305/365 - Jim - Clearwing Moth

( f/4 105mm 1/100 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I saw this clearwing moth feeding on the flowers so I ran for my camera. It was a fast little thing so I wasn't able to get focus very well. I probably would have taken a different photo if I had seen how bad these were, but I also had friends over, so I didn't have time.

304/365 - Jim - Frogger

( f/3.5 70mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I took my camera to work because I had plans of going at lunch to take a photo. That didn't happen... After work I had attended a party, so no photos were taken there also. When I pulled into my driveway I saw this little guy jumping out of my way, so I stopped and tried my best to focus and take a photo. It's not the sharpest photo, but it will do for today. I don't feel like setting up a special shot and it isn't everyday that I can get a photo of a frog.

303/365 - Jim - French Press

( f/11 55mm 1 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I decided to just do a quick product shot tonight. This is a Bodum french press coffee maker that I got at Target a while back. If you want a good strong pot of coffee, these are excellent. It makes about 3 cups and by the third cup, it has brewed longer and is the strongest cup. I have gotten the jitters after drinking the whole thing. The only thing I don't like about this is the clean up. It isn't horrible, but takes longer than cleaning a regular pot. I used a softbox off to the right and a little behind. Then a white reflector on the left side of the press. Also, I had a flash with a grid pointing at the reflector to bounce onto the beans because they are so dark. The coffee beans are a dark roast that I got at the Butler Farm Market.

302/365 - Jim - Golf Hazard Panorama

( f/11 24mm 1/500 sec ISO 800 Nikon D300 )

I finally got out to golf the first time this year. This is probably the longest it has taken since I started golfing back when I was in 4th grade. I wanted to make sure I at least got out once before a golf scramble that I will be playing on Saturday. It wasn't too bad, I shot a 44 and nothing is sore... yet... I photographed this hazard from on top of hole 5 green at Pittsburgh North Golf Club. Then merged them together into a pano with Photoshop. I accidentally left my ISO at 800, so it's a little noisier than I would have liked it, but still not bad. It was a great day to golf and enjoy the weather.

301/365 - Jim - Yard Snapshots

( f/2.8 ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

We just went out in the front yard for a while and let the kids run around or crawl in Nolan's case. Jameson was driving his bubble mower around which made some bubbles lay on the grass. I sat down and got real low to take a photo of the bubble. Just as I had focus and hit the shutter, the camera was jammed into my face with toddler force. Jameson must not have wanted me to photograph the bubble, because he ran full force toward me to pop the bubble and then continued on into me and my camera. It knocked me back and Jameson went to the ground. He didn't enjoy going inside for a timeout after that...

300/365 - Jim - Cemetery Statue

( f/8 70mm 1/250 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Today we went to Michael's to get some frames for the photos we recently printed. Afterwards we drove into the cemetery in Butler to see if there was anything interesting to photograph. The light was facing the wrong direction for most of the statues, but this one was facing opposite. The statue was probably around life size. It's pretty amazing how the make these. I don't know if it was just a form that was filled with concrete or chiseled that way. I don't think I know anyone with that elaborate of a tombstone.

299/365 - Jim - Hidden Color in Rocks

( f/2.8 50mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

The reason I say the color was hidden is because they didn't look this colorful out of camera. Once I had the photo in Lightroom, I increased the contrast and vibrance. That brought out the colors and made them look like they were washed clean. There is a large pile of these rocks sitting in my backyard for use in my addition. I don't know exactly where they will actually be, but I'm guessing they will be buried.

298/365 - Courtney - Hibiscus

( f/5.6 7.9mm 1/320 sec ISO 100 Sony DSC-P200 )

Courtney said this was the only plant that she got for her new house. Her mother bought it for her at Lowe's while we were out visiting. I had intended on taking out the little money plant photo that I took, but it started growing and producing twenties. I wish... Really I just forgot it.

298/365 - Jim - Purple Flower

( f/8 70mm 1/40 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I was driven around by my wife to find something to photograph. I had a couple things in mind, but it didn't work out. So a flower photo becomes the default...

298/365 - Tyler - Tractor

( f/3.2 35mm 1/160 sec ISO 250 Nikon D200 )

Tyler just got a Nikon D200 so I'm sure he was excited to get out and shoot some stuff. I like photos like this. There are several times that I will pass old tractors along the road and take photos of them with my head. Then I never seem to go back and use a real camera. Maybe I should go out in search of one today. We will see what happens. Nice photo Tyler, keep them coming.

297/365 - Jim - The Mellon Institute Building

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

On my way through Oakland, I stopped to take some pictures at one of my favorite photo destinations. The Mellon Institute building is something I saw in a photo many years ago and found out how close it was to me, so I went to reproduce the photo. I have been there 4 or 5 times now and I still love the photos I get. It was getting dark, so there wasn't much light to work with. I enhanced this photo with Lightroom to brighten and give it somewhat of an HDR look.

296/365 - Jim - Eggsausted Ideas

( f/11 55mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I feel as though my creative ideas are becoming exhausted. It just seems to be more and more difficult to come up with something to photograph. Probably because I don't get out enough and see new things, but that is what work and kids will do to you I suppose. There isn't much to say about this photo. I applied a preset in Lightroom called Creative Catalyst to give it the blue and tan shades. I thought it made it look less boring.

295/365 - Jim - Boggle Your Mind

( f/16 70mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Optical illusions have always intrigued me as I'm sure they do you as well. Because of this and other reasons, I am a big fan of M.C. Escher and his illusions. I grabbed the Boggle game again and set the dice up in the general pattern and took a shot, then removed some dice and shot anther one. Then it was time for Photoshop and fitting everything together seamlessly. It wasn't easy, but I'm happy with the results.

295/365 - Ryan - Seattle Skyline

( f/10 60mm 1/320 sec ISO 100 Sony DSLR-A100 )

My friend Ryan sent me this photo without any editing done to it and suggested darkening the water and lightening the sky. I took it a step further and added some contrast and fixed parts of the water. Then cropped it down to a panorama and added white borders and text. I thought it looked like something that would be hung in a corporate office building. Nice shot Ryan and I hope you enjoyed your trip.

294/365 - Jim - Colorblind Test

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

Can you read the hidden message? If not, you may be color blind. I set these Skittles down and lined them all up into a rectangle and shot from above with two softboxes. You can comment the message if you can see it.

293/365 - Jim - Route 38

( f/11 24mm HDR ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

On my way home from camping I passed several places that I thought I should stop and take photos, but I wanted to get home so I didn't. Then I remembered this place on Route 38 that someone set up a bunch of old signs and such. I ended up driving right past it and had to turn around, but it was worth it. I bracketed 7 shots to do an HDR and had to do 3 of them, then merge them together. I thought it ended up looking pretty cool and I didn't even get out of my car.

292/365 - Jim - Wakeboarder Down

( f/4 98mm 1/1000 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is Al. See Al wipe out. Splash Al, splash. One of the things I like most about going out on a boat with wakeboarders is photographing the wipe outs. I am not a swimmer, so I wouldn't even attempt it, but it sure is fun to watch them crash. I was hoping to get a bunch of wakeboarding photos this weekend, but with the weather and not having the most experienced wakeboarder out there, I got very few shots. I guess I'll have to try to make it down to the river sometime.

291/365 - Jim - Camping Sunset

( f/3.5 24mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Today it rained quite a lot. When it finally let up for a while, we went out on Kinzua and did some wakeboarding. Not me, I just drove the boat. At sunset it was real nice. This view is about 30 or so feet from our campsites. It's nice because the boat can be tied off right there and is very easily accessible. I knew I would have a nice shot, but it actually turned out better than I thought.

290/365 - Jim - Fire Sparks

( f/6.3 35mm 1 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

The first night of camping. I was too busy carrying things to the campsite and setting up so I didn't get any decent shots. When I realized this, it was very late and we were just sitting around the fire. So I set my exposure to 1 second and asked if someone would stoke the fire to get all the spark trails.

289/365 - Jim - I Droste Myself

( f/11 50mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I only have a couple days left on my demo of Photo Brush 5, so I figured I would do another droste. I set the tripod up and took a shot of myself with my fingers in a circle over most of my face, then selected that area to do the droste. I will be camping the next four days, so you won't see any photos until Sunday. Hopefully I will get some nice photos!

288/365 - Jim - Nolan Duck Head

( f/8 55mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Nolan is old enough now to sit in the tub, so we had to get a duck head shot of him too. He will be 7 months old tomorrow and he still doesn't crawl. I think he might be like Jameson and barely crawl and then go straight to walking. He actually pulled himself up to standing on a toy today. I shot this with my SB-800 flash bouncing off of the ceiling. I also increased the flash power to a +1 EV to make it brighter, but I still had to lighten more using Lightroom. Then I isolated the duck as the only thing saturated with Lightroom as well.

287/365 - Jim - Bokeh Colors

( f/2.8 66mm 1/40 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I just wanted to play around with bokeh to see what kind of results I could get. I used my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens and set my camera to a 10 shot multi exposure. I pointed at a color changing led fragrance plug-in thing and took shots ever few seconds. Then I used the in camera overlay function to merge 3 photos together. This was just a test, but I think bokeh looks cool in photos and also in video.

286/365 - Jim - Caprese Salad

( f/5.6 200mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I started this basil in a cup a long while back. I just put paper towel around a glass cup and put the seeds against the glass. I remember doing this when I was a kid and wanted to show Jameson how the seeds grew. My mother finally transplanted them to soil and they took off from there. We used some today for the caprese salad I made. Carol suggest I make it so I could take a photo of it. I think she just might have wanted me to make it for her to eat:) It did taste good though.

285/365 - Jim - Perspective

( f/22 46mm 1/25 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Carol wanted to go for ice cream and I had remembered I wanted to get a perspective shot of her licking the giant ice cream cone on their lot. It was totally the wrong kind of day for a shot like this. The clouds filled the sky making the exposure of them very bright, so I should have used a flash to compensate, but didn't know how dark it might have made the cone. At least it is lined up pretty well and looks almost real at first glance.

284/365 - Jim - Matching Flames

( f/3.5 105mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I attached a match to the end of a tripod arm and lit it from below with a lighter. Then I used Lightroom and Photoshop to apply different color effects to it. After I had a few variations I created a Triptych in Lightroom. Then I saved it off and added the text using Picasa. All that to turn a boring photo into a less boring photo...

283/365 - Tyler - Summer Flowers

( f/8 50mm 1/640 sec ISO 500 Nikon D80 )

Tyler sent me this photo a while back and I intended on doing something that would match it, but it seemed like something came up every day or I forgot. But I finally took a flower shot as well. Maybe Tyler can shed more light on this photo. I like how sharp the flowers are and how soft the background is. It seems I always have trouble balancing the two when I take flower shots.

283/365 - Jim - Water Cooler for Flies

( f/8 200mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I walked out to just get some simple flower shots, but found some interesting bugs hanging out. These green flies look so cool on a daisy. Instead of using my macro lens, I thought I would try out my 70-200mm with the Canon 500D close-up lens on the front of it. Turned out pretty well but was pretty difficult to hand hold. A tripod might have been equally difficult to setup though.

282/365 - Jim - Billiard Droste

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

This is a clock that I have in my game room. I used Photo-Brush 5 again to do the droste effect. This would probably make a nice photo for a game room wall. My trial version of the program is almost up, so I'll either have to get it or find another droste program because I think it is pretty cool and an easy effect to apply every once in a while.

281/365 - Jim - BluBlockers

( f/22 105mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I bought 2 pair of these so I thought I would get a little more use out of them. I used a clamp on a tripod to hold the glasses. Then I put a softbox really close to them to completely fill them with a white sheen. Then I used a white sheet of paper to bounce the light back at the BluBlocker label. I also had a flash behind with a grid on it pointed at the red wall. I don't know how people use these as sunglasses. They just make everything brighter for me.

280/365 - Jim - Hangover Poster 3

( f/13 38mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is the last of the Hangover posters that I will do. I ordered the BluBlocker sunglasses a while back and they were on back order so it took a while to get them. I also had my wife order the hat that Nolan is wearing and she also got me the shirt at Target. I added the birds with Photoshop as well as all the other effects. It isn't quite as perfect as I had pictured, but still not bad. I really liked doing mock posters, so maybe I'll try it again if I see something that inspires me. The character that plays Alan in the film was really funny. I recommend going to see it before it leaves the theaters!

279/365 - Jim - Shadow Swing

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

We found a playground down the road from my sister-in-law's house while walking. Later we took my kids down there and let Jameson swing and play. This is the first time he got to be on a real swing, so he was excited. The sun was casting a nice solid shadow which I thought looked cool, so I got a shot of it.

278/365 - Jim - Fireworks

( f/18 24mm 4 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It is Independence Day which means lots of fireworks. We went to a farm on a hilltop where we could see out for miles. The fireworks were visible and then about 3 seconds later we could hear them. Not only could we see the main fireworks of the town, but we could also see them all over the valley, so it was like watching several shows at the same time. There were some guys setting some off in the field beside us, so I was able to get some shots like this one.

277/365 - Jim - Dutch Wonderland

( ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Today we went to Dutch Wonderland so that Jameson could go on rides and see the Thomas the Tank Engine show. Nolan was able to go on a couple things like the train, but was too little for most of the stuff. I just took a bunch of snapshots there, so I decided to compile them into a collage.

276/365 - Jim - Tunnel Vision

( f/8 5.8mm 2 sec ISO 100 Canon PowerShot A710 IS )

We took a short vacation over the weekend and went to visit my sister-in-law in York, PA. There are a few tunnels on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that you must go through. I thought of this before we got to them and planned to take some long exposure shots in the tunnel. It's not the easiest or safest thing to take photos while driving through a tunnel, but I did it anyways. This was about all I had time for today because it mostly consisted of working and driving.

275/365 - Jim - What is that?

( f/2.8 10.5mm 1/13 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It's pretty late and I had no ideas for a photo, so I took something laying around and wondered if anyone could figure out what it was. Some of you should know right away. This is a different guessing photo because it isn't a macro, but instead a fisheye shot. If it's too obvious, you can comment that you know what it is and let other people try to figure it out.