Stern Views

This week really flew by, and one of the highlights was seeing my Flickr account really soar with visits. I’m breaking the rules of the 365 a bit and posting two photos from one day because the bonus photo was part of a set that brought in over 200 unique visitors to my Flickr account. I haven’t seen traffic like that before, or after, so I figured it would be good to commemorate that milestone here. Here are the photos from this week. Enjoy, and come back next Sunday for more.

10/19 : Photo omitted due to “rule breaking” mentioned above. It was a picture of a clock I have in my house, but it is a lot less interesting than I thought it would be.

10/20: Rust. Saw this post as I was getting into my car one evening after work and the colors of the rust really caught my eye.

10/20/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 200 | 1/800 exp.

10/21: Fall leaves. I can’t stop taking pictures of the colors of the fall season. I’m a little obsessed but its only once per year and in Kansas it only happens for a short time, so you’ll just have to deal…

10/21/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 200 | 1/250 exp.

10/22: Maya Smiling. My little dog Maya has been on this blog a couple times and it is her turn once again to be featured. As I was sitting in my office one night she walked by and then looked at me with this great smile on her face. I was messing around with my camera so I was lucky to get this shot of her before she meandered back to the living room.

10/22/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 800 | 1/40 | Flash

10/22: Bonus Photo. After taking this picture of Maya I decided I wasn’t done photographing for that day and I ended up grabbing a flashlight, a tripod, and then proceeded to turn off all of the lights in my office and do some light painting. I uploaded the results to Flickr and the next day I had over 200 views to my account. Here’s to gimmicky photos doing really well!

10/22/09 | Nikon D50 | 24mm | f/4 | ISO 400 | 5 sec. exp.

10/23: Us. My parents bought us this lawn art from the Garden Deva series of artwork by  Lisa Regan. Because we live in a rental house, Amelia and I have decided that it will stay inside for now until we have a more permanent place to put it.

10/23/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/40 exp. | Flash

10/24: One Way. One of my favorite features about this photo is the distribution of the vine leaves in the frame. To the immediate right of the one way sign the wall was completely full of vine leaves and then there was this one little line of them sort of coming out from the one way sign. It was my goal to create an effect almost as if the leaves were being pushed through the sign and forced to go “one way.”

10/24/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 200 | 1/2500 exp.

10/25: Old Pipe. I’m always fascinated by old buildings and their fixtures. This old pipe really caught my eye due to the paint job and the blazingly white “E” that has been painted on.

10/25/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 200 | 1/640 exp.

More photos will be posted Sunday. As usual, leave your feedback in the comments section, I look forward to the critique.

Not too much to say before the photos other than that I am in awe that I’m already 7 weeks in to this project. It has gone by so fast and I’ve had a lot of fun taking more and more photos. This week there are a lot more photos that were not taken at my house…I’m getting out a bit more which is good for my photographic eye.

10/12: Cuddling Dogs. Sometimes when I go home for lunch I have a really hard time convincing myself to go back to work, here are 2 reasons for that….

10/12/09 | iPhone 3G | f/2.8 | Edited w/ Best Camera

10/13: Warmth. The temperatures have only gotten colder and the need for space heaters has risen. We have this one as a permanent fixture in our bedroom.

10/13/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/40 exp. | Flash

10/14: Pottery. My sister-in-law is a very talented artist and she made this piece a few years ago. It was one of her “throw-away” pieces (I have no idea why) and I have it in one of the cubbies of my desk.

10/14/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/40 exp | Flash

10/15: Stuck. I was in Bonner Springs, KS doing some work at one of my company’s properties. Walking back to my car after finishing up I noticed this bright piece of gum stuck on the wall and thought it would make an interesting focal point for a photo.

10/15/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8| ISO 200 | 1/1250 exp.

10/16: MuteMath. Saw MuteMath in concert along with As Tall As Lions at the Beaumont Club in KC. It was an awesome show that exceeded all of my expectations.

10/16/09 | iPhone 3G | f/2.8 | Edited w/ Best Camera

10/17: Daisy. There’s a park close to my house that has really beautiful flowers still growing. Walking through the park I noticed this single daisy sticking up out of the ground cover. It really caught my eye because the flowers around it are yellow, red, purple, etc. and here’s this bright white flower sticking out amongst the “crowd.”

10/17/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/8 | ISO 200 | 1/15 exp.

10/18: Pruned. Not much to say about this photo other than that this particular branch which has been pruned caught my eye today.

10/18/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 200 | 1/250 exp.

Again, please leave critiques in the comments section, I really appreciate the feedback. Watch for more photos next Sunday.

This week represents a lot of work with my flash. Most of the photos are also objects around my house, because I was super busy with school and work and did not grant myself enough time to get out and take photos. I have to say, though, that I’ve enjoyed the challenge of making what I see everyday interesting. If nothing else, this week has taught me about the many opportunities I have for taking pictures wherever I am.

10/5: Blue Dino. I saw one of my dog’s toys laying on the floor and decided that with some interesting lighting effect I could turn it into a neat photograph. I think this is what kickstarted the obsession with off-camera flash the rest of the week…

10/5/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/80 exp | Off-camera Flash

10/6: Rope. Another dog toy, another off-camera flash lighting effect.

10/6/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/40 exp. | Off-camera Flash

10/7: Security. This week I bought an external hard drive so that I could back up the data on my two computers at the house. I have Macintosh computers so backups are very easy using the built in Time Machine software. I bought a 1TB MyBook Home Edition from Western Digital which is more than I’ll probably ever need. If you don’t already backup your data regularly, I will humbly suggest that you consider making the $100 investment of an external hard drive. $100 is a lot less to pay than the thousands it would cost to recover your digital music/photo/etc. collection, right?

10/7/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/60 exp | Off-camera Flash

10/8: Coffee. I love coffee, am a coffee snob, so what better an every day object to photograph than coffee beans?

10/8/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/60 exp | Off-camera Flash

10/9: Munny. I have this vinyl figure called a Munny that I haven’t used yet and I was distracted from doing my homework. With my camera in hand I looked around my office for things to photograph and saw my Munny figurine and decided to play around with light and the Munny.

10/9/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 200 | 1/500 exp | Off-camera Flash

10/10: Self Portrait. Using my table-top tripod, laying on the ground, I lined up this shot with the mirror drive doors of my G4 and captured this “self portrait.”

10/10/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 200 | 0.4 exp

10/11: Leaves. I love fall weather but would rather not deal with the product of fall…leaves off the trees and in my yard. Last year Amelia and I picked up roughly 60-70 bags worth of leaves from the 5 trees that we’ve been blessed with in our yard. Here’s to another season of raking!

10/11/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 200 | 1/640 exp.

Thanks for taking some time to look at the photos. I really appreciate the feedback that I’ve had over the past couple of weeks and would love to hear more. Come back next Sunday for more.

Autumn is upon us in full effect and the weather is turning much cooler. We’re in the 60/40 weather battle (that’s degrees, folks) which makes wanting to work on cleaning up the yard a testament of will. This, however, is some of my favorite weather and one of my favorite times of year. Unfortunately it goes quick so I have to enjoy it while it lasts. And of course, take more pictures of the turning leaves. Enjoy the photos and come back next Sunday for more.

9/28: Maya, sleeping. I love my dogs, as you may have guessed. Here’s a photo of Maya, lazily sleeping upon the chair in our living room.

9/28/09 | iPhone 3G | f/2.8 | edited in Best Camera

9/29: Bouquet. One of our friends gave Amelia some flowers in honor of the 3 yr. anniversary of her dad’s passing. This photo highlights the stargazer lily which was part of the bouquet.

9/29/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/60 exp.

9/30: Relief. Amelia came down with a cold and bought a large variety of relief options to medicate herself. I gathered all of them up and made a “still life” of sorts for this image.

9/30/09 | Nikon D50 | 35mm | f/4.8 | ISO 400 | 1/125 exp | Flash Used

10/1: Beer. It had been a while since I had a beer, and I thought after a long couple days and as a reward for getting homework done, I would treat myself. It was delicious.

10/1/09 | iPhone 3G | f/2.8 | Edited with Best Camera

10/2: Coffee. Needed coffee at the house and picked up this bag of Ethiopian Mocha Yirgacheffe beans. It made for a wonderful air freshener in my car.

10/2/09 | iPhone 3G | f/2.8 | Edited with Best Camera

10/3: Leaves. As I mentioned above the leaves are turning colors and they are absolutely beautiful right now. Such great colors exhibited by nothing else than nature. Love it.

10/3/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/1600 exp.

10/4: Danger. I was walking around the backyard and noticed the box where the electricity cables go into the receiving box on the back of our house. I saw the “Danger: 90 Volts” tag and was trying to figure out a good way to capture its texture and make it interesting.

10/4/09 | Nikon D50 | 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 400 | 1/1250 exp.

That’s all for this week, come back next Sunday for more. As always, I really appreciate critique so leave a comment if you so desire.