Best of the 365 Blog – February 2017

Things got back to normal this month. I took advantage of the relative calm to put the new phone through its photographic paces.

Anna Marie, looking serious and photogenic as usual.

iPhone 7

Remember last November when we found out ladybugs weren’t all that cute close up? Apparently Arby’s reubens aren’t improved, either.

iPhone 7

The warm weather prompted us to replace the grill. They look so good when they’re new.

iPhone 7

This bit of carpet scrap and dead leaf arranged themselves into an interesting configuration.

iPhone 7

And these pens in a rack made an interesting pattern.

iPhone 7

Even without much exposure control, the iPhone can still get some dramatic sky shots.

iPhone 7

This is one of the blog’s most popular posts. That’s at least in part because I Facebooked it with the comment, “Draw me like one of your French cats.”

iPhone 7

An abandoned chew toy on the floor of Amigos on State.

iPhone 7

Best of the 365 Blog – January 2017

New year, new beginning. Or at least that’s what it seemed like until the middle of the month found me in the hospital. The adventures never cease.

New Years Day as usual found us out at the ballpark for our annual ceremony.

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/160, f/6.3, ISO 100

Winter got off to a warm start, with more rain than snow.

Nikon D7000, 400mm (18-55), 1/30, f/5.3, ISO 800

At the Zum soap shop. If you’ve got exposed pipes, you can at least paint them attractively. This was one of the last photos I took with my old phone.

iPhone 5s

And this was one of the first with the new phone. Our deepest snow so far [added note: this turned out to be the deepest snow we got all winter].

iPhone 7

My pictures didn’t amount to much for the three days I was in the hospital. Fortunately Amy got some good pictures. This one’s the light fixture in the ER.

iPhone 7 Plus, photo by Amy Whitehead

Local meteorologists predicted a huge ice storm, which fortunately didn't materialize. All we got were a few icicles.

Nikon D7000, 36mm (18-55), 1/80, f/5.0, ISO 400

The aftermath of my stay at the hospital left me with several new pills, two kinds of insulin injections, and a blood testing meter.

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/30, f/2.8, ISO 640

An array of sauce cups I photographed while waiting to pick up some carry out.

iPhone 7

Unblogged Favorites of 2016

The past year was unusually active for me, at least behind the camera. I took a ton of pictures during a trip to Idaho in March, and June saw the start of a 365 project that is still going strong (fingers crossed). Many of 2016’s unblogged favorites were taken shortly before or after blogged photos, narrowly missing the cut for one reason or another.

Nikon D7000, 28mm (28-200), 1/250, f/8, ISO 160

Photos like this one are a great example. The mountains in Idaho provided no end of opportunities for dramatic landscapes. It was hard to choose one over the others. Indeed, I could probably fill this entire post with nothing but stuff from that one-week trip.

Nikon D7000, 18mm (18-55), 1/250, f/8, ISO 100

Here’s another case in point. This photo was taken just a few seconds and just a few feet from one that ended up in the Google Tour about the trip (as well as my portfolio). The other one gives a better view of the lake and the mountains, but this one provides a better view of the beach.

Nikon D7000, 250mm (75-300), 1/640, f/5.6, ISO 800

Early in the baseball season we got to see the guys get their World Series rings from 2015. The view from our upper-deck seats isn’t always the best for photography, but this one came out okay.

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/400, f/5.6, ISO 1600

In June I was doing a 30-day, subject-specific photo challenge. On the day that found me at a party at the lake the subject was “portrait.” But I couldn’t let this one go unblogged forever. I love the heat ripples in the blurry background above the flames. And if you spend too much time looking at the fire, it starts to look a little like a Xenomorph from Alien.

Nikon D7000, 105mm (28-200), 1/100, f/5.3, ISO 6400

The trip to KU’s Natural History Museum produced a lot of good shots. These trilobites were barely edged out by a big fish.

iPhone 5s

I hate to be this petty, but I’m still steamed about the Body Worlds exhibit’s arbitrary and poorly-publicized rule against SLRs. Look at how blown out the highlights are in this phone photo. That would have been so easy to correct for when shooting or to fix in post.

Nikon D7000, 135mm (28-200), 1/640, f/6.3, ISO 200

The Fourth of July is always such a good photo op.

Nikon D3000, 20mm (18-55), HDR

An October weekend in southern Missouri yielded some good subjects. This particular one is my only HDR piece from the trip. It was hard to get the rushing water just right while at the same time losing neither the brightly-lit rocks or the shadowed, mossy background. That justified dragging the tripod along.

Best of the 365 Blog – December 2016

December was a little catch-as-catch-can. Between the emotional fallout from the election and the usual end-of-semester exhaustion, I wasn’t focusing on photography like I usually do. Keeping up with the 365 project was the best I could manage. So here’s what I got:

An absinthe spoon in silhouette:

Nikon D7000, 42mm (35-80), 1/800, f/4.2, ISO 800

The resident cat at the Dusty Bookshelf in Lawrence:

iPhone 5s

Snow on a table at the college:

iPhone 5s

Jenny making the Jenny Face:

Nikon D7000, 48mm (35-80), 1/80, f/4.5, ISO 400

A dramatic-looking rabbit:

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/125, f/16, ISO 100, flash

Christmas Eve in the drive-thru of our favorite Chinese restaurant:

iPhone 5s

An amazingly-detailed toy car (from the Supernatural TV series):

Nikon D7000, 80mm (35-80), 1/125, f/8, ISO 100, flash

Cat scratches on a railing:

iPhone 5s

Best of the 365 Blog – November 2016

November was quite a month. The election and its aftermath distracted from routines such as the 365 project. But I still managed to keep up.

On the first day of the month I hauled out a macro lens and took some pictures of ladybugs. Oddly they aren’t as cute when you get this close to them.

Nikon D7000, 80mm (35-80), 1/400, f/5.6, ISO 400, cropped and rotated

Last month I blogged a photo of one of the college’s new “Learning Commons” signs. Thus I figured I should include an image of the sign in place.

iPhone 5s

On Election Day I paused for a moment after voting to photograph the polling place. I thought it might turn out to be a historic occasion. Unfortunately I was right.

iPhone 5s

Time to recycle! I liked the combination of the bottle chaos in the foreground and the fall foliage framed by the window on the other side of the bin.

iPhone 5s

On the 13th I got a shot at a lunar event. The moon was unusually close to the earth. I didn’t have much luck with surface details, but at least the leaves created an interesting effect.

Nikon D7000, 300mm (75-300), 10 sec., f/25, ISO 100

This is one of my favorite photos of the year. I love the color patterns on the leaf, a small bit of beauty of the sort we all too often walk right past on the sidewalk without ever noticing it.

iPhone 5s

Or sometimes it’s something interesting that you notice because you’re stuck in a drive-thru with nothing better to do than take random photos.

iPhone 5s

Of course the leaves look pretty when they’re still on the tree, too.

iPhone 5s

Best of the 365 Blog – October 2016

October proved to be a reasonably good month for photography. It started with the year’s last trip to the ballpark.

iPhone 5s

One Saturday morning it rained hard enough to get the excess bubbling up from the drains.

iPhone 5s

Every year I promise myself that I’m going to get a good set of darkroom work photos. And every year I neglect it until it’s too late. At least this year I got a few photos in the darkroom, including this odd angle.

iPhone 5s

At mid-month we took a weekend trip to southern Missouri. The lobby in the hotel had a cooler full of water and fruit.

Nikon D7000, 82mm (28-200), 1/40, f/5, ISO 1600

The next day we went prowling around the back roads, splashing in creeks and the like.

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/2000, f/5.6, ISO 2500

After an eternity of promising to get a burn permit and get rid of some yard waste, this year we finally did it.

Nikon D3000, 55mm (18-55), 1/160, f/6.3, ISO 100

The combination of film and photo students inevitably leads to mishaps, such as this strip that was exposed to light before being properly loaded in a developing tank.

iPhone 5s

And of course, Happy Halloween!

iPhone 5s

Best of the 365 Blog – September 2016

If you go back and check the dates on these photos, you’ll note that they’re all from the second half of the month. It’s so much easier to stay photographically active when work makes me get out of the house with a camera in hand.

This first shot is from the once-a-semester trek to the college’s flower garden:

Nikon D3000, 40mm (18-55), 1/320, f/9, ISO 100

On my way into work, I happened to spot a heron hanging out in one of the drainage ditches. On the one hand, it would have been nice to have had a longer lens with me. On the other hand, at least I had an SLR.

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/500, f/5.6, ISO 800

I neglected to bring the usual model in for the Intro to Photography class session on studio lighting. Fortunately we were in the 3D art room, so I managed to grab a simple subject off of a shelf. The gold filter in this shot is a nice addition.

Nikon D7000, 200 (28-200), 1/80, f/6.3, ISO 2500

There’s something about the extra bright lights of gas stations that makes for interesting photos.

iPhone 5s

The waning days of the baseball season were upon us (especially with the Royals having no postseason prospects). This is the view from behind our seats.

iPhone 5s

Here’s a lucky catch. This sign was awaiting installation on the newly-christened Learning Commons at the college. Catching it on the ground made for an unlikely-to-repeat-itself moment.

iPhone 5s

Sometimes one needs to stop and take a picture even when running late for class. The jumbled shadows of the table and chairs was too good not to photograph.

iPhone 5s

This huge spider built a huge web in our back yard.

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/125, f/32, ISO 2500