352/365 - Jim - Pond Fountain

( f/22 32mm HDR ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This pond is just down the road from my house and I have been wanting to take a picture of it for a long time. I've always liked house that sits there too. Over the last 6 years, they have added the rocks and some landscaping around the pond and then the fountain. I pulled Jameson in his wagon all the way there and the fountain wasn't turned on. I was a little disappointed to go all that way and not see the fountain. I'm not sure if the owners saw me taking photos or it was on a timer, but it suddenly turned on and I was able to take some fountain shots. I bracketed 7 shots and then merged 3 of them into an HDR. I set the HDR effect to it's lowest setting, but turned the strength and saturation all the way up. You can see the leaves are turning a little already. Kind of sad to see summer ending.

345/365 - Jim - Water Like Glass

( f/10 24mm 1/400 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

We went out fishing in the morning and the water was like glass. The moon was still out and you could see it in the reflection on the water. It was pretty awesome to see the river this way. The Allegheny River is never this calm.

341/365 - Jim - Montreal River

( f/18 18mm 1/160 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is a bay off of the Montreal River in Ontario. It was really scenic there and the water was really clear and glass-like at times. I took this as one photo and then cropped it 5 times. Then I merged them all together as a collage. I didn't catch any fish the first day there.

339/365 - Tim - OBX Bird

( No EXIF Info Nikon D60 )

No, OBX does not stand for obnoxious. It stands for the Outer Banks in North Carolina. My uncle Tim was there on vacation and got this awesome shot. Here is his description of it:

When we were at the Outer Banks NC this year I got up early to shoot the sunrise over the water. I set the camera on a tripod and would snap a picture every minute as the sun rose. As this bird flew by I couldn't resist snapping a photo.

328/365 - Shawn - Fireworks Over the Allegheny

( f/4.5 38mm 1/15 sec ISO 1600 Nikon D40x )

This was taken with my first DSLR camera that I sold to Shawn when I upgraded to the D300. It is pretty difficult to take fireworks photos while hand holding the camera, let alone while hand holding on a boat, but he did a pretty good job of it. Here is his poetic description of the night he took this photo. Thanks for the guest post, Shawn.

The green and red navigation lights of all of the boats sway and reflect off of the Allegheny river. If you could look to the left you would see all of the onlookers lined up against the railings of the convention center. If you could feel the air around you it would remind you of laughter, smiling, good times, and hope. Awe speaks into the air with booms and flashes. The river current never stops its incessant tugging at the anchor lines as we lose ourselves in the flow of the Allegheny. The bridges pull like arms holding us in an embrace of the city of Pittsburgh. My hand holds that of one so close to me and we both squeeze all the more tightly. Our souls twist together on this night when the sky has become so bright in the darkness. Dreams fill the mind as we worry about naught and stare at the overhead spectacle with the bright eyes of children.

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.

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.

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.

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.

259/365 - Jim - Water Bounce

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

I watched a video on how to produce a nice water drop photo, so I put myself to the test today. I put a painted blue sky shot behind the water and flash pointing directly on it. Then I had another light on the right side pointing across to the left of the drop. It probably wasn't needed, but I had a red gel to the left hoping that it show in some parts of the drop. This is one of the best shots I got. I did try to get a collision shot where as the rebound drop comes back up, the next drop hits that and creates an umbrella look. This requires 10 drops per second pretty accurately and my method of dripping was not adjustable. I hope to get a shot like that one of these days.

240/365 - Jim - Water

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

This was very difficult to photograph. I painted the formula with water and a paintbrush onto a piece of Plexiglas. Then put it about 8 inches above a blue foam sheet. I had to get at an angle that would produce the white edges otherwise it looked very flat. Getting it in focus well enough was hard for some reason. I finally got an image that worked, but the Plexiglas had all kinds of imperfections, so I edited them out with Photoshop. I don't know why it was difficult, but it was.

233/365 - Jim - Finally!

( f/3.2 24mm 1/80 sec ISO 640 Nikon D300 )

I call this Finally because this is the third time I have been out fishing and the first time I got a line in the water. The other two times were bad luck... I caught two nice bass to make up for the first two times, so it was a good night. Then on the way back to the dock I was able to get this photo. It is pretty plain, but so vibrant that I just find myself staring at it. I have to thank Smochko for teaching me to fish :)

214/365 - Jim - Lake Storm

( f/5.6 200mm 1/10 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is my second attempt to go fishing. This time the boat engine worked, and we got out in the water. Then the storm clouds engulfed the lake and started pouring rain. We thought it might pass over, but cue the lightning. A few bolts and we were heading back to shore. Loaded up the boat and waited for a while, but it wasn't letting up. So that makes 2 times fishing and not one line in the water. I'll eventually get to fish... This photo was pretty lucky. At 1/10th of a second shutter, everything should be very blurry, but somehow I followed the movement of the boat zoomed in at 200mm while we were also racing back to shore. It was impressive enough to post as today's photo.

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...

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.

148/365 - Jim - Preform

( f/22 56mm 1/125 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Because I work for Giant Eagle, I was able to go on a tour of their Chestnut Ridge Beverage Company. There they are able to form plastic bottles and fill them with a variety of beverages. On the right is a preform that later gets a blast of air and turns into the bottle on the left. They fill it with water, label, and package them up. That is the shortened version of the process... We joked quite a bit about being like Laverne and Shirley and putting a glove on a bottle as it goes down the line. I'm sure they wouldn't have thought it was too funny. I really enjoy watching How It's Made, so it was interesting to me and the whole time I kept thinking of how I would film it.

093/365 - Jim - Shot in the Dark

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

Being New Year's Eve I thought I would take a photo of a drink. The recipe to this drink is pretty simple. You take 2 parts of hydrogen and 1 part oxygen. The white top is produced by turning the knob on my sink which is labeled H. The bubbles go away and you are left with a warm shot of pure water. So here is to you and a happy new year! Yuk, I had to chase it with cold water...

071/365 - Jim - Watercolor

( f/14 105mm 1/200 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Theme is food coloring. I have seen this before from other photographers and wanted to give it a try. I figured I would use red and green to keep in the Christmas spirit. The lighting was setup the same as my tea photo. I filled the glass with water to the top and dropped the food coloring in. It is that simple. I added the vignette and adjusted the colors and clarity in Lightroom.