Day 31.. I can't believe January is gone!!

Wow, where has the month gone? I can't believe that I am 1/12 the way throuth the year already. Time really flies when you are having fun. For today's picture, I thought I would break out the nostalgia. This is an old record player that has been sitting around unused for many years. I actually still have one connected to my stereo and still in use. I guess I was a little behind times but I didn't have a CD player until about 3 years ago. I think that records and record players just had more character than CD's. If you listen closely, you can hear Steve Miller singing.

Day 30

On day 30, this was all about textures and angles. As a guy who spent most of his time with a camera taking landscape and nature photos, this PAD project has been particularly fun as it has forced me to expand my horizons and experiment with some different things. After all, how many landscapes can a person do in a limited area without taking what is basically the same picture over and over. This has given me a chance to play a little with abstracts and with studio type shots. One thing I have learned is that I have a lot to learn. Something I plan on doing this year as my skills hopefully improve is to revisit some of the shots and redo them to see if the results can be improved. I think it will be interesting to compare two pictures of the same scene taken several months and several hundreds of shots later. See you tomorrow.

Day 29

Today's photo was again a quikie. Matt and I played golf today so after that and a short afternoon nap, my time was limited. I originally was going for a shot of these two birds that live on our entertainment center. Reba had a candle burning by them and I thought it looked interesting. As I was looking into the viewfinder, I noticed the photo of the kids of Reba's oldest friend. A little location adjustment and here it is. I have decided not to waste time with all the info on shutter speed and aperture etc. because I'm sure nobody really cares. If by some chance you do have a question on one, leave a comment and I'll answer.

Day 28

For the few of you who come here periodically, you may recall last week when I mentioned that Reba wanted to buy some paint. Well, I was able to put off painting for a few days but it all caught up with me today. Since that is what I did all day, it seemed only natural that the POD on my PAD should reflect that.

Minolta Z1
Focal Length 12.6mm (35 mm equiv-82mm)
Shutter Speed 1/3
Aperture f 3.2
ISO 50

Day 27, Better Late...

Hey. The boy came home for the weekend so I had limited time yesterday. I did take some photos but had no time to post. Therefore I am a little late with my Friday pic. In keeping with my plan to not miss a day and to only post photos taken on the proper day, sometimes I don't have a lot to choose from and this was one of those days. This was taken in Reba's curio cabinet of a tiny little vase.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300 Lens
Focal Length 90mm (35mm equiv-135mm)
Shutter Speed 1/20
Aperture f 4.5
ISO 100

Day 26, Heads or Tails?

Today's shot is another that I have been thinking about for a while trying to figure out how to pull it off. Do you know how hard it is to hold a camera and shoot while flipping a coin? Tune in tomorrow for another entry in the PAD.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300 Lens
Focal Length 60mm (35mm equiv-90mm)

Day 25

Hello again. It was another beautiful winter day in Florida, 70's and sunny. I know that people who live up in the north can get some really cool pictures this time of year but that's OK. I'll stick with the weather here. My mother had a crystal necklace that was given to my wife. She hung it from the mirror in the Jeep. Since I have been driving the Jeep for a couple of weeks, (Reba has decided she likes the car better now) I have been looking at this necklace catching the light every day. I finally stopped at a local lake today to take a picture of it with the sunset as a background. I cloned out the chain and adjusted levels a little.

Minolta DiMage Z1
Focal Length 16mm (35mm equiv- 105)
Shutter speed 1/160
Aperture f 5
ISO 50

Day 24

Back to some color after a couple days of B&W. I don't know if explaining what I did here would do a bit of good because unless you were familiar with what you see, it would be too hard to explain. If you are familiar with it, then you will know what it is. I bet you wish now that you had bought one of these when they came out! See you tomorrow.


Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300 Lens
Focal length 200mm (35mm equiv-300mm)
Shutter speed 2"
Aperture f 19
ISO 100

Day 23

Monday, if we could figure out how to start the week on Tuesday though, I guess Tuesday would be as bad as Mondays are now. Tonight I had an idea that I have wanted to try for a few days. Have you ever had an plan for something and you have the whole process figured out in your head, then when you try to pull it off it looks like crap? That is what happened to me tonight. I had planned a long exposure of a clock face with the hands being turned manually to make it look like time was passing really fast. Unfortunately, it was going so fast that you couldn't see the hands. Oh well, scratch that. Next idea. Does anyone remember the old Dr. Pepper ads. (1o,2 and 4)? That inspired this picture. This one is actually a composite of 3 pictures, one with the hands at 10, one at 2 etc.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300 lens
Focal Length 50mm (35 mm equiv-75mm)
Shutter Speed 1"
Aperture 9.7
ISO 100

Day 22, Back to Work Tomorrow

Hi. Reba had a fun idea today. She thought it would be great to go buy some stuff to paint the living room. For some reason I had a brain cramp and didn't come up with an excuse like "It's not good to paint in the winter." or "I heard that paint is going on sale next month." Therefore it looks like I will be busy this week after work. We did go get some cloth today for me to use as backdrops, so expect to see at least a couple indoor type shots coming up. Today's picture comes to you from Enterprise, Florida. This is a park on a canal off of Lake Monroe. It looks a little cold and bleak in this picture but it was nearly 80 degrees and sunny.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300 Lens
Focal Length 28mm (35mm equiv-42mm)
Shutter 1/750
Aperture 6.7
ISO 100

Have a great week.

Day 21

Today we took a trip to Daytona to see an Egyptian exhibit at the museum. Reba's dad went with us. He was in Egypt for a few months back in the 70's. Many of the places pictured in the museum he had seen in person. It was all right but did not have near as much stuff as I had expected. Overall though it was a nice outing. I think the most disappointing thing was that they would not allow cameras in the museum. Oh, well, what do ya do? After the museum and lunch at Steve's Famous Diner (personally I had never heard of it), we took a drive down A1A just to see what we could see. For anyone not familiar with the area, at that point A1A runs along the beach about 100-200 yards from the water. It is amazing how little ocean you can see now from the road. So many condos!! At the end of the road is a little town called Ponce Inlet. There is a lighthouse there and that area became the subject of my PAD. The picture I chose is of a window about halfway up the lighthouse. For some reason, I seem to like to take pictures of windows and doors and I had to take this one. I had a few others of the lighthouse and from around the marina that I liked. If you would like to see them you can at
http://www.photographybydennis.photosite.com/PonceInletJan21/

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300 lens
Focal Length 300mm (35 mm equiv-450mm)
Shutter Speed 1/250
Aperture 6.7
ISO 100

Thanks for stopping by.

Day 20, I love Fridays

It's Friday again!! due to all the holidays recently, I haven't had to work a full five day week very often since before Christmas. I guess this will all change now since I won't get another holiday from work until Memorial Day. I may just have to take some vacation.
Tonight, I wanted to try something with some color. I went driving around the area looking for something to fit the bill. That's when I ran across this little pizza place in a strip mall near here and thought that it looked interesting. I want to work on night shots anyway so it was a perfect opportunity.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
Focal Length 250mm (35mm equiv-375mm)
Shutter Speed 1/200
Aperture 6.7
ISO 3200

I hope you enjoy. Have a great Saturday and I'll see you tomorrow.

Day 19

Welcome back! I tried a few things tonight without much luck but finally came upon this bookcase. Reba is a big fan of a certain author (I guess it's not too hard to figure out who). I thought that it made kind of an interesting shot. I was not really happy at first when I saw the book by another author in the picture but was informed by Reba that Stephen King by any other name ...

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Promaster 19-35mm lens
Focal Length 28mm (35mm equiv-42mm)
Shutter Speed 1/10
Aperture f 4
ISO 100

See ya' tomorrow.

Day 18

Hey again. Another beautiful Wednesday. I thought I would try another "studio" shot today. I took this using two candles and a mirror, offset so you could see one candle and the reflection of the other. I adjusted levels and sharpened a bit.










Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
Focal Length 50mm (35mm equiv-75mm)
Shutter Speed 1/30
Aperture f 22
ISO 3200

Day 17

All caught up!! I used the bird and cat for targets today. I couldn't get them together in a shot but maybe someday.









Minolta DiMage Z1
Focal length 21mm (35mm equiv-135mm)
Shutter Speed 1/10
Aperture f 3.5
ISO 50

See you tomorrow.

Day 16

OK, this is an easy one. We were coming back from Charleston, I was sick, we stopped at a rest area and I took this picture so that I would have something to submit. That's it.

Minolta DiMage Z1
Focal length 5.8 mm (35 mm equiv-28mm)
Shutter Speed 1/1000
Aperture f 8
ISO 50

Day 15

The weather was cold on day 15 also. Not quite as windy but it was 31 degrees when we left the room with a wind chill of 24. Good weather to stay in! We started our day out at an old rice plantation located on the Ashley River. It is called the Magnolia Gardens and Plantation. Reba always wants to see the plantations (it's a "Gone With the Wind" thing). We had gone to one outside Savannah last year and she was a little disappointed. It didn't have the big house and nice grounds that we were expecting. Magnolia Gardens however did not disappoint. Keep in mind that it is the middle of winter and not a lot is blooming but there was enough to give some color and it really is a beautiful place. Between the tour of the house, the train ride through the grounds and a walk through the gardens, we ended up spending about four hours there instead of the 2 we expected. We would like to go back some time in the spring when there is more color and more wildlife. After that, we cruised back through Charleston and did a little walking tour. Today's picture came during that walk. This was a small establishment down by Market Street.
For more of our pictures of Charleston, you can go to http://www.photographybydennis.photosite.com/Charleston/

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
Focal Length 35mm (35mm equiv-52mm)
Shutter Speed 1/200
Aperture f 4.5
ISO 200

Thanks for coming and please check out the Charleston pics.
See you tomorrow.

Day 14

Hello. I'm feeling human again so I thought I would take some time and get this up to date. Unfortunately, Reba just called and it looks like she got what I had. That sucks.

We had a great time up in Charleston this weekend. We wanted to do it a few months ago but that was when Hurricane Katrina hit. They were talking about gas shortages and we didn't want to take a chance on getting stuck up there so we decided to postpone it. It was cooooold up there (at least to me). 30's with about 25 mph winds on day one. It would have been a good day to sit inside but with somewhat limited time, we didn't want to waste any time. We got there too early to check in to the hotel so we started with a tour bus ride around the city. We have found that this works well for us 'cause we see the good areas quickly and then can take our time going back to see the ones we really like. By the time we got finished, it was check-in time. We took a little time to drive around. I had been wanting to see the lighthouse on one of the nearby islands. What a disappointment. It was the only lighthouse that I had ever seen that didn't even rate a photo. Ugliest thing I ever saw. It didn't even look like a lighthouse. We did find a little area near the water as the sun was going down. I actually had a hard time holding the camera still enough to take pictures because of the wind.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
Focal Length 100mm (35mm equiv-150mm)
Shutter Speed 1/60
Aperture f 5.6
ISO 100

We've been gone but are back now

Hey, I haven't forgotten about this thing but Reba and I went to Charleston for the weekend and I had no internet access for a couple of days. Therefore I could not do the PAD thing. I did take the pictures, I just haven't been able to post them. Then to top it all off, I got some kind of bug while we were gone that hit me on the drive back. Needless to say, I haven't felt much like sitting at a computer since we got home. I am feeling better now but haven't had the time to go through the pictures that I took this weekend. I should be able to get them up tomorrow. Thanks to all two or three of you for your patience. I will throw in an old one so you'll have something to look at. See you tomorrow.

Day 13

Hey. I have to admit that this one kind of got thrown together tonight. We are leaving tomorrow for a couple of days and we are trying to get things ready to go. Therefore I didn't have a lot of time to devote to this submission. Fortunately, nature cooperated a little and gave me a full moon to shoot. I was hoping a cloud or something would blow by but alas, nothing. Oh well. I played with the color temp a little to get the bluish tint and got rid of some of the haze that was around the moon tonight. Other than that and a little cropping, this was it.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
Focal length 300mm (35 mm equiv- 450mm)
Shutter Speed 1/8
Aperture f 22
ISO 100

Thanks for coming.

Day 12

One more day until Friday!!!! Tonight, Reba and I had a chance to watch a 3 yr. old young man named Conor for a couple of hours while his parents were at church. I figured this might be a chance to work on some child portraits. Tougher than I thought. I had forgotten how hard it is to keep a 3 yr. old still for long enough to even focus. The trick is to get them in a chair and put a piece of pizza in front of them. I finally was able to get a couple to work with. I particularly liked the look on his face in this one. There was some post processing: Desaturated, adjusted levels, cloned out a little bit of a booster seat and applied a touch of Gaussian blur to soften a little. Thanks to Melissa and Rick for allowing me to use this shot.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300 lens
Focal Length 160mm (35mm equiv- 240mm)
Shutter speed 1/30
Aperture f 5.6
ISO 3200

Thanks and I'll see you tomorrow.

Day 11

Hey again. Great titles huh? I was going to try to come up with some witty title every day but I have enough on my hands with the pictures. I don't need to try to be a writer too. Today's picture is again very different from my normal style. I have seen shots done with this general technique and thought it would be interesting to try it. We have a a crystal ball that has a lot of bubbles in it that usually sits on a window sill. For this shot, I opened a file in Photoshop with a blue background. On that background, I painted a small red circle. This image on the computer screen provided the background The idea was that I would place the ball in front of the circle so that the refraction caused the ball to be red but everything else blue. The ball was resting on a CD on top of a CD container. It took a few tries on position and size but I finally got it. There was a small amount of sidelight coming from another room but other than that it was totally illuminated by the computer screen.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
Focal length 45mm (35mm equiv.-67mm)
Shutter speed 1/45
Aperture f 4.5
ISO 1600

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

Day 10

Hey again. Today I thought that I would try kind of a colorful fun shot. I have been driving by these newspaper stands for years and have always thought that there was a picture there somewhere. Today I wanted to test my theory.

Minolta DiMage Z1
Focal length (35mm equiv) 60mm
Shutter Speed 1/100
Aperture f4
ISO 50

Day 9

Monday morning and back to the grind. It seems that the weekends are never quite long enough. I figured that last week I cut it pretty close on getting a photo a couple of times so I decided to throw the old Minolta Z1 into the Jeep and increase my odds of seeing something I might like to photograph. I was pretty glad that I did. Taking a slightly different route home and driving through downtown Orlando, I remembered a little neighborhood that I always used to like to drive through. In this neighborhood is a small lake. It's only a few acres but it is a very nice area and one of the places in central Florida where the fall colors show up. I hope you enjoy today's picture. See you tomorrow.

Minolta DiMage Z1
Shutter Speed 1/200
Aperture f 5.0
ISO 50
Focal length (35 mm equiv) 75 mm

Day 8

Today I tried a different approach. Even though I had all day to go somewhere, I decided to limit myself to 1 place and 1/2 hour of shooting time. I figured this would force me to pay close attention to the surroundings and watch my exposures and composition. This area is full of parks with lakes so there is always one close by. Often they are very crowded but it was pretty quiet. After looking at the photos and getting Reba's input, I thought I would go with a black and white submission today.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
35mm (35mm equiv - 52mm)
shutter speed 1/1000
Aperure f 6.7
ISO 100

Hope you had a great weekend. See you tomorrow.

Day 7

Since this is the first Saturday of the year, I decided to go out and search a little for pictures. Reba and I packed up and visited a cemetery, a riverside park and a train station. I was truly amazed that someone didn't call homeland security on me. Last time I tried to take pictures at a train station, I was not allowed to. This one was a tiny little station in DeLand Fl. I only saw one other person while there. I had taken some shots of the terminal and tracks etc. and was getting ready to leave when Reba spotted this train coming. Good timing I guess.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
Focal length 50mm (35mm equiv-75mm)
Shutter speed 1/15
aperure f 4
ISO 100

Thanks for coming and I'll see you tomorrow.

Finally Friday, Day 6

Finally!!!! I thought Friday would never get here. After being on vacation for a week or so, even a four day week seems long. At least for the next two days I'll have a little more time to play. Tonight I decided to take some nighttime photos but it is getting really cold so I said "to heck with it". It is a good time to get more practice working with my new lighting and playing a little bit with some new techniques. I have been wanting to do something with this wine bottle since Thanksgiving. By the time I get this posted it will be January 7th but the photo was taken on the 6th so it still counts as on time. For this picture I used a Cokin 4 star filter along with a Cokin pastel filter. Post processing included small levels and saturation adjustments and a little sharpening.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
75mm (35 mm equiv-112mm)
Shutter Speed 1/250
Aperture f4.5
ISO 800

Hope you like this submission. Have a great weekend and I'll see you tomorrow.

Something a Little Different for Day 5

Hi again. I thought I would try something a little different tonight(at least different for me). This really is stepping away from my usual style but I guess that is what this whole Picture a Day thing is about. Anyway, I thought I would take advantage of having Matt home tonight since he goes back to Gainsville tomorrow to start the next semester. I had gotten some studio lighting a couple of weeks ago but had not had a chance to use it yet. So I got it all set up and gave it a shot. I definitely need to spend some time practicing with it and getting the setup right but I think it should be a lot of fun. There was a lot more post processing here than I normally do. I cropped, adjusted levels, desaturated and then added color back in to the eye.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300mm lens
Shutter 1/90
Aperture 6.7
ISO 800
70mm ( 35mm equiv-105mm)

Have a great night and I'll see you tomorrow.

It's Day 4!

Hey again. It is now day 4 of 2006. Wow, time really flies doesn't it. I was an idiot last night and stayed up to watch the whole PSU-FSU game. I am whipped today. The picture today came from around the house since I was too tired to go out looking very far for a subject. I am excited though because my new lens came yesterday and this is really the first chance I have had to work with it. It is a Tamron 28-300. So far, I am very happy with it. It looks like it is going to really outperform my old Quantaray which doesn't really surprise me though the old girl did do a pretty good job for me.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Tamron 28-300 lens
Shutter 1/90
Aperture f 9.5
ISO 800

If anybody is interested in photography and is thinking about doing something like this Picture a day thing, I recommend it. I think it will be good for me to have to go out and shoot everyday(and for a limited time frame on weekdays since my wife wont let me quit my job), pick 1 photo from that and go with it. Makes you think a little about what you are doing. Well, have a great evening and I'll see you tomorrow.

Day 3

Hey, three in a row. I can tell this isn't going to be real easy. I can't wait until we get back on DST so I'll have a little more time. This one was taken this evening beside a small local lake. (Living in central Florida, there will probably be a lot of water shots over the next year but I'll try to mix it up.) The sun had gone down about 15 minutes earlier and I was on my way home when I passed this scene and just had to stop.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Promaster 19-35mm lens
Shutter 1/4
Aperture f3.5
19mm (35mm equiv=27mm)

Have a nice day and we'll see you tomorrow.

Day 2

During the course of watching football games, I have managed to create my entry for PAD day 2. This shot was actually inspired by a contest going on at fotofight.com. The title was vintage. I used an old Yashica-Mat camera and and old photo album as my subject. Very little was done to this in post processing. Basically just an adjustment layer for levels, a little cropping and just a little wall was cloned out.
KM Maxxum 7D
Promaster 19-35mm lens
ISO 3200
Shutter 1/6
Aperture f11

PAD Day 1

Well, I made it through the first day with a picture. I took some time today and went to a local County Park named Gemini Springs in DeBary, Florida. It is a small spring feeding Lake Monroe and into the St. John's River system. It was a nice day to get out and around, a little overcast at times and in the 70's. Not bad for a winter day huh. I actually ended up with two shots that I had this narrowed down to and quite frankly, I haven't decided yet. I guess I need to do that. OK I did it.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Quantaray 28-200 mm lens
Shutter 1/30
Aperture f6.7
ISO 100
70mm (35mm equiv-105mm)
Handheld

Adjustment layer was added for levels and some sharpening.

Thanks for looking and I am looking forward to getting back out tomorrow.