Only a couple photos left to go for  my year-long project!  I’m both a bit sad and a bit excited to be wrapping it all up.  With Christmas right around the corner, I figured it was about time for a holiday-inspired shot, so I set the camera up by our tree.  This is an HDR merged shot from three different photos again as I have done in the past.  I really like the way it brightens up the background, but the ornament is still nice and bright as well with out being blown out.  This was a frosted glass ornament with a blue light behind it.  Hope you have a great Holiday this year!

“Happy Holidays”

I decided to run out to Lake Sangchris this evening to go for some sunset pictures.  Plus, it seemed fitting that a place where I started off my photo project should also get included in the end of my photo project.  It was pretty cold out, so I didn’t stay out shooting too long, but I still got a decent set of pictures I liked.  This shot was at F/4 with a 1/25th exposure, and hey, I even remembered to set the ISO down to 100.  I only did a little post-processing on this which was basically a mild color saturation, just to make the setting sun’s colors pop a bit more.

“Sunset”

This one was an interesting set up.  It involved a dark empty closet, some paint cans, and my equipment.  It was fun playing around with different lighting angles, zooms, and camera settings.  This shot was taken at F3.5, 1/1000 shutter.  I used my remote trigger so I didn’t have to touch the camera.  The remote trigger also made it easier to blow out the candle as I pressed the button.  I ended up with over 170 shots, but ended up using this one because the smoke is lit the best and looked the coolest here.

“Extinguish”

This is a piece of art my Dad has hanging up in his house.  We were sitting around after Thanksgiving and the way he had it lit up caught my eye.  This piece originally laid flat on the wall, but he ended up offsetting it from the wall with some strategically placed styrofoam blocks, then lit it up with a track light.  It creates a neat shadow effect on it.  I used a f/8 aperture with a 1/25th shutter speed to underexpose the photo a bit.  I liked how it accented the spotlight on the piece and made the shadows look that much more dramatic.

“Shadows”

I couldn’t go my whole photo project with out  a picture of our dog, and with the weeks counting down quick, I decided to make today the day.  This is Bandit, our Morkie (part Maltese, part Yorkie).  He’s a very mild-mannered dog that my wife and I love with all our hearts.  Thanks for being so photogenic bud!

“Bandit”

I haven’t been to a Glenwood home game since I graduated ten years ago, but I decided I’d go to the game today since it was a playoff game, and I’d get to take some shots.  I used my 70-300mm lens for the whole game and shot from the upper half of the bleachers.  It was a mostly good vantage point, with the only downside being sometimes people in front of me got in my way and messed up a few shots, but over all, no big deal.  I ended up picking this shot because I like the lighting in it.  The day was mostly overcast, with the sun breaking through only a few times.  I liked the shadows made by the players in the late afternoon autumn sun.

“Playoff”

I was in Chicago earlier this week for work and we stayed at the Palmer House downtown.  It was a very nice hotel, and I found this in the elevator lobby.  From a little research online, this was an Elevator display panel from the 60’s.  I felt it was pretty neat looking, and a bit Art-Deco’ish, which I thought was cool.  It was a spur of the moment shot, but I really like it as it’s not something you see very often, and they definitely don’t make them like this any more.

“Selectomatic”

I decided to make this week an easy week, but also take a photo that had a story to it that I could share with you, and what better than one of our cats we rescued?  This big guy was one of our free cats we have taken in.  My wife has a soft spot for cats, which has sort of rubbed off on me.  Several years ago in the wee hours of the morning, my then girlfriend woke me up around 4am and put this skinny bag of bones gray kitty on the bed with me and told me to watch him, she had one more to get.  Since I was still waking up, I thought she was just messing with me.  We have another gray cat and that’s who I thought this was.  After I got my wits about me I could see this one was obviously not our’s.  The story goes she had been hearing a kitty crying outside all night.  She finally decided to go find it, and it was stuck up a tree.  Except it wasn’t the one she brought me, but instead a black kitty.  While she was trying to get the black kitty out of the tree, this gray one ran up to her as well.  So, she brought him in, and got the black one out of the tree as well.  We figured they were brothers since they appeared to be the same age, and they seemed to be hanging out together outside.  I told her we could call them Blackie and Grayie for the week or two it took to find them new homes.  I figured calling them by their color would not allow us to get too attached to them.

I was wrong.

All that being said though, these two kitties ended up being two of the best cats we own.  They’re both very good cats and have two very distinct personalities.  Grayie seems to have the attitude of pretending to not like you, but he’s the one that demands the most love in the house.  He’s always hanging around you and wanting to jump in your lap.

Just today I was working on my computer and I turned around, and there he was laying in the chair behind me, just looking up at me with those giant innocent eyes of his.

“Grayie”