Day 61 Iris bud

Well day 60 on the picture a day project passed by with me realising. I've taken a photo every day fro 2 months. I'm pretty pleased with myself...

Anyhow it was a gorgeous day today so I was out and about looking in some of my favourite places for something but nothing jumped out at me. I took a few shots but they were all so-so until I got home and heard this Iris bud shouting at me in the sunshine from the front flower bed.

Day 60 Windblown Wild Rose

Once again I've no idea what it is I just like the colours. The bloom was being battered by a breeze too which made it doubly difficult to get a picture. But there is something rather pleasing about the motion blur in the petals and the stamen(?) being sharp

Day 59 Trainspotting in Staples, MN

OK as promised a train picture for the picture a day project...

Quite the caboose

As you may know I'm a railfan and I do like to photograph trains, in fact there is close to a 100% chance that tomorrows picture of the day will be of a train. Anyway as I drove into work this morning as I passed through Osseo I saw a quite unusual sight. A caboose. A bright blue caboose. Now cabooses. cabeese/cabii (take your pick) are are a rare sight since the introduction of through braking on trains and to see such a swish looking one was a surprise. It had been holding the crew of the Schnabel car that had taken a rather large piece of equipment up to Monticello Power station the night before and had rested here, in Osseo, overnight. Alas I missed the Schnabel car but you don't see a bright blue caboose everyday now do you?

Day 58 quirky

Its the start of a holiday weekend. Lets look for some fun.

Day 57 You'll either love it or hate it!

What is it?

Exactly.

You have no way of knowing what it is (you can make a pretty good guess if you look) You certainly have no idea of the size of it.

It's the light fitting in the foyer at my workplace. Its about 12 feet long. I've had my eye on it for a while for a picture. Wether to show it as it really is in a light airy high key shot, or just totally destroy it was the decision I had to make. Today I was in the mood to destroy it. So I metered off the light to throw everything else into darkness and then bump up the blacks in CameraRaw. The white dots are some small spotlights in the ceiling.

It might grow on you.

Here comes another one Day 56

This is the picture I've been wanting to take all week. Every day I've been outside photographing I've been sizing this one up. Checking angles and viewpoints. Today I went for it and took the shot. I was drawn by the big powerful curve running into the vertical pillar and then diagonally across the rest of the picture.

The Workplace day 55

Following on from yesterdays workplace exterior shot I present two today. The same shot. One in black and white and one in colour. Normally I don't think much of black and white but it stresses the graphic qualities of the image in this instance.

"W" day 54

This here inter-web thingy is a marvellous place. There are these wonderful places called forums where like minded individuals hang out and share opinions and advice on all manner of things.

One such great place is the the micro four thirds site Mu-43.com lots of micro four thirds camera users swapping advice and inspiration. Yesterday I saw a particularly interesting picture an abstract building exterior shot and thought I'd like to try something like that. So today I looked for some interesing abstracts around my office complex. There was plenty to choose from on this large concrete, glass and steel slab and this view appealed to me. SO there we go. PLenty more to choose from where that came from I can tell you...

Hidden barn day 53

I found this barn hidden away amongst the trees whilst out for a drive and thought it might make a worthwhile picture. I'm a tad annoyed that I couldn't totally crop the bland sky out of the picture being as it is such a cloudy day. But you can't have everything

Dead tree stands proud (day 52)

After yesterdays ghostly watertrail picture experiments I'm sure you're expecting me to produce more of the same today. Well its not for want of trying. It was just too sunny so that was a no starter even though I went to have a look and see if I could do anything. But as I drove away from the lake my eye was caught by this dead tree lit up in my rear view mirror. So I stopped and out came the camera and tripod and I snapped away.

Back for more

So, as well as posting the first pictures here I posted them on the mu-4/3 forum where I very quickly got some excellent advice on what to do to improve the pictures. So as the location is only 11 minutes down the road Fired up with reckless enthusiasm I headed back.

Now reckless enthusiasm is NOT a good thing because I forget everything I know. Good stuff like use the self timer to release the shutter. I blew the first half a dozen shots like that they were shaky.

I'm also looking at some of these close up and I'm thinking that perhaps I should have manually focussed as well rather than rely on auto. In the fading light I was getting exposure times of 1.5 seconds which has given me more of what I was looking for. I'm definitely really pleased with the way these have gone. I look forward to going back to Elk Lake again and honing my abilities

Watertrails

One type of picture I really, really envy are those pictures of water running over rocks where a long time exposure has been used to turn the water, once bouncing and splashing over the rocks into ghostly trails. But I've never been in the right place at the right time to do anything about it. Whenever I've been in waterfall locations it's always been in bright sunshine and I've not been able to get a slow enough shutter speed to blur the water. Until today. This afternoon I went out for a drive looking for pictures and ended up passing by Elk Lake near Baldwin Township. The afternoon was cloudy and I wasn't expecting much until I drove past the end of the lake and saw the water dropping (plunging is too much of a word the water only fell about 15 inches) over the outlet. I immediately knew what I was going to try to do. So I had enjoyable 40 minutes or so just trying things out with as slow as possible shutter speeds, adding an ND2 filter etc: to try and get the effect I wanted.

The pictures aren't exactly how I'd like, the water trails aren't as "ghostly" as I'd like. That might be down to the amount of water or the shutter speed I don't know yet, but for a first attempt they keep me happy.

Day 51 an Olympus viewer 2 experiment

I knew what I wanted to photograph today. I'd seen these piles of landscaping materials on the way to work every morning and knew it would make a good shot however being alongside the freeway made getting a shot difficult to say the least. So I had to set up on the frontage road on the other side of the freeway and use my PL 45-200. It was then the enormity of the task I'd set myself hit me. It was going to be one long thin panoramic. But that would give me a chance to use the new Olympus viewer software I downloaded the other week.

So there are 4 shots here, the joins seem pretty obvious but could be softened in photoshop I expect.

Rocks and Hosta Day 50

This morning I was up bright and early scrabbling around amongst the trees looking for interesting shadows to make a cracking picture to celebrate reaching day 50 on this project. But then as I left work this afternoon I saw this arrangement of some rocks and a Hosta. I thought it was too amusing to pass up.

Playtime so shoot me (p.a.d. 49)

There's a lot here to learn about in Adobe CameraRaw and Photoshop Elements 8 and if I don't mess about with it I'll never know how to use it. So today I decided to have a bit of fun and try the b/w conversion and convert my picture to infra red.

Of course it helps to know a bit about infra-red photography so you know how to get the exact effect you want.

Anyway I needed to blow off some creative steam and I feel better now...

forest floor

I suffered for this shot. I was running out of time, light was fading I was being bit by mosquitoes. I wanted to do a bit of gardening on the shot to tidy it up a bit but the skeeters were driving me crazy...

Its a bit grainy but to be honest I find the grain rather pleasing in places especially on the pine cones.

Shrub and mulch

I'm going to quit photographing plants just as soon as I can. But as you walk to the office door and are greeted with these crazy colours you can't pass it up. I think there is more to get out of these colour combinations. But I didn't have time to do much more than a grab shot as this is a high traffic area at work

Red Columbine (pad 46)

Yet another example of doing things I wouldn't normally do for the sake of the picture a day project.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the wildflower the Red Columbine. I didn't know what one was myself until this morning. I saw one while I was out on Friday at Sherburne and it took an email from my brother in law this morning to tell me what one was. So now knowing what it was I decided to try to get another picture of this plant. As you have seen from my friday shot the flower points down and I though it would be an interesting shot looking upwards in the structure of the flower. We have several of them in our back yard in the shade of the house so you'd think getting a picture would be pretty easy.

You'd be wrong. Most everywhere I tried to shoot from the eaves of the house got in the way, (the plant likes shade). It took ages to contort myself into a position where the roof didn't destroy the bokeh. Then it took at least another half an hour to get a shot I was happy with as the flower got blown all over the place in the breeze. To be honest though I wonder if this is the right shot. I've focussed on the wonderfully twisted stamen of the plant. I now wonder if focussing on the backlit petals with their delicate veins might not be a better shot. Decisions decisions... But this shot does make me happy so you'll have to wait for another day for some delicately backlit petals.

Some Holiday snaps

So here are a few more pictures from last weeks jaunt up to the North Shore of Lake Superior. On the Monday we headed up to Grand Marais and the scenic Artists Point.

above: Nice pile of stones with some bright orange lichen growing on it caught my eye immediately we stepped onto Artists Point.
above: We are clambering over Artists Point making our way down to the lighthouse there in the distance. What this picture dosen't show is the fact that 10' to my right is Grand Marais harbour and 15 yards to my left is Lake Superior
above: More Rock, Lichen and a clear blue sky at Artists point. Artists Point is a beautiful place to explore . You'd never run out of thgings to photograph.
above: The very scenic Cascade River falls. Cascade is a very appropriate name as you can see from this picture

Prairie Violet (I think) p.a.d.45

I am a changed person since starting this picture a day lark. I go out in the rain and photograph plants I hate, for example.

Then today I went out and took a shot of this what I think is a prairie violet in our back yard which I was more than happy with until I got it on the computer and looked at it closely. All of a sudden the bokeh bothered me and as much as I tried to cut the corner and hit "upload" on photobucket, I couldn't. I had to go out there and do a bit of gardening around the plant to make the bokeh less obtrusive and re shoot the image. Now some of you might still not like the bokeh but now I do and I think it really makes the flower pop. Actually, it's not so much of a pop more like a BOOM!

Back to Sherburne

So after I had done my 6 mile run, mowed the grass. It was long grass so it was a long job. With the sun out and lovely clouds in the sky I decided to head over to Sherburne Wildlife refuge and take some pictures. I'd not been over there for a while and things were decidedly dead and bleak then so I was looking forward to seeing some life. My first visit was to the trees I named "the three witches" on my first visit my how they've changed.

Next I look a tour around the wildlife drive, open now that the Eagles have finished nesting. The Wild Lupines are blooming and I was rather intrigued by the somewhat abstract view of the plant from above.
Photographing them from above was easy compared to getting a side on view as every plant I chose seemed to have ants in the shot...
After a while I drove around to the woodland walk looking for some different ant-free plants to try my abstract close up skills on. Trillium perhaps they are starting to bloom. They are one of the few Minnesota plants I can recognise. But no. No Trillium. Just this thing.
I've no idea what it is. The shot is remarkable for being hand held and manually focussed on the E-P2 whilst the plant was blowing in the breeze. Manual focus on the E-P2 is great because as soon as you turn the focus ring the viewfinder automagically zooms in to 7x magnification to aid your focussing.

So, there we are, another trip to Sherburne. Another great time.

Dunn bridge on The Rum River (p.a.d. 44)

This morning, I was out bright and early looking for a picture in the morning light but nowhere I went for a picture "spoke" to me. Them some clouds rolled in so I headed home with the thought of a six mile run ahead of me. As I drove into town I saw that the water level was well up in the river so I thought it worth investigating. As I roamed about Riverside Park a sucker hole appeared in the clouds and lit up the bridge. There we go there's my picture.

As the bridge is due for demolition and replacement with a new structure this summer the picture serves as a nice scenic memento.

Lilac in the rain (p.a.d. 43)

Harumph.

This picture a day project makes me do things I wouldn't dream of doing.

Take todays picture for example.

Lilacs.

I hate them. With a passion. Smelly weeds. I say.

Then what on Earth am I doing stood out in the rain for 30 minutes scrutinising the Lilac blossoms for a picture? I wouldn't do this in the dry, but the wet? Anything for a picture...

Not a bad picture at that...

Half a barn. (p.a.d. 42)

Bit of an oddball shot for Wednesdays contribution to the pad. On the way home from Duluth I was struck by this scene. I don't know why. Was it the half a barn? Was it the bright red end of the barn firing up as the sun shone on it? Or was it that plain old weird sky in the background? I have no idea. But when an opportunity like this strikes you take it.

A photograph is a photograph

So, on Tuesday we visited the gallery of Jim Brandenburg in Ely, MN. It was a treat to see so many great pictures. The last time I saw an exhibition of his work was for his "Chased by the light" book over at the U of M many years ago.

However, I did see something there that sort of disturbed me. There was a selection of his photographs that had been reproduced as Giclee prints on canvas so they took on the look of an oil painting. Now you're quite welcome to disagree with me but a photograph is a photograph. It shouldn't masquerade as an oil painting. No matter how much the subject matter looks like it could be an oil painting.

Just my twopenn'orth

Driftwood and Rocks (p.a.d.41)

I was looking forward to today. For today we headed over to Ely, MN to visit the gallery of world famous nature photographer Jim Brandenburg. The weather was dull and overcast so I knew there would be no opportunities for landscapes with beautiful blue skies in them. But this presented me with the opportunity to concentrate on individual elements in the scene. To that end there were many, many photo ops. So many in fact I doubted we'd get home we stopped so many times and back tracked to get a picture. When we returned to our lodgings I couldn't select a picture for the pad. So I left it to my wife to select one. She chose this one of some driftwood and rocks near Lake Kishwashiki (spelling?) I reckon she made a good choice.

Split Rock Lighthouse (p.a.d. 40)

As we are away on the North Shore of Lake Superior for a few days there was ever only going to be one subject for todays picture a day. Split Rock Lighthouse.

Tranquility (p.a.d. 39)

I awoke up at the lake on Sunday morning ready to do a 12 mile run (and no I didn't have to use the outhouse) and was greeted by the glorious sight of mist burning off the lake. The lake was mirror calm and I knew I had to take a picture. The mist was burning off very quickly however and by the time I got my camera and made it down to the lakeshore the scene infront of we was quite different to the one I originally saw. It still says tranquility though I think.

Outhouse (p.a.d. 38)

Few things say "Up at the lake" more than the outhouse.

Really a vestige of the past more than anything as modern septic systems and waste management make them a bit of an anachronism. But many folks keep them "just in case" and they will get used a few times a year. Owners individualise them with painting and decorations. This is the one at my in-laws lake place.

Pot-Pourri (pad 37)

It's raining out there been raining since I got up. It's going to start snowing soon.

Snow in May.

So today I am resigned to shooting some kind of still life inside. That's tough. Still life takes lots of thought, technique and equipment I don't have so I plod on and try my best shooting in the cold natural daylight of a rainy day. I tried half a dozen different subjects and angles and treatments before settling on this.

This pot-pourri is actually the remains of the first bunch of roses I sent my soon to be wife on our first Valentines day. So there's a little added backstory for you

A nature lesson (p.a.d. 36)

So after yesterdays experimentation. Something a little more normal.

I've often wondered just how pine needles grow and over the past few weeks I've had a chance to discover how.

What I thought was a baby pine cone (like in p.a.d. 22) would appear to be a pod from which the needles spring from. Perhaps some of the pods do turn into pine comes I know not. I'll be keeping a close eye on the pine needles for a while.

Anyhow this picture illustrates the development quite well with some pods burst through and one not quite done with.

Messing around again

I'm soon going to loose count on these pad numbers I think...

So to todays experiment for thats what it is. There was a bit of planning involved here as the weather forecast for the day was unsavoury and I didn't expect to get outside and photograph.

So I was looking at the top of this lampshade the other day and I thought that the framework at there might make some kind of interesting composition. So I took the picture first thing this morning and messed around with it when I got in from work.

The file is a RAW original and I can't tell you exactly what I've done but the most important thing I did was set the clarity at -100 and I really liked the effect that gave by softening everything up. This was quite the opposite to what I was planning to do with it. I thought I'd be saturating it and increasing the contrast to make the centre "matchstick man" stand out but for some reason the opposite appealed to me.

Anyway I'm quite pleased with it. You don't have to like it but if it makes you think a bit then thats OK

Reflections (part 2)

Sorry, that title sounds like a Kenny G instrumental...
I just realised I haven't publicly reflected on the first month of the picture a day project.
I bored the folks at the mu-43 forum with some thoughts about it but now I've had a few more days to reflect a bit more.
There were good times and bad times.
Incredible highs when I produced a picture that received a positive reaction even though I thought I was aimlessly messing about. Then there was the lowest of lows when faced with the choice of cheating on myself and submitting a picture from a previous day I submitted something taken on the day despite how dull it was. I'd say that 95% of the time I've been happy with the shots I've taken.
Do I have some favourites? The woodpecker holes in the tree are a particlaur favourite as I'd never seen such a thing up close. What with April being a month filled with great weather I got outside a lot more and got to photograph a lot of nature. Which is not anything I've done before. Many of the shots I feel would be better served by having a macro lens but you can't have everything. That's not to say I don't like my flower shots. I'm proud of all of them. I'm just being overly picky I suppose.
If I've learned on thing from this first month it's more about nature than the craft of photography. Because I've never actually walked around and really looked at flowers and trees and seen how they are growing and blooming. Like when I was following the flowering cherry for a week.
So what does the future hold? How long will I be able to keep going? Who knows. Carrying a camera is easy for me. Seeing the picture is pretty easy too. I hope I have the time to keep going for another month and longer.

New light through old window p.a.d. 34

As I was getting ready for work one morning last week I had cause to go into the garage and was greeted with this sight of the sunrise shining through the window. Alas I didn't have my camera or the time to take a picture then. So I had to wait another six days for the conditions to be favourable for the shot. I think the six day wait was worth it.

Hangars, Princeton Airport (pad 33)

This is a scene I've had my eyes on for a while. A selection of old hangars at the airport. I was originally planning a closer in view but then I saw the marvellous clouds working their way into the shot and couldn't pass them up

Some reflections

I've had the camera for some 6 weeks now and completed a month of pictures for my picture a day project. So its time to sit and reflect a while.
Firstly the camera. I couldn't be happier with it. I'm now getting used to the controls and the small 3-way control dial that seemed so small when I first got the camera doesn't seem all that bad. In fact I can quite easily change settings while looking in the viewfinder.
Oh the viewfinder. It's a gem. I'd be lost without it. Several times on the p.a.d. project I've found myself in situations where setting the camera up made using a conventional camera quite awkward. With the EVF I just tilt it and bingo! Viewing is easier.
I've spent the first 6 weeks exclusively using the 14-42mm lens. Pictures are sharp colours are great. It's an excellent lens.
Two weeks ago I uploaded firmware 1.1 to the camera and did notice an improvement in the performance with the autofocus.
I've now added the Panasonic 45-200 lens to my outfit and though I've not had much chance to use it yet, the results seem pretty good, certainly sharp. The one thing I have noticed with it though is the sluggish autofocus in dull conditions. The duller the light the slower it gets. Is this all down to the lens or is some of this to do with the camera? I don't know. But the lens is certainly fit for purpose, witness the picture from May 1st.
So six weeks in I can't complain. I'm taking some pretty good pictures. Though I do miss not having a swish looking DSLR strapped around my neck. But then I think how heavy that would be and I don't miss it anymore.

Not as easy as I first thought (p.a.d. 32)

Running 20 miles is tough. Pretty well saps your energy for the entire day. So please excuse me if I don't make all that much effort today. I was out at 6:30 this morning plodding around town. It was beautiful. Blue skies, low sunlight. Even the Taco John looked like a good subject. But it's now the afternoon. I'm somewhat recovered and the clouds have rolled in. So the best I can do is to hobble the 30 yards to the building up the road. With its striking evergreen on its corner, it's a subject I've had my eye on for a while.

But when I got there and set up the camera a whole host of problems appeared. The evergreen is not lined up perfectly with the corner of the the building. A little bit to the left and a window with an air conditioner in it appears. A little to the right and a tap/faucet and some pipes appear. Most annoying. This is about the best I could do and now the downpipe starts to annoy me. But I'm too tired to do anything about it

Northstar commuter Rail (p.a.d. 31)

And so another month begins. Will I make it through the 31 days of May with a picture a day? Hope so. It's quite fun.

One of my favourite subjects to try and photograph are trains. I'm a real trainspotter. But because of the original slow autofocus of of the E-P2 I'd held of photographing trains at speed. But now I have a firmware update as well as a panasonic 45-200mm zoom lens. I wanted to have a go. So a quick trip down to Elk River netted this neat shot of the Northstar commuter rail on one of its Saturday turns.

Notable for being a picture of a double headed train. On a 4 car commuter train this is overkill but the second loco Northstar 504 was dead and UTA #12 was doing the work.