drip, drip

originally uploaded by billaday.

If you're thinking of starting a photo-a-day project and you're really busy, read on. If not, then don't.

I'm pretty busy, and I photo-a-day. Most days, I don't have time to spend an hour taking photos. Most days, I don't have a desire to take photos for an hour. Nearly every day, I don't have the desire to sort, delete, edit, and upload photos. So, I take photos of things when I have a free minute. Today, I got the my car washed at the gas station, and took a picture of the windshield.

Year 3, Day 173

this shot socks

originally uploaded by billaday.

Sorry for the bad pun with the title. I'm busy, and I need to do more laundry.

Year 3, Day 172

Lactase

originally uploaded by billaday.

Ah, Lactaid. You give me the power to digest dairy. You are the superhero of enzymes.

Year 3, Day 171

a trip to the Mann Chinese

originally uploaded by billaday.

I took Daniel to the Mann Chinese to see Terminator. He had never been to the Mann. Welcome to the club.

Year 3, Day 170

a thousand dances on an empty canvas

originally uploaded by billaday.

Not gonna say much about what this photo is, but I will suggest what it could be used for: album cover.

Year 3, Day 169

love the staff parking

originally uploaded by billaday.

I really like teaching at the college level. Among the myriad of reasons, great parking is definitely one of them. I get to park really close... for free. If you've ever had terrible parking, you know how great this can be. Love it.

Year 3, Day 168

painting our perfect home

originally uploaded by billaday.

We officially started house hunting. Since most houses have photos on the internet, I find myself not taking many pictures. Even though we aren't buying this house, we did look at it. And, as it turns out, it was the only photo I took. So to make this mediocre shot a bit better, I threw it into Photoshop and applied the Alien Skin Watercolor plug-in. Kinda cool. Definitely fun to create.

Year 3, Day 167

aye matey

originally uploaded by billaday.

After a few months, I finally used my Disneyland pass. I met up with my old friend Rob!, and we hit Pirates right away. Good times for sure.

Camera choice for the day:
When hanging out with friends, I almost always bring my point-and-shoot in my pocket. This time, I also brought my dSLR with my 50mm f1.4 lens. This setup is great cuz the lens is fixed (doesn't zoom), so it is pretty small and easy to carry around. Definitely glad I brought the fancier camera. I gotta do that more often.

Year 3, Day 166

a sidewalk lunch with Chris

originally uploaded by billaday.

I'm happy with how this shot of Chris came out. His cap, mixed with Downtown Oakland's atmosphere, led me to a more vintage processing. It fits his personality, too. Check out the shot large on black. You can see the halation (glow) and the grain nicely.

Year 3, Day 165

Congratulations Divine Master

originally uploaded by billaday.

Today Annie earned a masters in divinity.

I got a bit lucky with this shot. The graduate exit line got backed up and Annie stopped right in front of me. Although... I was prepared for this shot. By testing my flash on graduates leaving earlier, I made sure I had the right amount of flash thrown at her. Luck? Talent? I once heard a Samuel Goldwyn quote:
The harder I work, the luckier I get."

And I think that I have to call my little sister O Divine Master before addressing her now. ;)

Year 3, Day 164

a formal rose

originally uploaded by billaday.

Getting ready for Annie's graduation up in Berkeley. I might need a tie.

Year 3, Day 163

Welcome to our Deep Blue Sea

originally uploaded by billaday.

This photo is a big reason why you haven't seen many photo-a-day updates lately. Open House in kindergarten is crazy! Do you see the underwater sea we created?

Year 3, Day 162

the long and winding (and distorted) road

originally uploaded by billaday.

I've been teaching a class through University of La Verne. It's not in La Verne, though, it's in Whittier. This has been my first time at Rio Hondo College. Aside from the large amounts of hills, I noticed that there is a lot of thick decorative glass. Here's what it looks like at night.

Year 3, Day 161

meteorite storm

originally uploaded by billaday.

Prepare for impact.

Year 3, Day 160

battle of the cupcake

originally uploaded by billaday.

I see one cupcake and two people. I don't remember who got to eat it.

Year 3, Day 159

rear view mirrors

originally uploaded by billaday.

View On Black, and watch where you're driving.

Year 3, Day 158

digital projection is a beautiful thing

originally uploaded by billaday.

We have a new movie theater: AMC Glendora. Every theater has digital projection. That means that the picture never has scratches on it. It is the best suburban movie theater I've been to yet. Disclaimer: real movie theaters, like the Mann Chinese, are still far better.

Year 3, Day 157

inside the gears of a clock tower

originally uploaded by billaday.

Take a guess at what this is... then scroll down.

Before I tell you, lemme tell you why I like my Canon point-and-shoot. I can bring it with me everywhere I go. I can get very close to objects. The lens is small, so it can squeeze into tight spaces.

This is the inside of a running electricity meter. It's an 1/8 sec. exposure, so enough light got in, but the gears aren't blurred.

This is another shot that never would have been if it weren't for the photo-a-day project. It was late at night, and I hadn't taken a (remotely) interesting photo all day. I was looking for a late night shot, and stumbled upon this. Kinda cool.

Year 3, Day 156

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart

originally uploaded by billaday.

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
-Carl Jung

Year 3, Day 155

Stop ahead, behind, and under ahead

originally uploaded by billaday.

This is a weird road. This is not photoshopped. It is rotated 180 degrees.

Year 3, Day 154

The Rosedale Project: a fence without homes

originally uploaded by billaday.

Before beginning my photo-a-day project three years ago, I was thinking of photo projects. I thought of documenting the Rosedale housing development, from start to finish. The big problem was that, at the time, I only have a film camera, so it was expensive to take pictures. Inevitably, I missed a couple important steps in the demolition of the Monrovia Nursery to make room for houses. I still drive through the "new" development and marvel at how much uglier houses are than flowers. Ironically, the development of this land has frozen, since nobody wants to buy expensive houses in Glendora.

My original goal with this shot was to capture downtown Los Angeles from afar. As I moved around looking for a good perspective (and avoiding power lines), I became increasingly interested in this fence. As it turns out, the silhouette of the fence leading into the foothills was the best capture today.

This looks nice large on black. You can see the details as the fence's silhouette fades into the foothill's silhouette. Thanks Photoshop Curves.

Year 3, Day 153

drive thru view of the Orange Bang dispenser

originally uploaded by billaday.

El Amigo is one of the places. So much character throughout the restaurant. If you're ever around, go get some rice and machaca tacos. Yum.

Year 3, Day 152

small dog, big head

originally uploaded by billaday.

Parking in Old Town Pasadena can be challenging, at best. The upside to terrible parking is being around to find shots like this (while driving around, and around).

Year 3, Day 151

A ride along the San Gabriel Riverbed Trail

originally uploaded by billaday.

My father-in-law and I rode our bikes from the Santa Fe Dam to Seal Beach. It was an amazing 30 mile ride along the San Gabriel Riverbed. Check out the map I made of the ride. Very cool ride.

Year 3, Day 150

smoked baby back ribs

originally uploaded by billaday.

We went out to celebrate. Despite the lack of funding for education in California, I have a teaching job next year! Fourth and fifth grade music, here I come.

Year 3, Day 149

follow the three blue lines as they travel through the frame

originally uploaded by billaday.

I'm gonna try to bring my dSLR with me more. I like the wide aperture. I'm also gonna try to keep up with uploading photo-a-day nightly.

Year 3, Day 148

pastel cassette deck mix tape

originally uploaded by billaday.

I aimed my point-and-shoot camera at a shadow, then at this easel.

Year 3, Day 147

giant green hose

originally uploaded by billaday.

Whatever could it be? Whatever it is, I like the whiteground in it.

Year 3, Day 146

from the earth to the moon

originally uploaded by billaday.

Prepare for blast off.

Year 3, Day 145

Gene

originally uploaded by billaday.

Gene rocks on percussion. Amazingly steady tempo, very tasty chops. Sometimes when I play bass, Gene is right next to me on percussion.

Two shots in one here. Good call? Should this remain two separate images? Does it work? I kinda like the story it tells. Lemme know your thoughts.

Year 3, Day 144

The 70s is alive and well

originally uploaded by billaday.

Here's Alex and his new, old bass. It's new to him, but old to us. For some reason, Fender made amazing bass guitars in the 1970s. Not before, not after. Here is one such guitar.

If you don't know Alex Balderston, go check out his tasty bass licks.

Year 3, Day 143

commerce building by night

originally uploaded by billaday.

I took a pretty cool shot of this by day back in December, zoomed in and cropped, and wanted to get a night shot of it. Fortunately, I just missed the light, so I was able to capture 14 one-second shots. I used about 11 of them. In Photoshop, I changed the layer properties to Lighten (new to CS3). It's similar to Screen, but keeps the sky from getting too bright.

Year 3, Day 142

high key parrot gradient

originally uploaded by billaday.

Any guesses on this shot? It's pretty abstract.

Here's a clue:
I used Photoshop's curves to modify the colors from a dark orange to a bright(er) yellow and green.

Year 3, Day 141

Let's Go Fishing

originally uploaded by billaday.

And with this ridiculous image, I now have 9,001 photos in my iPhoto library. A milestone perhaps.

This is a really boring math training, SB472. The only worthwhile part of the 5 day training was discovering this center for my kindergarten classroom. Students (or Jeanene, as seen here) "fish" using a magnetic hook. The fish have paper clips on them (so the magnet picks them up) and numbers on them (so they kids can add) .

Year 3, Day 140

closing the blinds on mediocrity

originally uploaded by billaday.

Reflections are all around us. Here's a building reflecting another building. Not sure why the security glass looks like curtains.

Year 3, Day 139

reflecting upon a time

originally uploaded by billaday.

I want to start a couple small sets/projects:
1. taco stands
2. bathrooms

It wasn't until I wrote them just now that I realized they could be related. There are not, however. Both of these places seem to have objects conducive to photography. They both tend to have vintage, outdated stuff, and more personality than given credit for.

Year 3, Day 138

one legged man on a bus bench

originally uploaded by billaday.

This man sitting on the bench caught my eye. He was sitting with his legs crossed, but it looks like there's just one leg.

Year 3, Day 137

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

old time gas station and a hand built motorcycle

originally uploaded by billaday.

I arrived early to a Pasadena appointment to give myself some time (ten minutes) to take some photos. After a brief photowalk, I was heading back to my car, and I passed a guy with a purple motorcycle. He got off the bike and took out a Nikon dSLR. He positioned his shiny motorcycle in front of an old-style gas station, and was planning to photograph his bike for a calendar. I asked if I could jump in, he obliged, and I snapped a few.

This was was taken with my Canon DS870is, which is a killer camera, but doesn't have a very wide aperture when you zoom. So, in Photoshop, I duplicated the layer, applied a gaussian blur (at 22 px), and masked out the bike and gas pump. I also applied a Color Stylizer filter using Nik Software's Color Efex Pro. Basically, it applies a sepia filter, and lets you fade in the color. You get way more control over colors and shadows with Nik, but that's the basic idea. Now (hopefully) it looks like it was shot with my f1.4 lens with a super old film.

Year 3, Day 129

Let me ask you a question, how do you feel about frilly toothpicks?

originally uploaded by billaday.

I'm for 'em! Well, this club is formed. Spread the news on menus nationwide.

Year 3, Day 128

Bob Tron and his green bowl

originally uploaded by billaday.

Remember the movie Tron? Remember how the characters from Tron used to be on the Peoplemover at Disneyland?

So, I think that if I was hanging out with those guys, this is what their diningware would look like. And, of course, the guy's name would be Bob. Bob Tron.

Year 3, Day 127

aerodynamic and warm

originally uploaded by billaday.

I started teaching with University of La Verne. It's a satellite course, so I'm teaching at Rio Hondo College in Whittier. I wanted to photo-a-day the building I teach in, but the light on my car just looked so cool. And by cool, I mean warm... warm colors (reds and yellows).

Year 3, Day 126

called out of retirement

originally uploaded by billaday.

Tires are expensive. We bought 4 recently... it's not as though you can buy just one tire. I suppose that's why there are place like this that sell 4 tires that are used. I went to Costco and got 4 new.

Year 3, Day 125

a moon made of diamonds

originally uploaded by billaday.

150 teacher and I sat in a room for 2 days waiting to see if we were going to get laid off. So far, 89 of us, including me, will not have jobs in August.

Year 3, Day 124