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.