four twenty five was eight days ago

originally uploaded by billaday.

My goal with the photo-a-day project is to shoot (at least) one photo every day. I'm still going strong on the shooting part. The tough part is geotagging, editing, sorting, uploading, and blogging them. The internet at home has been painfully slow and intermittent. Translation: from what little free time I've had, it's been eight days since my last photo-a-day post.

On to the photo... I don't know what color this is. Blue? Purple? In Photoshop, I working in lab mode, and made it blue. When I converted back to rgb, it turned purple. Depending on the program I open it in (Preview, Finder, Photoshop, HoudahGeo, or Safari), the color looks different. Any Photoshop help here would be great.

Year 3, Day 136

Blue in Orange

originally uploaded by billaday.

The color of the windows changed depending on the angle they were at. Only this side of the building had the alternating blue and gray rows of windows.

If it wasn't for Zel's photostream, this scene never would have caught my eye. He's a big influence.

Year 3, Day 135

Geneva swings

originally uploaded by billaday.

I've always liked these types of shots, and have wanted to take one for a while. My original plan was to have my friend swing his daughter around, and I'd put my dSLR where his shoulder is. Then, I could get fine tune the composition, aperture, exposure, etc.

Here is what really happened:
Geneva kept trying to climb up and down the stairs. Up and down. Up and down. So, to avoid having her inevitably fall, I distracted her. She asked me to swing her, so I did. I reached into my pocked and grabbed my point-and-shoot (Canon SD870 IS). I was careful to not drop her, but knew that I may drop (and step on) my camera. I was only cupping it with my palm and one finger on the shutter. I'm surprised I could even push the shutter button. So I swung her around and snapped three shots. One had her looking away, one had a blurry face, and one was awesome.

Interestingly enough, I took what I learned from a blurry grass shot of my dog. I was able to get a good shot in only three tries here; with my dog, I took 40 pictures to get one good one. I guess I really am learning about photography, and getting better (or at least faster) at taking shots.

Year 3, Day 134

slow twitch muscle fiber

originally uploaded by billaday.

So, I just discovered that my motorcycle and gas station photo made it onto Explore. (If you don't know about Explore, that means it's listed among the 500 photographs chosen each day for the Flickr Explore page.) Thanks are in order to all the attention, comments, faves, and support from Flickr friends.

Here is a slideshow of my Explored Flickr photos.

Year 3, Day 133

put a cork in it

originally uploaded by billaday.

Cork is an interesting thing. I would not have thought to shove a piece of tree into a bottle to help it last. Apparently, there is a cork shortage in the wine world. Some day, there won't be corks in wine bottles. I might as well capture the iconic keeper of the wine while I can.

Year 3, Day 132

the low end is the heart of the band

originally uploaded by billaday.

This photo is a good illustration of why I love the photo-a-day project...

It was 9pm, and I hadn't bothered to take any decent photos. I was getting tired, and would have much rather vegged out and watched TV, but I knew that I had not taken a good photo yet.

So, I begrudgingly took out my D70s and my SB600 speedlight (strobist: speedlight mounted, TTL mode, 1/60 shutter). I knew what shot I wanted to take (which sometimes is most of the battle for a photo-a-day shot)-the day before, my eye caught an angle of the bass when I was setting it down. Rather than take a photo with my point-and-shoot, I waited until I could get my f1.4 lens to shoot. Before shooting, or even taking out my bass, I decided to take 5 shots, then go back to relaxing. As I knew it would, 5 shots turned into 40, and I got a couple great photos of the tuning keys on my bass guitar. I like the bokeh (shallow depth of field) in this shot.

Year 3, Day 131

The Lord looked down from heaven on the children of men

originally uploaded by billaday.

Isabelle was trying to get the kids to mellow out, so she suggested they pretend to sleep (on the hot, hot pavement). They loved it, but didn't lay down much.

Year 3, Day 130