213/365 - Jim - Mixed Fruit

( f/11 70mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I had an idea to take two things and split them down the middle. Looking around I wasn't able to find something that was the same, but different, so what better than apples and oranges. The orange was a little smaller than the apple, so that added a little challenge. I used Photoshop to merge the two together. Which one is more dominant to you at first glance? The apple or the orange? For me it is the orange, but I've also noticed that my right eye is more dominant than the left.

212/365 - Jim - Only the Strong Survive

( f/6.3 210mm 1/10 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

We will be going to the Pittsburgh Zoo on Sunday and for that occasion, I ordered the TC-20e II 2x Teleconverter to use with my 70-200mm lens. It arrived today. Another bonus is that it works with my 105mm macro lens. I thought that auto focus would not work, but it does, so yet another bonus. Armed with a 210mm macro lens, I went out into the front yard to get really close to something. This is the time of year that those pesky dandelions are all over the place and spreading seeds everywhere. I simply plucked one like turkey until only one seed was left and placed it in front of a dark background. I feel like I could have done better with more light, but this isn't bad.

211/365 - Jim - Deck

( f/4 29mm 1/60 sec ISO 800 Nikon D300 )

I saw a blue jay below the bird feeder so I went out on the deck to see if I could find it. I did see it, but it was far away up in the trees and too dark from being so cloudy. Then I looked around for a while and didn't find much to photograph, so I pointed the camera down and got this shot. Yes, that's right, I wear socks with my sandals. It's more comfortable to me.

210/365 - Jim - Blossom

( f/8 200mm 1/250 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is from one of the trees in my front yard. Yeah, more flowers, but it blossoms nicely. I guess I need some themes to keep me from photographing flowers every day.

209/365 - Jim - Tall Flowers

( f/9 18mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

They aren't really very tall, I put my camera as close to the ground as possible to get this photo. It was a guessing game because I could not see where it was focusing. The first shot was without a flash and turned out really dark, so I turned the flash on. I wish I had used a remote flash though so it would look more natural, but I didn't take the time. I have a headache, so this is the best I could do...

208/365 - Jim - Sandbox

( f/2.8 200mm 1/400 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My son was happy to finally be outside in nice weather. He begged me to get his sand box out so he could play with it. I figured I would just get some snapshots of him while he played. I had my 24-70mm lens on at first, and saw a hawk soaring in the sky. Two crows didn't like it around so they tried fighting it and drove it away. I wished I had my 70-200mm lens, so I went to get it. They were gone by the time I got back, but I was able to zoom way in on Jameson at f/2.8 and really soften the foreground and background.

207/365 - Jim - Shy Flower

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

There are a bunch of tulips in my landscaping, but only one so far has opened up. I am guessing with tomorrow being a nice day, they will mostly come out of their shell. To get this photo I laid down on the sidewalk to get as low as possible. The live view helps sometimes for low shots, but not this low. Nikon announced the new D5000 that has a vari-angle LCD which would have been handy for this shot. Although, I would probably end up breaking it off at some point or never use it.

206/365 - Jim - Take two and call me in the morning

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

I'm about to take these right now. Every time I take this Sudafed PE, about an hour later I'm knocked out. I hope it also helps me get better. Being sick stinks...

205/365 - Jim - Time Keeps On Slippin'

( f/8 70mm 0.8 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

To match the photo my dad took, I set my camera to take a photo of my clock every minute for 15 minutes. Then I used the merge feature in my camera to merge six pictures together. It was pretty simple to do and I got to just lay around while it was doing all the work. I have been sick all day, so laying around is nice...

205/365 - Dad - Time Flies

( Blackberry Phone )

My dad took this photo in Oglebay while he was there doing a wedding. If you can't tell from the small image, there are flies all over the sundial.

204/365 - Jim - BigSkinny Salads

( f/14 35mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is the first time I have posted more than one photo. My dad works part time for a restaurant called The BigSkinny Hot Dog Shop and is actually the "Big" part of it. I have been working on their web page and today he brought down some food to photograph for it. I took pictures of sandwiches, salads, chicken fingers, soup, and even steak and shrimp. Most of my evening has been cutting images and playing with Photoshop to come up with a way to display the food nicely on the screen. It's coming together slowly but surely.

203/365 - Jim - View from PNC Park

( f/3.5 14.7mm 1/60 sec Canon PowerShot A710 IS)

I went to the Pirates game tonight. It was raining all day and right before the game started, it stopped until the 8th inning. We were sure that it would be cancelled. Pirates beat the Marlins 8 - 0, so it was a great game. Plus they are over .500 now with a 7-6 record. But like the last 16 years, it probably won't last... I used my Canon point and shoot camera for portability. I liked it at first, but it takes horrible pictures in comparison to my Nikon. I had to do some noise reduction to this photo. It didn't tell me what the ISO was, but I assume it was pretty high because I had it set to auto.

202/365 - Jim - Hohner Big River Harp

( f/18 105mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I put off taking a photo all day because of numerous things like watching the Penguin game. If I could play some blues on my harmonica, I would because the Pens lost game 3 of the series. Actually the only thing that I can kind of play is the beginning of Piano Man. It's at least recognizable. The only reason I have it out is because my son got a plastic one and I told him I would play with him. He has perfected the art of making noise...

201/365 - Jim - Bookmark

( f/8 18mm 1/800 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Today I went to Lake Arthur to fish. I got there at 10:30am and waited for Matt to show up with his boat. He had some car trouble with his battery, so after he got that fixed, he showed up a little before 1pm. While I waited, I walked some nature trails and took almost 200 pictures. When we finally got the boat in the water, it didn't start... Matt found out later that it was the starter. Turned out to be a long day. Especially for Matt. I thought this photo would make a nice bookmark.

200/365 - Jim - Blooming Flower

( f/25 105mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Today was the first day the flowers have started blooming in my area. Tomorrow is going to be another nice day and I'm guessing that the tulips might bloom. I plucked this from our landscaping and held it in front of the grass that the sun was shining on. I don't even know what these are called, but they grow like crazy in the spring and then die off in the summer and are just a healthy leaf plant.

199/365 - Jim - Big Dipper

( f/8 26mm 900 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I set out to get some star trails, but my first photo turned out horrible. I wasn't sure of good settings to try and keep the noise down, so I set what I thought would work and left the camera outside for an hour. Turned out I was completely wrong. So I went back out and at least got a few more. This one was pointed directly at the big dipper for 15 minutes. Then I thought it would be cool to connect the lines and use red/blue for the 3D effect. It's kind of interesting to be able to see the movement and the shape of the dipper over time. Actually it's Earth that is moving, so it would be our movement relative to the stars... Anyway, I also did a little 3D text effect in Photoshop just for fun while I was waiting for the long exposure.

198/365 - Jim - First Cereal at 4 Months

( f/5 50mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is the first time Nolan has had cereal. He wasn't real sure what to do with it and spit a lot of it out. There were several times that he gave us a concerned look. Today he is exactly 4 months old too. He seems to be growing up faster than Jameson did.

197/365 - Jim - Hazardous Shot

( f/22 70mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I didn't think of anything to photograph tonight and this golf ball was staring at me. So I tried to think of a different way to use it and I came up with this cheesy idea... I didn't spend much time on taking the photo, which showed when I looked at it on the computer. The shot glass had water in it before which evaporated and left some hard to clean residue. I should have taken more time to just clean the glass, but instead I wasted a bunch of time on cleaning the image.

196/365 - Jim - Risky Business

( f/11 24mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My son Jameson was running around the house like this, so I naturally gave him a guitar and sunglasses... He had a blast playing with the guitar that he usually hears "Don't touch that!" when he goes for it. I did my best to pose him like a rock star. He did a short set for us that consisted of Baa Baa Black Sheep and She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain. The crowd went wild and he showed us who was "Number 1." I also did a video of him if you want to check that out.

195/365 - Jim - Eggcellent Easter

( f/32 105mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Today was Easter. Jameson and I colored these eggs with a Paas package. We used the marble method where you add some vegetable oil to the dye. It made them pretty slippery no matter how many times you dry them off. If you look close enough you can see that the bottom right egg slipped out of my hands as I was setting it up to photograph and it cracked. I used a softbox over the top front right of the egg and a small white reflector below the egg to fill in the other side a little.

194/365 - Jim - Model City of Pittsburgh

( f/20 34mm 1/250 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I went to Mount Washington today to get some photos. I really wanted to try a tilt-shift on a photo of the city. Since I don't have a tilt-shift lens, this is a fake done in Photoshop. When you see an image with a very shallow depth of field, your eyes assume that you are seeing it very close like looking at a model. I haven't come across any true tilt-shift photos of Pittsburgh, so I wanted to see what it would look like. A tilt-shift lens does what it says and actually can tilt up or down which changes the plane of field, and shift to change the line of sight. It is typically used for architectural photos, and there is a cheap lens called a Lensbaby that only tilts and is used for various special effect photos.

193/365 - Jim - Easter Eggs

( f/5 62mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Paige came to visit for Easter and play with Jameson today. She colored eggs with my sister while Jameson took his nap. When he woke up they got to have an Easter egg hunt outside. They had a blast. Paige was kind enough to pose for a portrait with her eggs for my photo today.

192/365 - Jim - Rainbow Scarf

( f/11 44mm 1/250 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My son goes to a thing called Kindermusik where he sings and plays instruments with other kids. They have scarves there that they throw into the air and play with, so my mother got a couple scarves to play with at home. My sister and I were throwing them up in the air for my son and she suggested I photograph one. So I took it down to the studio and had a flash on both sides with the black muslin background. Then threw it up and snapped some shots. Looks like it could be an interesting wallpaper.

191/365 - Jim - Once in a Blue Moon

( f/11 200mm 1/250 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It was getting late and I hadn't taken any photos yet. I noticed the moon was full so I headed out to get a shot. I made it blue by setting my white balance to tungsten. I've taken many shots of the moon over the last couple years, but haven't gotten any closer to 200mm. There are telescopes that have adapters that you can connect a Nikon camera to for photographs, but that can be pretty expensive just for moon shots. I would like to try a Phoenix 650-2600mm Telephoto Lens that sells for around $250. The aperture is f/8 - 16 so it wouldn't be very useful for many things other than moon shots, but would still be fun.

190/365 - Jim - Spring Back to Winter

( f/18 50mm 1/800 sec ISO 1250 Nikon D300 )

Well, Winter came back to haunt us today with a continuous snow. I'm hoping this will be the last of it, but who knows. My mood changes with the weather and today was pretty depressing... I turned the ISO way up for this shot so I could get a fast shutter speed and some grain for black and white. I applied an effect in Lightroom called Moriyama 4. Usually the effect is too strong for photographs, but for this one it worked pretty well.

189/365 - Jim - Haircut Reward

( f/2.8 50mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

After every haircut that Jameson receives, he gets a lollipop and a glow stick. He knows this and get so excited about it. So it has become a ritual to get his hair cut and then eat his lollipop and play with the glow stick. This lollipop turned his tongue all blue, so I got my camera. I had him sticking his tongue out so much that he was drooling. But this photo turned out the best, so I used it instead of a tongue one.

188/365 - Jim - Whole World In His Eyes

( f/2.2 50mm 1/100 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It may be subtle from the small image, but I put the Earth over top of Nolan's eyes. I was just taking some snapshots today with my 50mm f/1.8 and trying to get some sharp eyes and very shallow depth of field. Using this lens reminded me how well it works in low light, so I'll probably try to use it more for snapshots.

187/365 - Jim - Tulip Drip

( f/45 105mm 1/5 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I noticed yesterday that the rain laid on the tulip leaves really nice. I wanted to get a photo of it, but it was too windy to get a macro shot. Today I cut a leaf off and brought it inside by the back door to make it look like it was outside. So you can see my back yard in the drip.

186/365 - Jim - April Showers

( f/11 70mm 1/20 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This sums up the whole day, but I can't forget to mention the wind. As I'm writing this, I can hear the wind blowing strong just as it has done all day long. I tried to go out and get a good raindrop photo, but just got wet. The background of this photo is my front yard. Just a month until May flowers...

185/365 - Jim - You spin me right round baby

( f/22 18mm 1/15 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It was a nice day so we took Jameson to the local school playground. He had a blast and I was able to take some photos of him. I thought of this shot before even going, so I was ready for it. I made sure to set the camera to aperture priority to get the longest shutter speed to show the motion.

184/365 - Jim - Eye will hand it to you

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

Smochko sent me an image like this and wanted me to reproduce it. Since eye didn't have anything better to photograph tonight, eye gave it a try. Turned out to be very easy, so thanks Matt for the eyedea :)