Cracks in the ice.

I did not venture out for any shopping until 3 pm today, and even then there were still crowds out and about.  The only stores I visited were a small, local sports store and Hallmark.  The worst line I stood in had two people in front of me, I suspect a lot of folks waited in much longer lines today.

But it was a beautiful, sunny day here and I also made time to get outside for some photographs.  My husband went out with me and we drove around the two local lakes to see if the lakes had frozen over yet.  Indeed they had.  There were even a few folks ice fishing near the shore on Lake Pelican.  (But we never found a vantage point where I could photograph them well.)

My husband is much braver than I am on the ice, he walks right out.  There were actually a few cracks in the ice, but he jumped up and down and it was frozen a good way down.

(The Lensbaby wasn't the best choice of lens to show the cracks in the ice, but it was hard to tell if the shot worked or not on the little screen on the camera - but you can still see the relatively large crack.)

It was neat how the water froze thick on the rocks.

Here is the beach on this cold winter day before any snow has fallen.

 

Finally, here is a shot I captured near our other lake, Lake Kampeska.  I thought it was cool that you can see a big airplane in the background.  It is a retired Fed Ex plane that our tech students get to use to learn about repairing airplanes, and it sits right near a runway at our little airport.  Someday I'll have to remember to try and catch a nice photo from this same perspective when an airplane is coming in for a landing.

See on,
Julee

More holiday spirit.

It is getting close to the time when it seems universally acceptable to begin holiday decorating and truly getting into the holiday spirit.

It is also a busy time of year, so taking photos gets kind of a backseat to family time, shopping, decorating, wrapping, etc.  (Although tonight's excuse for a rushed photo session was a long day at work rather than holiday fun.) 

So to keep myself in the spirit, I pulled out some sparkly holiday bows and my Lensbaby.

Voila...

This second photo is pretty abstract for me - but I love it.  (It's not exactly what I was aiming for, but it was close for a quick five minute experiment.)

See on,
Julee

Angry Birds and Camp Wanahlegoh.

My Thanksgiving events started this weekend, so it was a busy two days filled with family fun.  Ah the memories made amidst ham, potatoes, cheesecake, wine,and trains and Legos. 

Trains and Legos you wonder...  Well, the local model train show was this weekend and I have a number of young nephews and nieces who have a blast looking at all the train stuff - although admittedly the adults have just as much fun.  One of the most spectacular displays at the train show is the Lego display.  Yes, it has a Lego train, but there is also an entire city of Legos complete with Camp Wanahlegoh, a lego bank, a lego greenhouse, and more.  So cool.)

Once I got home, after relaxing for a bit in front of the TV and watching Brave, I pulled out my camera for a short session.  I was looking around for inspiration and my Angry Bird characters caught my eye.  I suspect there is a story coming eventually surrounding these guys, but here was tonight's best photo - courtesy of my Lensbaby Plastic Optic.

Can you see the fear in the pig's eye?  He's toast!

Oh, and here is Camp Wanahlegoh if you're curious.  It's a camera phone shot so the quality isn't the best.  But if you look closely you might be able to see one of the Lego men on the zip line.  (He's right above the leftmost black tent.)  Awesome!

See on,
Julee

Eggs.

Tonight I hope to make you giggle just a bit. 

DPChallenge had a challenge with the theme of 'eleven'.   I was trying to be creative and come up with an interesting idea for how to shoot a photo of 'eleven'.  I was able to go back to old challenges to see what kind of things other folks have done with number challenges and there was everything from photos of the number to photos of that number of items.  (Like for a 'four' challenge folks would photograph four birds, or an address with a '4' in it.)

Lots of the DPC folks are amazing photographers, and much further along in their skill development that me, but that doesn't mean I can't be creative and have fun.  So my goal was to come up with something where the 'eleven' was an integral part of the idea, rather than just photographing 11 gumdrops.

I really did not have much luck in the creativity department except for one genius idea.  (At least I'm pretty proud of it).  I photographed eggs.  Oh yes, I know there are twelve eggs in a package - but that's where my creative twist came in.

I photographed 11 white eggs with one brown egg.  So I had my full dozen eggs, but just 11 that were the same.   The second shot is my actual entry, the colors are much better, but I got this awesome chicken suit Lego man this afternoon and had to throw him in one of the photos.

I also tried having one of the eggs being a broken egg, but I did not like that quite as well.  The perspectives (slight angle) was just better in the other photo.

And wouldn't you know it, this photo is getting me my highest score yet.  (Not really high mind you, but high for me.)

Light is proving to be an incredible challenge.  I am going to work on mastering it, but I suspect it'll take months to get a handle.  Notice how my second two shots have a much whiter background that my shot with the Lego man.  Granted, I was shooting really quickly this afternoon to get something with Lego guy in it, but I used the same lighting from last weekend with the other egg shots.  The only difference was that I had my foam core boards behind the eggs tonight rather than just white paper.  The foam board is taller so maybe blocked more of the room lighting?  I don't know.  Between getting the color of the background pretty, getting the shadows right, and figuring out the whole reflection issue - I've got plenty to learn.  (My book on lighting arrives tomorrow - so I am on it!)

See on,
Julee

Mad Scientist on the Loose.

So I picked up some foam board over lunch hour, in order to have a bigger and better 'studio' setup and I meant to play around with reflection again - but after having to wait around for two hours while my camera battery charged I got sidetracked with my mad scientist Lego person who I had totally left out of my 'cast' of Lego characters photo.

How could I do that?  That's me, or at least it was until I left chemistry for quality assurance.  (Less safety glasses required in quality assurance.)

Here's mad scientist guy making a wild creation...

 

 

 

(Thanks to the red light on my headlamp for these!)

 

See on,

Julee

Into the season of sparkle.

So it's not quite the season, but it's so darn close I just couldn't resist getting a start on adding holiday sparkle to my life.  I found some pretty ornaments and thought I'd try them out in my little home studio.

Well, turns out I have a HUGE reflection issue.  (Which I kind of knew would happen, but I'm here learning people so I had to try and work with what I had for this first round of photos.)

My setup involves leaning several pieces of white cardboard leaned up against a photo album that sits up against a Rubbermaid storage container.  Today I even resorted to taping the cardboard in place so that two pieces of cardboard could be side-by-side - which increased the size of my backdrop.  (That move was my first attempt at reducing some of the refection.)

My lighting involved the overhead light, a large 'happy' light to the right of my set, an LED work light to the left of my set, and either a headlamp or a flashlight usually straight in front of the set or sometimes above the set.

I've been reading a little about reflections, and I knew I would have trouble as soon as I added a reflective item to my stage, but winter is a great time to learn about fixing unwanted reflections.  (Tons of reflective sparkle, sparkle, sparkle available over the next month, plus it's cold and while light painting outside sounds intriguing I suspect my fondness for the idea will wane a bit as the temperature drops and drops and drops.)

I found a book that I'm hoping will have some practical advice, so we'll see if I can improve.  But for now, enjoy today's best shots:

(And for this last shot, the blur is intentional, that's my Lensbaby in action.)

See on,
Julee

Foggy day.

All week our weatherman had predicted a nice weekend.  He was correct only in that the temperature is a pleasant 50 degrees.  He was incorrect about any sun.  Today was totally gray and foggy, and it drizzled most of the day.

 

But not to let it get me down, I figured the fog might give me a great opportunity to capture those three trees I feel in love with last weekend without the clutter of the city being visible.

 

And it worked! 

 

The top two shots are with my Lensbaby (first shot is with the plastic optic, second shot is with the Edge 80).  The third shot is with my 'regular' 16-85 mm lens.  The river was actually flowing just enough that there wasn't much of a reflection visible, so I'll have to keep trying for that perfect shot, but I really quite like what I captured.

 

There was also a grain elevator (at least I think I'm using the terminology correctly??)  right across the street from the river and trees.  The fog made for an interesting scene and I liked that is was full up with corn accentuating the time of year the photo was taken.

 

 

It is supposed to be gray with a mix of rain and snow tomorrow, but I've got an '11' and a 'glass' challenge to be working on, so hopefully I can come up a few ideas and get out and shoot.

 

See on,

Julee