but didn't exactly turn out as I had planned. Of course, when does that ever happen with photography?

Day 295: Chipotle Sack

That's a pretty self explanatory name, and to start my updating process off, that's just what this picture is. It's a Chipotle sack, in exquisite detail! Check out the full view and be amazed.

So here's the deal, my updating begins now, and to be quite honest with you all, I missed 13 out of the last 54 days. Thankfully some days I took extra subjects because I knew I was behind, but that only brought the missing-count to 8 days. So today, the 23rd of December, so near to Christmas, I went all-out. I took all eight POTD's today... so I'm fairly tired, but they turned out well. I'm not going to let you know which ones they are... except for this one of course. So everything will be perfectly normal henceforth. I look forward to posting more as I get more of my act together tonight and tomorrow.

Day 294: Happy Reformation Day!

Thank the good Lord! I am finally caught up! I've been over a month behind in recent day's because of homework, but I have caught up and shall not again fall behind! I'm so near the end of my project, I can't stop now :D

This was taken at the bonfire, I was again too busy to take pictures today. I went Trick-or-Treat-ing (NO! I'm not too old for that. Get with the times people) with Jordan, Tali, and Abi and we had a blast. It was hilarious. Over the course of the night we:
1. got an M80 thrown at us from a rooftop.
2. Sang "Happy Birthday" "Oh When the Saints" and "Silent Night" countless times and even said "Happy Reformation Day" rather than the usual "Trick-or-Treat!"
3. Nearly got run over by a Jeep going in reverse.
4. Frightened the populous in general with our crazy schemes.
5. Switched "McCain * Palin" and "Obama/Biden" signs which were on opposite sides of the street. That should result in some upset neighbors by tomorrow :D
6. Walked probably more than 3 miles over the course of our journey.
7. Got a freakin' huge load of candy.

The picture of course has nothing to do with any of it because I got 0 good pictures of it all. I would still recommend the full view however. It's a very cool fire picture.

Day 293: Gates Of Hell

This was also taken in the bonfire, I've been really busy this week because Wednesday was a moodle day, so there was no time for picture-taking. I had about 10 hours of homework that day. Fun stuff.

Anyway, this picture in particular reminded me of a burning gate, and where else would you find one of those but hell? Hence, the title. Haha

And just for good measure, and because I can: Matthew 16:18 "And I say also to you, That you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Day 292: Hungry Inferno

This was taken at the bonfire Tuesday night. I'm trying to sort out which days are which here, so bare with me. I'm about to finally catch up (it's the 1st of November when I post this.) Anyway, in past years I've had fairly incapable cameras at the bonfire, and I focused on the overall fire, and of course friend pictures. This year I focused on friend pictures, but there weren't many people there so I was left with a lot of time for just fire photography. Most of the time I had my 50mm lens on due to the whole low light situation, so my zoom level was fixed and most of the fire pictures turned out somewhere kind of close up. This resulted in some pretty cool detail in the pictures, and this one was taken right when a new fence-like piece of wood was thrown on. Very cool through-the-fence patterns going on, and at f/1.8 the depth of field is pretty cool too.

Day 291: Favorite Sunset

As I said yesterday, yesterday's sunset was really extra-unique. It had these different stages and it looked different every 15 minutes. The actual red and orange and pink tones hung around for about 30 minutes though, so it lasted an unusually long time compared to a typical sunset.

I'm loving the fact that my Day names are getting less and less creative. I'll try to think harder next time. haha

Day 290: Fire Sword

This picture of a sunset (I couldn't control myself, I like sunset pictures, what can I say...) reminds me very much of a fiery sword. Tonight's was a very unique sunset, it went through about 5 unique stages. Tomorrow's picture will show another part of it.

Day 289: Trails in Wood

Today Yesterday (I think I'm off by a day... for the last 2 pictures. That's ok though) I went on a 3-4 hour tour of pretty much every Tourist spot in all of Garden of the Gods, plus a little hike off into the side trails. Elisabeth and I both had nothing to do with our Saturday, so we decided hanging out at GoG with our cameras and taking pictures might by fun. I'm pretty sure I got something around 600 pictures, and I had a blast.

Day 288: Champagne-Colored Sky

This is the sky just before another Colorado sunset. I'm still amazed by how often we get such spectacular sunsets. I'm probably boring everyone with so many sunset pictures. I'll stop :P

Day 287: Computer Parts

Dad had me take pictures today for a project that he's been working on which he is submitting to a contest. I got distracted for a little while and went off taking macro pictures of his work. What you see here is a Parallax Propeller chip. It has eight 80-something MHz processors in one chip, and is thus pretty powerful for most micro-controller type applications. Not that any of you know what that means...

Day 286: Spooky Forest

This was also taken at Fairish. It's really a great place for photography, assuming you have a military ID and can get in... This part of the road kind of reminded me of middle earth. you'd have to see the rest of it. It was very spooky. Yeah. Cool stuff.

Day 285: Inverted Reflections

I know how well Day 238 went over with all of my blog followers, so I decided to try to repeat the feat. I think this one is different enough that you should all like it. If nothing else it's certainly an intriguing perspective no?

Day 284: Reflectionary

Today I drove out to woodland park with my mother. We were originally going to see the trees, but were kind of a week or two late. It seemed all the leaves were gone. Then she had the idea to go visit Fairish. It's a military camp ground type place that has 3 beautiful lakes. I really like the reflections in such still lakes. It's cool how much detail you can see in the reflection.

Day 283: Orb of Sun

This was a cool pattern I saw in the clouds just before the sunset yesterday. I really like the shape of the burst of light the sun made in the clouds. It reminds me of a mirage you might see in the desert.

Day 282: Sunset Gradient

This is a sunset, as seen zoomed in from the 3-story-tall rock in our back yard. Have I mentioned how much I love Colorado sunsets?

Day 281: Fallen Leaves

This was taken in a little grassy area of our school parking lot after school today. it's been pretty much buried in leaves over the last few days, and I figured I'd get a picture. It's where we usually eat lunch, until recently because of the cold.

Day 280: Game Ball

This is a football. The picture was taken at the Powder Puff game yesterday. My friends tried to convince me this would be a cool picture, and so to humor them I've posted it. I edited it to be a bit more yellow and intense than it would be normally, just trying something different.

Day 279: Junior Year

Today was the powder puff game! We won! again. Our class has won the powder puff games annually since freshman year, and we are the only class in the history of our school to have made it 3 and 0 all the way to junior year. I'm sure we'll have no problem defeating the juniors as seniors next year. Buahaha!

Anyway, this was our teams flag at the game. I brought my camera and got some pretty cool action shots. Let me tell you, that was one intense game of flag-football.

Day 278: American Icon of Fruit

This is the new Apple store in Colorado Springs. I stopped by to check out the new mac books, and they are fantabulous. Anyway, being the nerd I am, I had to get a picture. I was in a hurry though, so I didn't really focus on quality or composition... oh well. I think it turned out ok...

Day 277: American Passtime

This was behind out mailbox. I took this near the end of my little jaunt with mother. It looks pretty bashed up, and unfortunately I couldn't manage to get a better picture of it that wasn't blurry. Haha, that's my luck.

Day 276: Magical Plant

This is a very confusing plant. It doesn't seem natural. Anyway, mother dear and I took a walk around our neighbor hood today and really had a blast. It was cool to get some pictures of things we see every day on our various driving trips, and getting pictures of it all was even better. Sometimes we take the places we live in too much for granted. Example A: I never would have noticed how odd this plant is driving by, but while walking it really stood out. pretty awesome.

Day 275: I Kill You!

This picture reminds me very much of Jeff Dunham's Achmed the Dead Terrorist for some reason. Anyway, this is Gabe. I did his family portraits a while back and probably forgot to mention it here. This is his angry face, and it also evokes the feeling of a Kung Foo master who wants to kill you. I edited his eye to be a little more saturated and bright, then desaturated the rest. I like the effect it caused.

Day 274: The Back Yard Leaves

This is my back yard. It's full of scrub oaks. Pretty fun stuff, especially in Autumn. I have so many memories of running through the variable forest of scrub oak trees playing with water guns or just chasing my friends back in the elementary school days. I do like my back yard :D Good times.

Day 273: Old School

I hung out with Elisa for 2 hours before the game today. We had a blast messing around outside of the school with Brandon, and later on we went and took pictures in the baseball field near the football field where our team would be playing. We had a blast and it was a pretty cool adventure overall that ended when we met up with a bunch of others at the tailgate party before the game. These are her shoes, and this was taken in the aforementioned baseball field. I tried to edit it to look a little yellowish-red and over exposed to give it an older-camera/retro feel. I really like it, it's certainly a change from my usual over-saturated and well white-balanced color pictures.

Day 272: Up Close and Personal

This is a macro picture of a blade of grass on our school lawn... Taken with my close-up filters. This was actually captured on the 10th... which hasn't happened yet... SShhh! don't tell anybody I can time travel. Wait! You too can time travel. Let's break all the rules and give you a link to the future: Day 273!

Day 271: Orb of Lush Grassyness

Wow. That was a failed attempt at a synonym for "green" Oh well...

This was taken back on the 4th or "Day 267" as we call it around here. I went up to Denver to help out with the Colorado First Lego League Rookie Booster with Dad. We worked on a presentation the day before hand and gave said 50-minute presentation 3 times that day. It was a lot of fun and we got to "boost" the rookie's knowledge of programming with the LEGO NXT Mindstorms system. Anyway, as it turns out our little presentation room was right next to the space exhibit which has very interesting overhead lighting. This is one of those "interesting" lights.

Day 270: Flares and Rays

This is another beautiful Colorado sunset. I suppose this is what sunsets look like when there aren't many clouds to participate in the festivities.

Day 269: Car Paint

This is the rather unappealing car foam-stuff Kelsey used to decorate her car... It says "Marry Me John Horton" and has hearts all over it (I'll admit to being a little offended by all that as her homecoming date ;) but I got over it... haha) and frankly I think she's left it on so long that she stands no hope of ever getting it off now :P This is one of said hearts, and the blue artistic flame-looking thing off to the left is the reflection of my camera flash.

Day 268: HomeComing 2008

This is me. Well, obviously not my face. Anyway, this is how I was dressed for homecoming... My tie matched Kelsey's dress nearly perfectly, which is pretty good I suppose seeing as the only description of her dress I had received was "it's kinda green/turquoise" :D I think it's kind of narcissistic of me to post a picture of only myself for homecoming, but I try not to post faces on the internet too openly, which means a picture of the two of us wouldn't do. I'm sure she would be offended if i cut off our heads too :P

Day 267: Lake reflections

I hung out with Rach for about two hours before Ice Skating today. I would have like to have taken more pictures, but as it turns out there apparently wasn't much to photograph at 5PM on a cloudy day to be honest. Other than this lake, of course. This happens to be the same lake pictured in Day 238 by the way, and it turns out it's just as reflective on a severely cloudy day! haha

Day 266: Jumbo Jet

From what my dad has told me, this is one of the biggest jets the US Air Force imploys in it's service, and for that matter likely one of the biggest in the world. It's the replacement for the C5 Galaxy, which you would know about if you happened to be an Air Traffic Controller at a USAF base in Britain in the 70's like my father was. Go dad! So we were eating breakfast out on the back deck, and this thing flew over about 5 times. Luckily by the fifth time around, I was ready with my camera. This was taken at 135mm zoom level, and cropped to 100% (look at the full size) but you can pretty much see how big this jet was, and on top of that it was at a pretty high altitude.

Day 265: Golf with Leaves

A few friends and I went golfing today, We had a fantastic time. Elisa and I pretty much took pictures the whole time. There was barely room for golfing between all the shutter sounds. It was so much fun. This is one of the less-silly more-artsy pictures I got today.

Day 264: Leaves Fall

This is one of the beautiful color-changing sets of leaves in our back yard. You just can't beat a back yard full of Scrub Oak's in Autumn. Gorgeous colors.