DAY TWO HUNDRED FIFTY SIX

My friend and I took a long drive and I stopped when we reached Highway 176 to take a photo of the day.

Spoiler: The sky was blown out so I replaced it with the sky from another photo.

DAY TWO HUNDRED THIRTY EIGHT

These two precious kids belong to two of my friends in San Francisco. Sam is 14 years old and Bindi is 5 years old. My friends have a set of beautiful black and white photos in their home hanging over their couch so I decided to make this photo black and white as a special treat for them.

DAY TWO HUNDRED TWENTY TWO

I had my bubble busted tonight twice! I had two shots in mind and a fence stopped me from taking one and security stopped me from taking the other. But you know what, I've got more bubbles and they can't pop them all!

Strobist Info:
- LP160, 50mm, 1/2 power, thru shoot thru umbrella, 1 ft away, 3 ft high, behind camera
- Fired with Alienbees Cybersyncs

DAY ONE HUNDRED THREE

This picture almost didn't happen tonight. My camera battery was dead and my cell phone's battery is still completely dead. I thought I charged my camera's battery earlier today only to go back to the charger to realize that I didn't completely push the battery all the way in the charger. Good grief! So I push it into the charger for 10 mins, took it out, popped it in my camera, and grabbed this pic.

DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY FOUR

I really wanted to do a portrait this evening after reading David Hobby's blog but after brainstorming took so long, I decided to just do a quick one of myself.

Strobist Info
- SB-600, thru DIY 18" beauty dish, 35mm, full power, camera right, 5ft tall, 3 ft away
- LP160, thru shoot thru umbrella, 24mm, full power, camera left, 6ft tall, 4 ft away

DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY EIGHT

Today, I went to the harbor to get some lobster tails and I walked out on the breakwater and took out my camera while trying to avoid the high waves shooting over it only to press the shutter button and nothing happened! I looked at the back and my camera and saw 3 words that are able to sink my heart every time I see them if I don't have my camera bag with me, "No SDcard detected." :-O

So I pulled out my trusty Droid X and processed this photo using HDR Toning in PS with Monochromatic Artistic setting.

DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY TWO

I received this bottle of Sunstone wine as payment for the family portrait I did last month. I'm not usually a red wine drinker but I absolutely love this wine! I'm almost out so I've got to get some more. There are a few recipes I'd love to try it in.

I will be releasing a link to view pictures from the family portrait session soon.

Strobist Info:
- SB-600, thru 24" softbox, 1 ft away, 4 ft high, 35mm, camera left

DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY

We've been having a good 'ole time - me, my macro lens, and my speedlight. We've become quite close in these past few photos. My macro lens and speedlight were tired of being overused for macro shots of water drops and I became extremely busy, distracted, and often grew bored. Then we went out on a date to rekindle our love for one another and I began to see us in a different light and I'm thinking my creative juices are starting to flow again or at least I hope.

While this shot is very simple, the thought process behind looking for different angles, getting the right light, and getting great bokeh was enough to make me remember why I love this pair all over again. :)

Strobist Info:
- SB-600, fired from on camera, TTL BL mode

DAY ONE HUNDRED FIFTY FIVE

We could all use a little change in our life sometimes and right now I feel like I want to shake things up a bit but I'm not exactly sure what. I'm not worried because I'm sure it will come to me. One change I know I would like to make is to get a picture up before the end of the night. I'm usually such a late poster.

I took a page from Matthew Coughlin's book and used two different fonts for the text. I like the technique and feel that it adds to the expression of the words.

DAY ONE HUNDRED THIRTY FIVE

I did my first family shoot today and now I'm processing pictures, not to mention the pictures I have to process from my friend's birthday. Needless to say, I'm a little behind on photostreams but I promise I'll catch up soon.

DAY EIGHTY THREE

I got this shot without picking a flower because these are artifical flowers. I llike flowers and love photographing real ones but I just don't really like picking flowers. It's something about cutting them off of their stems that makes me feel like I'm ending a life. Call me sensitive but I cringe if I do it so I get florist to do my dirty work. :)

Strobist Info:
SB-600 bare, 85mm, 1/64th power, camera right

DAY SEVENTY SEVEN

I waited all day today to take a photo under the full moon. I was so excited when night came! Then, I walked outside and saw that my chances of actually seeing the full moon long enough to take some long exposure shots were slim to none. I took three shots and only liked the composition of this one but didn't like the shadows cast on the ground from me, my tripod, and the buildings behind me so I knew I had to do some work on this shot. I have never seen selective coloring on a landscape/seascape before so I decided, WTH, and went for it!

That's what my Project 365 is all about - experimenting to see what works and what doesn't and most of all taking chances.

DAY THREE

Gosh, I really wrecked my brain trying to figure out what to photograph today. Then I remembered that I needed to wash my hair today so I figured why not have some hair flipping fun. The process pretty much went like this:

- Wash my hair in the shower
- Wrap my hair in a t-shirt so I don't drip water on all my gear
- Put some of the world's hardest water in a bottle to keep rewetting my hair
- Set up the camera and the flash
- Take some test shots
- Rewet my hair
- Flip my hair over and over again while pressing the remote
- Ignore the pain from my hair slapping me in the face
- Stand straight up and stop feeling dizzy before walking over to the camera to check the shots

I couldn't wait to get back to the computer to post process my fun hair flipping shots. I hardly ever delete a shot in camera (unless it's an obvious flop) because all the photos look much different on a computer screen than they do on the mini camera displays. Even after all of that, I still wasn't pleased with the shots. Go figure!

I had to take a break from the photos, come back and take another look at them before I really started loving them...I blame it on only getting a few hours of sleep last night. So I needed time to recharge before I could throw myself back into the post processing.

I went for hard light for this photo. The SB-600 was positioned directly to the left of the camera and set at 80mm at 1/4 power. It was also fitted with a snoot. In photoshop, I brought up the shadows a bit and added a cooling filter and a black and white filter.