368 - Jim - Ready for Bed

( f/5.6 56mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My whole family has been sick this week and I finally got to try out my ring flash. You can tell by the light spots in Jameson's eyes. I had a shoot through umbrella modifier on the flash which produced the larger white dot. The little black dot in the center is where my camera was. Jameson was actually up for pictures tonight and posed this way for me. Then he wanted to see the picture. He usually doesn't cooperate for pictures.

361/365 - Jim - Reflection

( f/11 40mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I bribed Jameson with the show Caillou to get him to work with me on this photo. I had to make sure I could get a shot of him with his eyes open and closed without any other movement. That isn't an easy task with a 2 year old. I wanted to just make the eyes opposite, but I tried taking out the saturation on the one Jameson and liked that. It adds another element to make your head turn just a bit more to figure out what is going on in this photo.

349/365 - Jim - Jameson

( f/4.5 50mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Since I posted a guest photo from Carol (without her knowing) of Nolan, I figured I would post a similar shot of Jameson. I did however take some other interesting shots today that aren't of the kids, but again I wanted to match Carol's photo. I played around with this in Lightroom adjusting the exposure to make it brighter and then used the paintbrush to enhance his eyes two-fold. I used sharpness and clarity at full strength twice to make them really stand out. Just a side note for family, you might have noticed the cut beside his right eye. He built a tower of blocks and when he knocked them over, so did he fall down onto the base and hit his eye hard enough to cut it open. Luckily it wasn't a direct shot to his eye!

348/365 - Jim - Penn State Kids

( f/5.6 24mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Aunt Courtney got these jerseys for Jameson and Nolan. It was hard to get Jameson to do this without hurting his little brother. He fell back on him right after this was taken and Nolan cried. I don't know if the Penn State game was on TV here today, but they beat Syracuse 28 to 7.

346/365 - Jim - Radio Flyer Tricycle

( f/5.6 36mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I was supposed to be in Canada until Saturday, but we came back early. Jameson had his Steelers gear on ready for the game. I noticed the nice shadow behind him, so I told him to look at me and smile. He chose to be super difficult... So this was the best shot I could get of him. The Steelers finally won in overtime 13 - 10.

339/365 - Jim - Smell the Flowers

( f/7.1 105mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I will be leaving for Canada tomorrow for the whole week. So today I spent some playing time with Jameson out in the front yard. He likes to investigate the flowers and then "accidentally" rip them to shreds and say he broke it. I told him to smell the flowers when I got this shot. I made sure to include all the flowers in the background.

Now I need to prepare for Canada. I won't be posting any photos until I return. Hopefully I will bring back a bunch of nice photos and have a difficult time picking just one for each day. Have a nice holiday and enjoy your week!

334/365 - Jim - Hide and Seek

( f/2.8 70mm 1/500 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Jameson and I walked around the yard before the sun set. The light was hitting these trees really nicely, so I told Jameson to go hide behind one and peek out at me. He thought it was pretty fun. I used a fill flash to give it a little more even exposure, but it kind of over exposed instead, so I fixed some of that in Lightroom.

329/365 - Jim - Grass Seed

( f/1.8 50mm 1/8000 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Jameson and I were playing in the back yard today. The grass in our mini garden grew so high it has seeds. I had Jameson hold one up so I could get a picture of it and have him all blurry in the background. He was less than cooperative as 2 year old boys tend to be. I was able to get him to hold it up, but he waved it around so much and I just got lucky with this shot. At 1/8000 of a second shutter, it froze like a deer in headlights. I got quite a few good shots while the sun was setting. It makes me wonder why I bother to shoot at any other time of day...

326/365 - Jim - Beware of Bubble Beard

( f/2.8 48mm 1/60 sec ISO 100 Nikon D300 )

I was just settling down for a nice nap when Carol said I had to come back and see Jameson. So I climbed out of my slumber and got my camera. When I got in the bathroom, there he was with a mohawk and beard. Is it a glimpse into the future? Maybe... I rarely do soft photos, so I thought I would give it a try and then added the white vignette to make it even more soft.

325/365 - Jim - Warhol Portrait

( f/11 105mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Courtney was reading my mind when she said I should do a Warhol portrait because that was my plan. Warhol did portraits by creating a large silk screen matte and putting that onto canvas, then painting in the areas with over the top colors. In some he also did some outlining of features, which is what I did here. I also applied some textures to give it a canvas look.

321/365 - Jim - Presque Isle

( f/8 56mm 1/1000 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

We went to Presque Isle today for the kids to play at the beach. I'm not a beach person, so I was there for photos. Jameson had a great time going in the water and playing in the sand. Nolan wasn't able to do much, but did enjoy jumping in the water. With it being nearly 90 degrees, I was ready to get back into air conditioning immediately, so I took the trip out with my dad to get pizza for our dinner. We had it so cool in the car that when I grabbed the pizza to take to the picnic table, I thought we chilled it. It turned out alright though and was a nice day.

311/365 - Jim - Fake Poster

( f/11 10.5mm HDR ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I went out to take some progress shots of the addition and pointed my fisheye straight up into the sky and took 7 bracketed shots. Then I turned that into an HDR. Using Photoshop I tried to correct the fisheye and it pulled in all the sides and made it look like a big poster. So I took an old picture of Jameson holding a frame and added him into the photo. It would be cool to get some poster sized shots printed, but I'm not sure what I would do with them. Maybe I could just get Jameson to hold them.

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...

274/365 - Jim - Fedora

( f/4.5 55mm 1/80 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

They had this fedora at Target when we were there a few days ago. I thought Jameson would look cool with it on, so I had my mother stop today and pick it up. He didn't want his picture taken, but I got it anyways. His shirt was actually bright yellow and so distracting that I changed it to blue. Then I noticed the reflective yellow on his face and had to correct that. It was a whole process that took way too long.

271/365 - Jim - Stick'em Up

( f/2.8 200mm 1/640 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I got this water bottle out to spray the flower a little bit. Jameson got a hold of it and squirted me right away. I wanted to try out my 70-200mm lens and see how well I could blow out the background at f/2.8. I stood back to a safe distance and told Jameson to squirt me again. Of course he ran toward me, so I had to get him to stay in one place but I finally got the shot I was looking for and stayed pretty dry for the most part. I only wish I could have got the water coming out of the bottle. That would have made it more interesting.

263/365 - Jim - Jameson the Movie Star

( f/11 52mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is the first of my movie posters I want to do. If you haven't gone to see The Hangover, go see it. It was awesome! Hopefully Carol will the my next subject, then lastly I will hold Nolan for the poster of the characters Alan and Carlos. Jameson cooperated really well for this photo and I got the exact shot that I wanted, but for some reason I had a lot of trouble getting the color right. It's close enough though and I'm pretty happy with it. If you haven't seen the poster I modelled this after, click here.

260/365 - Jim - Lost in Repetition

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

This is called a fractal droste. I don't know how exactly it works, but it makes a really cool image. I've seen these before and nobody explained what it was, so I never knew how to create one. While surfing the web today for an unrelated reason, I stumbled upon this program that gives you the ability to easily create these. I'm sure I'll use this effect again. It's very Escher like.

255/365 - Jim - Duck Head Version 2

( f/2.8 70mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It rained most of the day, so I got the idea to put Jameson out in it with his umbrella. Then I realized this is like the bathtub photo with the umbrella being a duck. I took this from the basement window so I didn't get my camera wet and I also was able to have a low perspective. I used Photoshop to desaturate everything except for the umbrella and added a heavy vignette and surrounding lens blur.

251/365 - Jim - Swing High Sweet Jameson

( f/5.6 10.5mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Jameson wanted to go swing in the back yard today. I brought my camera with the fisheye lens and put it directly under him with the 10 second timer on. I told him to look at the camera as I ducked down out of the way. He was swinging back and forth, so the timing on this was luckily perfect. I bumped up the exposure and vibrance in Lightroom.

245/365 - Jim - Papa Turns 57

( f/11 62mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

My dad's birthday is today and he came to visit. I wanted to get a picture of both boys, but Jameson wasn't cooperating very well so it didn't happen. Now for some crazy facts. Jameson is 54 years, 5 months, and 4 days younger. That is 2840 weeks or 19,880 days or 477,120 hours or 28,627,200 minutes. I am 23 years, 9 months, and 4 days younger than my dad. Jameson is 31 years and 8 months younger than me...