This is my daughter hanging over the couch today! Day 8 of 366.

ISO1000 ƒ/4 T1/40

So here’s the saved JPG from the RAW file:

I liked this, but I decided to go with sepia tones and to crop the image square as well. So here’s a screenshot of my edits in Aperture

Here’s another image from today I thought was fun:

See all the fun you can have hanging over the couch!

Good friends of ours have two dogs Bella and Mitzy, the Maltese sisters. Whenever we go over for a visit my daughter wants to play with them. So today we got to play with the dogs, so I grabbed a few pics along the way.

ISO 1000 ƒ/4 T 1/100

Post processing was handled in Aperture(Mac App Link) as I was pleased with its B&W conversion. Here’s the saved jpg from the RAW file:

I liked the lighting but wanted to clean it up a bit so here’s a screenshot of my saved edits in Aperture:

As you’ll notice I did do a bit of dodging to her face and i burned the background just a bit as well in addition to the vignette, sorry I haven’t figured out to show burning and dodging in a still image. Maybe someday I’ll get brave enough to do a video screen capture.

Here are some other captures from today as well:

Had a few minutes at home today and noticed these tulips in the kitchen window. The light was fairly harsh at the time I took this photo so I decided to try a bit of processing to see what I could come up with.

ISO 1000 ƒ/7.1 T 1/2000 at 62mm

Here’s the initial jpg saved from the RAW file:

So I didn’t do a whole lot in Aperture but I did do some minor levels adjustment and added a bit of contrast as seen in the Screenshot below:

Which led to this image:

So then I opened the file up in OnOneSoftware’s Perfect Effects 3, which is included in the Perfect Photo Suite

I added 2 effects one Snappy Warm and then I added a new layer and added the Polachrome filter and adjusted the opacity to 50% on the top layer to soften it just a bit…

Tulips in black and white always intrigue me, while I love the color of tulips, there is something about the soft textures of their petals that comes out when the color is removed.

Came home from work and it was dark but I found one of my kids Piggy Bank’s. So I decided to see what I could do with it. Here’s my final image, Note if click on the image a larger image can be viewed :

ISO 100 ƒ/2.8 T 1/40 at 50mm with an off camera flash unit to camera right bounced of the slanted ceiling.

Here’s the saved JPG file from the RAW file, note I use Aperture for my initial RAW processing

A tad bit dull, but again I slightly underexposed the image to help remove the background clutter, so here are my edits in Aperture(Mac App Link):

From here I opened the file up in Perfect Photo Effects 3 from OnOneSoftware’s Perfect Photo Suite and used the Glow>Deep Forest effect for the final image. I think a few edits have been helpful.

Sadly, this piggy bank is empty.

Busy day at work today, left only some time to play with Kitchen Utensils. I have no idea where this spoon came from, but I liked the various colors, so I decided to play around with Depth of Field.

ISO 1000 ƒ3.5 t 1/30, plus an off camera flash bounced off the ceiling, placed at camera right

Here’s the saved jpg from the RAW:

A little washed out, so a few quick edits in Aperture(Mac App Link), a slight crop and a few other things as noted in the screen shot below:

Today’s image is not the greatest I’ve ever created, but I enjoy the challenge of attempting to make an interesting image of a wooden spoon!

So I got an idea to try some cross lighting today. So I got home tonight and grabbed one of the many toys around my house and grabbed a flash and used a cheap Cowboy Studio off camera flash trigger to light the ball.

ISO 1000 ƒ5.6 T 1/160

I purposely underexposed the image just a touch so that I didn’t pick up the table in the frame. Here’s the RAW image:

Kind of drab and dull but a start… So I did some quick edits in Aperture(Mac App Link):

Which provides a good start:

So then I wanted to remove the color so the eye was lead to the geometry, so into OnOneSoftware’s Photo Suite 6:

Then back into Aperture for a final crop and some slight sharpening on the ball. I think it turned out better than I was expecting.

Even though today was a holiday here in the USA, I went to work for most of the day, but headed home a bit earlier than I usually do. I found this “Hand Cultivator” in the kids sandbox. I just always called these and other hand garden tools “Trowels” but a quick check at Homedepot.com(this link will show both a trowel and a hand cultivator) and I discovered that a Trowel is a Trowel and this is a Hand cultivator. I guess it could be called a hand rake as well. Ok, enough, it’s a Garden tool that has turned into a sandbox toy.

ISO 1000 ƒ/4 T 1/160 at 70 mm

Here’s the original Saved jpg of the Raw file:

Here’s how the image looks after a few quick edits in Apple’s Aperture(Mac App Link):

That looks better, but I wanted to see what a ground glass effect would do to the blurred areas. For that I jumped into OnOneSoftware’s Photo Suite 6:

So I added to filters on two different layers. The Sunglow-Glow and the Ground Glass- Texturizer I adjusted the opacity of the texturizer to 61%.

Now I know the difference between a trowel and a hand cultivator.

Spent a great New Years Day in the backyard tossing the football around. My son loves to get his football jersey on and helmet and then punt the ball to me and if I catch it I’m supposed to run it back for a touchdown! Here’s my first photo posted of 2012.

ISO 1000 F/2.8 T1/3200

Here’s the original Raw File(saved as a JPG for posting)

Looked pretty good but I wanted to focus the eyes on the nose of the ball…

So I played around with the sliders a bit in Aperture(Mac App Link) which led to the final image.. I think it’s an improvement.

Yesterday I finished my second Photo a day project(Project365). Back in 2005 I took a picture a day for 16 months(Link to that gallery: http://www.pbase.com/digitald3/pad). Finally stopping a few months after the birth of my son. The challenges of parenting for the first time led me in a different direction. Last New Years day 2011 at the spur of the moment I decided to try a 365 project again. I had been storing photos on Smugmug and decided to use my Smugmug account for my second try. Smugmug is a great place to store your photos, a great family company with unlimited storage for your photos at a reasonable price, plus you can sell your photos if you choose to do so. Here’s a link for a few bucks off your Smugmug Subscription. Smugmug has communities, some active and some not so active, I found the Daily Photo community to be quite active and supportive through the year. Some people in that community are posting photos daily some are actively taking a new photo a day…I prefer to store the images on Smugmug because I pay for it, I believe they care about my photos, when you store you photos on a social network, if that network falls apart or shuts down you photos may go with them. So I mainly post to Smugmug then cross post to my various networks.

Half way through my year Google launched Google+. Google+ is a great place for photographers. There are project365 groups and theme photo days which can be helpful finding something to shoot and a great way to meet other photographers. You can find me on Google+ at https://plus.google.com/u/0/100662758486338431135/ Google+ is a great place to store photos as well, it mainly piggy backs into Google Picasa Photo storage system. What I store in Picasa, I also store in Smugmug.

So here are some tips that I found helpful during the year.

1. Include your kids or family. My kids really enjoyed getting involved helping to set up shots with their toys etc…

2. Find a community of fellow Photo a Day photographers, i.e. Smugmug’s Daily Photo community or Google+‘s variety of circles. Share your work in those communities and on Facebook and Twitter!

3. Buy flowers regularly.

4. Have your camera with you around sunset! Often the clouds or sky are enough to capture something interesting

5. Carry a camera with your wherever you go! I used my iPhone for about 15 shots out of my 365.

6. Let Post Processing be your friend. Black and white images can be a great save for late at night shots of your kids toys.

7. Take walks

8. It’s your art, somedays you’ll like it, somedays you won’t, it’s ok… move on.

9. I found it helpful to make separate monthly galleries as the year moved on. I could celebrate the end of a month and move on to the next. I made video slideshows using Animoto of most months.

10. Make prints of your favorite shots through the year. Celebrate your work!

Happy New Year 2012!