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.

222/365 - Jim - Under My Favorite Tree with a Book

( f/8 50mm 1/250 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It looks like I just came upon Jameson sitting there reading and took a snapshot. The reality is that I staged the whole thing and he sat there looking at his book for only a few minutes. He did enjoy sitting on his bench there and it does look like a nice place for it. Jameson and I went to Lowe's the other day and I thought this bench looked like a nice prop, so I got it. Plus Jameson loves to use it, which is a plus for trying to get his photo.

217/365 - Jim - Red Maple

( f/8 200mm 1/160 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I took a similar photo the other day, but I chose a different photo to post. I liked it enough to take another one today. The late day light behind the leaves illuminates the leaves to a very vibrant red. It's almost hard to tell whether this is a spring or fall photo.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

121/365 - Jim - Pollock Tree Limbs

( f/8 50mm 1/200 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Theme is contrast. It just so happens to be Jackson Pollock's 97th birthday today. He died in 1956. I think my photo looks a lot like one of his paintings. We had a wintry mix from last night until now, which left the trees wrapped in ice. I took this photo out through my basement window. Contrast was added in Lightroom. I also made it black and white to make it more uniform and not give any specific focal points. Learn more about Jackson Pollock at Artsy.com.

087/365 - Jim - Christmas Morning

( f/3.5 24mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

All he wanted was trains. He got them. A lot of them. 32 in all. We put them all together and counted up 52 cars. It was amazing how many of them he knew by name! I know one little boy that had a good Christmas.

063/365 - Jim - Christmas Photo Example

( f/2.8 70mm 1/5 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I did not adhere to the theme today because I wanted to try something. A friend from work tried to take some photos of his kids in front of their Christmas tree. He said they all turned out crappy and asked for advice. I recommended him setting the aperture to f/2.8 and use a flash set in rear curtain. Looking at his EXIF information, his camera automatically was set to f/2.8, but his flash did not fire. I also was thinking that the kids should be about 5 or so feet away from the tree so that the depth of field would only be on the kids and the tree lights would have a nice bokeh. That is just a personal preference and I tried it in this shot. The only thing I did not do was use a flash. Since the lights in the room are a different temperature than the flash and I didn't want to go find a gel, I just didn't use it. I tried once or twice and the background was just too yellow. Using the available light I was only able to get my shutter to 1/5 sec. So Jameson had to be very still or any movement would cause blur. Luckily he is entranced while watching TV. I plan on trying some more things and using a better flash to see what I can come up with. A little research will probably help too.

062/365 - Jim - My Spin on Christmas

( f/18 10.5mm 16 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I have a Christmas tree with a spinning base. For this shot I used my fisheye lens and sent the tree spinning. The shutter was open for 16 seconds to get this wild effect. Now I must decorate it...

021/365 - Matt - Spooky Tree

( f/9.0 55mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D40 )

This is a tree I took on Saturday at Frick Park. I took some shots of some scary halloween things around my house but nothing came out cool. I added an effect to this tree to make it look even more dead than it is. I think it's spooky.

021/365 - Jim - Ghostly Tree

( f/8 38mm 30 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Theme is scary. I have looked at this tree out in my front yard for a while and thought it looked a little spooky at times. When I went out to take this photo, something was moving around because I could hear leaves rustling. Not knowing what it was, I hurried up and took a picture. This face appeared around the tree. OK, not really. I put a mask on and ran over with the 5 second timer on and positioned myself. My camera was set to a slow flash which means it flashes and then uses the ambient light for the rest of the exposure. In this case it was 30 seconds. After the flash went off, I walked by and behind the camera until this image appeared. It was literally 2 shots to get this. The first was just a test. Mwahh ha haaa...

019/365 - Jim - Camo Tree

( f/9 70mm 1/320 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Theme is leaves. Matt and I attended a Flickr Photowalk at Nine Mile Run in Pittsburgh. The trail was really nice and there were a lot of fall colors. I didn't get all that creative with my shots, but this tree was pretty interesting. There are a few leaves on it hanging onto summer.

019/365 - Matt - Frick Park Leaves

( f/5.3 150mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D40 )

Jim and I went to Frick Park Saturday and took a BUNCH of pictures of leaves. This is the only one that caught my attention. It was a great day.

013/365 - Jim - Crabapple Tree

( f/8 48mm 1/250 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Today we went to Moraine State Park for a walk. Along the trail we saw this crabapple tree, so I took a few shots of it. It was hard to decide which picture to post without a theme. Maybe I'll post the other options on my blog.

008/365 - Jim - Family Tree

( f/2.8 55mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Theme is tree. I wasn't all that creative today, so this is all I came up with. Carol and Jameson went out in the backyard with me for this shot. Jameson wanted to get the letters off the tree the whole time, so he kept grabbing me and saying "get it." It made it a little hard to focus...

008/365 - Matt - HDR Tree

( f/5.6 55mm 1/200 sec ISO 800 Nikon D40 )

This is one section of a tree in my backyard. It is about 6 or 7 stories high and has been there since I was born. I wanted to get a complete shot of the tree, but I was not satisfied with the pictures. So, I decided to take a picture and generate an HDR image with Photomatix. It came out pretty cool. Let me know what you think...