183/365 - Jim - The Old One Two

( f/8 60mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I have seen photos like this on flickr and stock photography pages, and I wanted to try it. Since I have a demo of Photoshop, I might as well use it. The hardest part of this was blending the finger into the wrist. Other than that it was pretty simple. This photo also officially takes me from the first half of fotoeveryday to the second half, which means I'm half way done now. Woohoo! It's hard to believe I have been able to keep up with it this long and makes me realize how fast time has flown by. Hopefully the second half will become easier and I become more creative.

182/365 - Jim - Heinz Field Panorama

( f/9 24mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I was able to eat lunch at Heinz Field today because of a Team Achievement award that I received from Giant Eagle. After lunch we were able to go on a tour. The locker rooms were pretty cool to see, though I did get yelled at for standing on the logo. I didn't know that was the rule... I tried several times to merge this panorama with not much luck, so I downloaded a demo version of Photoshop CS4 and it worked pretty well. I wanted to do a polar panorama, but there were too many people in the way and I didn't ask if I could go out in the middle of the field. I'll bet nobody has done that though, so it would have been awesome. Especially if the lines were painted on.

181/365 - Jim - Bacon Wrapped Fillet

( f/8 27mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My wife got some fillets for dinner for me to cook. I didn't remember until about 4:30pm when I asked her what was for dinner. I was kindly reminded and told about a smashed red potato recipe that was on her computer. I went to take a look and immediately got started on the potatoes. I don't cook very often, but when I do it is usually something special. Once the potatoes were on the stove, I got the steaks out and cut all the fat off the outside that I could and salt and peppered them. Then I put bacon in the microwave for a minute to get it partially cooked and flat. The steak went onto a pan with butter in it to brown the outside. Then I wrapped the bacon on it with toothpicks and continued to cook with more butter and the lid on the pan. Once the potatoes were done I drained and added the minced sautéed garlic with butter and milk, and then smashed them. The steaks only cooked for about 3 or 4 minutes on each side and then they were removed to rest and get photographed. I took several shots very quickly so I could go eat it. When I got upstairs I added some crumbled blue cheese to the steak because it's so good! The last few steaks I have cooked were overdone, but this one was perfect medium to medium rare, just like I like it. Best meal I've had in a while, even though it took about an hour to make and only 10 minutes to eat.

181/365 - Kyle - Warner Campus Panorama

( f/4.5 6mm 1/100 sec ISO 100 Fujifilm FinePix S5700 )

I just discovered the panorama in Photoshop, so I've been trying different shots to find a good panorama! Here is the sunset at Warner Campus.

180/365 - Jim - Oil Change

( f/13 10.5mm 2 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I only took 3 photos today. This one was done quickly while I did an oil change on my Honda Accord which has over 100,000 miles on it. It was really dark, so I decided to HDR it to bring out the details. You can even see the oil draining.

179/365 - Jim - Hit A Brick Wall

( f/4.5 24mm 1/80 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I didn't have much time for a photo today, so I quickly went out on the deck and got a shot of the brick wall. Maybe it represents my creativity hitting a wall. Or maybe it's just a brick wall...

178/365 - Jim - March Madness

( f/14 70mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

The theme just happens to be basketball. Only because I just watched Pitt finally get into the Elite Eight by beating Xavier. And because I took this photo of a basketball :) I assembled some extra hardwood I had left over from doing my son's room and coincidentally have an NCAA basketball. So I just put the ball down and took a close shot because my hardwood is just a small section. Then using Lightroom, I applied a Dream effect. Hopefully Pitt makes it into the final four, but I'll be surprised given the way they have been playing. Though, they did seem to turn it on today, so we shall see...

177/365 - Jim - Pont de L'Archevêché

( f/8 105mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Theme is old. This is actually a photo of a slide from a Stereo Realist camera. It was taken on September 14, 1955 in Paris opposite of Notre Dame. I believe that Pont de L'Archevêché is a bridge, but I've never been there so I don't really know. This is my favorite slide of the many that I have. My grandfather gave them to me a while back and they still amaze me. I'm a sucker for 3D, so they are fun to look at.

176/365 - Jim - A Tree is Born

( f/36 105mm 1/30 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Theme is new. This is what happens when you don't get all your leaves raked up in the fall. We had a pile of leaves for my son to jump in and then snow came before I could rake them up. Yesterday I was able to bag some of the leaves and under them was hundreds of baby trees. I wonder what would have happened if they were left to grow. There might be a 4' x 4' forest in my front yard...

175/365 - Jim - Backyard Island

( f/22 18mm 1/40 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Here is another island photo, but this time I had blue skies. This is my backyard, so my house is on the top below the sun, which makes it hard to see. I had a frustrating time stitching the photos together this time. It just took a while for it to turn out. The sky had to be edited in the corners because they just appeared as streaked sky. So I did some cloning and smoothing out. In then end, it's an alright polar shot.

174/365 - Jim - Machine

( f/16 31mm HDR ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My son Jameson likes "machines" so I took this photo for him. I went down to a bridge and railroad tracks to see if I could get either of those, but it turned out there wasn't anything very interesting. On my way back to the vehicle, this loader/backhoe was just sitting there, so I took 5 shots at different exposures so I could do an HDR. It's not very interesting, but it was all I got today...

173/365 - Jim - Eastern Gray Squirrel

( f/4.5 200mm 1/250 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I looked out my back window and saw a couple squirrels running around, so I grabbed my camera and went back to the woods to see if I could shoot them. This one grabbed a piece of corn and posed for me before I scared it off by taking a step toward it. Taking these wildlife photos is pretty fun and makes me itch for the 2x teleconverter even more... or is it just the mosquito bites.

172/365 - Jim - Birch Tree

( f/22 24mm 1/25 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I actually got outside while the sun was still shining today and just took some photo around the yard. This birch tree is at the corner of my house. I don't think it's very healthy because it is constantly dropping twigs and branches. This wasn't my intended image for today, but I liked it better than my others. I was trying to do a slow exposure lens zoom special effect. Some of them turned out alright, but made me a little motion sick.

171/365 - Jim - Water you looking at?

( f/11 36mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Alright, I have actually gone off the deep end... I drew the mouth on the gallon and then it asked me to draw eyes so it could see the water bottle. Then the water bottle got all nervous about what he was wearing. It was a whole thing that got out of hand. Honestly I don't know what I was doing, I actually just wanted a subject to try out a flash technique. This is two photos merged together in camera. I used my SB-800 flash remotely on both sides of the water and then merged them to see what it would look like. The results aren't too bad. I think I could be more creative and use this technique in the future.

170/365 - Jim - Rust

( f/32 105mm 1/80 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is an extreme close-up of rust from the base of an old halogen lamp. I used my 105mm macro lens and also put my 50mm lens in front of it to get even closer. I would say this is only about 1/8" wide, so it is very close-up.

169/365 - Jim - Twelve

( f/25 105mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is another photo of my guitar. I was preoccupied with something else tonight, so I quickly took a photo. The guitar was laying down, but I rotated the image and it made it look more cool. I think I've taken more photos of my guitar over the last months than the amount of times I have played it...

168/365 - Jim - Golf Is Around the Corner

( f/5 105mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It's just about time to start golfing. For this photo I put a tee in a cardboard box and put the ball on top. The background is a sky that I painted. The grass is just green rope that I frayed at the end. I took this with my 105mm macro lens at only f/5. This wasn't even close to the right aperture. I should have been at f/11 to f/22 because this lens has an extremely short depth of field even at lower apertures. On the camera it looked ok, but on the computer I found out how blurry it was. Oh well, I learned another lesson.

167/365 - Jim - 3 Months Old

( f/11 35mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Nolan is 3 months old today. I was tasked with getting his photo or else he was going to Sears. So I remembered this little wagon that my mother found. It didn't have a back on it, so I improvised with a box of cereal and the blanket. The background is baby blue, but it looks more teal, so I changed the hue with Lightroom to more of a blue. For the family, I put together the other photos I took today. Click here to view them.

166/365 - Jim - Rocky Raccoon

( f/4 200mm 1/400 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Matt Smochko (remember him?) and I went for a Photo Walk today. We started at Lake Arthur and ran into this raccoon. He was just laying in the yard and as we photographed him, he got scared and ran to the rocks. Of course we followed him and took over 100 photos each. Then we made our way over to McConnell's Mill since it's just down the road. We went down to a waterfall that comes off the hill and got some nice slow shutter photos. As I got what I thought was THE shot, I turned to show Matt. I heard a tumbling crash that turned out to be his second lens that he had in his hoodie pocket. I reacted faster than I feel is possible for me and grabbed it as it was rolling down a large rock toward the water. The whole thing made us extremely nervous so we left immediately. I got a lot of nice photos, which I could have used for over a week of FotoEveryDay, but I haven't broken the rule yet so I will continue as usual. Here are the other photos.

165/365 - Jim - Robin

( f/5.6 200mm 1/800 sec ISO 800 Nikon D300 )

I saw a bunch of birds outside after work, so I decided to put my sneakers on and see how stealthy I could be. I went into the front yard and hid behind a tree until they flew into it. Seeing the Robins makes me feel like Spring is almost here, which... it is. So birding was kind of fun. I'd like to get the Nikon 2x Teleconverter though so I could get double the reach and not have to be as stealthy. I didn't realize I was at ISO 800 and wondered why I was getting some incredible shutter speeds at f/8. Then I realized, but it was a little too late. Thankfully the D300 does alright with slightly higher ISO, so the noise isn't that bad.

164/365 - Jim - One Hundred Thousand Miles

( f/2.8 24mm 1/10 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

When you drive for years to work and it takes you 45 minutes one way without traffic, you tend to rack up the miles. Since working from home 3 days a week, I have really slowed down on the miles. I knew yesterday that I would be hitting 100,000 soon, so I took my camera with me to work. When I got there I was still about 10 miles short, so at lunch I knew it would flip. Just as we got back to the office, it was at 99,999. So I took a ride around the office park until it flipped, then parked and took some photos. Hopefully this doesn't mean the car will start falling apart...

163/365 - Jim - Sign of Good Weather

( f/5.6 105mm 1/15 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Hopefully these tulips know the weather is going to change soon and start getting real nice out. I'm sick of the cold weather and ready to be outside more. I'm sure you will see one of these flowers on here once they bloom.

162/365 - Jim - Bubble

( f/11 58mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I tried to get several shots of bubbles floating in the air, but it was really difficult to blow them and obtain focus and get the shot all at the same time. Right before I was done trying, I caught this bubble and was able to focus on it easily. If you zoom into the sides, the detail is pretty cool. But what is cool one second, pop, is a mess on your floor the next...

161/365 - Jim - Moon gets in way of perfect V

( f/2.8 70mm 1/160 sec ISO 800 Nikon D300 )

It was perfect. I went out on the deck and heard geese in the distance. I quickly set my camera to get a better shutter speed by turning up the ISO and setting it to Shutter priority. The geese went right over top of me and I snapped away. You might be thinking "Wow, and the moon just happened to be there too and you just happened to get an awesome exposure." Nope, I faked you out. I did take a nicely exposed photo of the moon, but the moon is bright, so the sky was very black. But how did you get the moon in there then? My camera has a photo merge feature. I take 2 pictures, choose them, and hit merge. It's very simple and works really well with moon photos because of the sky being all black. Here is a tip for anyone with a Nikon DSLR, zoom in on the moon as far as you can go and take a photo. Then take another photo of a cityscape zoomed out. Merge the two and you have an unreal looking HUGE moon. And unless they read this, they won't know you cheated.

160/365 - Jim - House Foto

( f/11 24mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Ok, this is my attempt at the TV show House logo. In the show it starts as a head x-ray and then quickly fades to the face of Hugh Laurie and House is displayed across the screen. I modeled it after this photo. I started out by taking a screen shot of the head x-ray from hulu. Then using Photoshop Elements, I did a Gaussian blur and then used layers to put my face in there.

159/365 - Just Nolan

( f/3.5 35mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My mother took Jameson for the weekend, so we only have Nolan. We took him out for some lunch and shopping and he smiled like this the whole time. When we got home I grabbed my camera and got a shot of him. Nothing special, just Nolan. I added the soft focus blur with Picasa.

158/365 - Jim - Ant Perspective

( f/8 24mm 43 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It was a nice day, so I went outside and put the camera on the driveway and held the shutter in for a count of 40. I was only 3 seconds off...

157/365 - Jim - Posterized

( f/11 66mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Well, I wanted to try something different with my studio flashes. I put one on each side of my face about a foot away with a softbox on each of them. This creates a dark line down the center of my face which I have seen done by other photographers and liked. Unfortunately I didn't have anyone to take photos of, so I couldn't experiment very much and had to do a self portrait. It didn't look that great so I covered it up with an effect in Photoshop called patchwork. If ever I want to count the pores on my face, this would be the effect I use.

156/365 - Jim - Gravity

( f/16 105mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This may boggle your mind, but all I did was drop these boggle letters onto a black reflective paper. It took more time to find all the letters than it did to take the picture. I have 26 more days to hit the mid point of Foto Every Day and it is getting increasingly harder to come up with ideas. This project is truly challenging my creativity, but that's what it's all about so I can't complain.

155/365 - Jim - Carrot Cake

( f/8 70mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My sister-in-law was visiting over the weekend and brought a carrot cake mix. She didn't get a chance to make it, but my mother did yesterday. For lack of a better photo idea, I cut a piece and took it down to my studio. I'm not the biggest fan of carrot cake, but it was alright. I used three flashes for this shot. One had a softbox and the others were bounced off of the ceiling.

154/365 - Jim - Signs of Einstein

( f/11 36mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My son Jameson is showing signs of being like Einstein. Though the only sign so far is the tongue thing, we still have high hopes for our little boy :) For my birthday, my parents got me a new paper background. It was supposed to be baby blue, but looks more like a sea foam blue/green. Of course you can't tell from this photo, but you will see it in the future. I rolled it out on my pool table and put Jameson up there to test the background. I tried to get him to make some funny faces, but instead he just laughed hysterically most of the time.

153/365 - Jim - McConnell's Mill

( f/18 24mm HDR ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I went to McConnell's Mill today to get a photo and take some video with my new camcorder. It was so cold! I lasted about 20 minutes before my hands were frozen. It was very overcast today so none of my photos looked very nice and I knew that would happen, so I put my camera on a post and took 5 bracketed photos. Then I created an HDR with them. If I post a video, I will link it here.