Day 31/365 Read my Hand

Can you picture me sitting over here drawing life, head, heart and fate lines on my hand?  I was checking this stuff out on the internet and trying to figure out which lines on my hand were what.  I am not sure if I have them correct.  I have way too many lines on my hand!  I couldn't pick which one was which line, and then, they broke up and went in different paths also.
EXIF: Canon T2i, 18-55mm lens at 36mm, f/5, 1/125 second, ISO 1600, no flash
I'm off school tomorrow and hoping to get some awesome ice shots! 

Day 30/365 Fly Me To the Moon

This isn't the best picture.  I took this with the L glass lens, but I think I screwed up a couple of things.
When I take "moon" pictures- at least the ones I like, I turn the metering to spot meter, use an f-stop of about 8, ISO 100, and usually 1/60 second.  I had the fancy new lens to try out and tried it at 400mm, doing all of that, but I forgot to turn off the Image Stabilizer and I had it on a tripod.  Sometimes that can cause some vibration, thus not letting such a clear picture happen.  I also think that our hot tub was on, and maybe causing the deck to vibrate a little bit.  Anyway, I've taken better moon pictures with my little crappy 70-300 Canon non-IS lens before.  Oh well, after yesterday's outing I'm so exhausted I can't even focus. 

Day 29/365 L Glass Eagles

I loved the lens I rented.  It's amazing and I understand why the L glass is so expensive.  What a great day!

Day 28/365 I'll take an L, Pat.....

 

My goofy cousin, Leah, was chosen to go on Wheel of Fortune when they came to St. Louis.  She is a game show NUT and has been in the audience at Price is Right too.  Well, this time she is competing and was told she is going to be part of "Pet lovers week" and she asked me to take some pictures of her and her dog Ally.  This dog is a sweet little thing!  

Leah has been an awesome cousin and even lived with me and Rich for a while during college.  She's an accountant now and a hard worker.  I hope when she goes on the show she wins big.  She deserves it!

EXIF information: Canon T2i, 100mm at 35mm, 1/125 second, ISO 200, f5, external flash fired.

Day 27/365 Another take a guess....

OK, here's take a guess part 2.....don't cheat...

  

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It's broccoli!

 

Broccoli is OK.  I could never have another piece again and be quite content.  But, if it's on the table for dinner tomorrow, that's OK too.  Whatev.
I just did this picture because it was one of 2 more vegetables I found in the fridge tonight.  It's boring, I know, but honestly, I just walked in the door 10 minutes ago.  I had a meeting for the Costa Rica trip tonight.
Hopefully if I get going on a theme for next week it will be more interesting :)
No exif info tonight- it was probably 1/200 second, f5, flash on.  That's my guess.

Day 26/365 Olives!

The Olive (pronounced /ˈɒlɨv/), Olea europaea, is a species of a small tree in the family Oleaceae, native to the coastal areas of the eastern Mediterranean Basin (the adjoining coastal areas of southeastern Europe, western Asia and northern Africa) as well as northern Iran at the south end of the Caspian Sea. Its fruit, also called the olive, is of major agricultural importance in the Mediterranean region as the source of olive oil. The tree and its fruit give its name to the plant family, which also includes species such as lilacs, jasmine, Forsythia and the true ash trees (Fraxinus). The word derives from Latin "oliva" which in turn comes from the Greek ἐλαία (elaia)^[1][2] ultimately from Mycenaean Greek e-ra-wa ("elaiva"), attested in Linear B syllabic script.^[3][4] The word 'oil' in multiple languages ultimately derives from the name of this tree and its fruit.

Olives are one of my favorite things!  I especially love the Kalamata olives, but just about any will do!
When I went to Spain in 2009, I loved looking at the olive groves along the roadside.  I never knew before that an olive is considered a fruit.  I also never knew that they grew on trees or how they were gathered with the large nets.  Ever wonder what extra virgin olive oil actually means?  It means the olive has never touched the ground because it was caught in the net when it was ripe or a little before.
So, in keeping with the fruit and veggie theme that I somehow created for myself this week, I decided to take a picture of one of the only other fruit and vegetables I had in the fridge tonight- olives!

EXIF for both photos: Canon T2i, Tokina 100mm lens focused up close and then further away, 1/200 sec, f5, external flash fired.

Day 25/365...take a guess!

 OK-----before you scroll down and see the answer, take a guess on what this is....

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Cucumber!  Stuck to my patio door so the light would shine through it....

Evidently I'm on a fruit and veggie kick this week.  Yesterday, bananas, today, cucumbers.   
To get this shot, I was wandering around the house looking for something to photograph.  Rich had tonight's salad prepared and I saw a cucumber in the bowl.  I took it out and stuck it to the window in the patio door so that it would be lit up. I used a tripod and took the close up shot and the further away shot.

EXIF info #1: Canon T2i, 100mm Tokina lens @100mm, f5, 1/200 sec, flash fired
EXIF info #2: Canon T2i, 100mm Tokina lens @ 100mm, f 4.5, 1/200 sec, flash fired.

Day 24/365 Chiquita

 

I have a picture of bananas tonight.  I kinda like the way they are spooning each other and I like the color and texture too.  I would never eat these bananas because they have brown on them, and that's not how I like them. I eat them as soon as all of the green goes away and then once they start getting the slightest bit mushy, they're no good to me.  Every once in a while I will put them in cereal this way, but not usually.

Anyway, this is my picture tonight because I have to go speak at a Board meeting tonight and I am so tired that I just didn't have enough energy to think.  I saw the bananas laying on the counter and thought they looked cute, so viola- a banana picture :)

EXIF info: Canon T2i, 18-55 mm kit lens at 24mm, f4.5, 1/40 sec, ISO 400, no flash.

Day 23/365 Richie and Stephen

This is the only picture I got around to taking today.  I've taken so many pictures since we had two snow days and my family party last night that  I am re-charging everything and I had the Danny Lee cello concert today at the Sheldon, so I am not going to be too creative today.

I will, however, tell you a new trick I've learned in Photoshop.  I'm sure that this can be done in Gimp as well and I really like the results.  First, go to Image>mode>desaturate and choose Grayscale.  Then hit Image>mode>Duotones and choose the 2 colors.  Then hit Image>mode>RGB colors and OK.  This will get the image into a black and white or black and ? and then make the image editable.  Now, you can click on Image>adjustment>color balance and play with the colors until you find the colors you like.

Now, this is what I recently discovered that is really making my latest pictures "pop" for me: Image>adjustments>shadow/highlight.  When you first click on this, the picture looks really bad.  Play with the amount of shadow and highlight (an adjuster bar) and I'm finding that I can really get some neat highlights on my pictures.  I'm using Photoshop CS2.  I'm sure the shadow/highlights button is in other programs, but may be elsewhere.

EXIF for this picture: Canon T2i with Tokina 100mm lens measured at 29mm, 1/200th sec, f4.6, ISO 100, external flash fired.

Day 22 1/2 Grandma's fudge

I miss my Grandma so much.  She's almost been gone for 5 years and I just had the tears well up on me when I finally got this fudge right.  I remember watching her make it in her kitchen and we'd sit around waiting for it to cool and it would be gone in like 10 minutes. 

Grandma's kitchen was my favorite place in the world. When people have told me to think of my "happy place", that's what I picture.  It wasn't the most beautiful of kitchens, in fact, it was basically falling down all around us, but it was where I spent so many happy times.

Grandma, you wouldn't have any idea what a blog is, but I am mentally sending you this fudge. I wish you were here to enjoy it with me and the rest of the family tonight.  I'm trying to keep us together for you.

Day 22/365 recipes

After having my friend Paige's wonderful Chocolate Marshmallow Bars, I have been craving these babies.  Since tonight I am having my whole family over for some games and food, I decided to try and make her recipe.  I followed it pretty carefully, and this is what it looked like when I stuck it in the oven for the marshmallows to melt.  I think I used too many.

My Mom has been craving my Grandma's fudge recipe and nobody can figure out how to make it properly.  It's the old Hershey's fudge recipe from the 1950s that's hard and very sugary.  I can make the soft fudge without even looking at a recipe, but I can NOT figure out how my Grandma did this stuff.  Here is one of the first attempts today:

 It looked like it used to look when she made it, and I tried to make sure to boil the heck out of it so it would be hard.  Finally when it smelled like I was burning the pot, I took it off and poured it into the pie dish to see if it would harden properly.
Back to Paige's recipe- I cooled the cake with the marshmallows after spreading them.  My version didn't look very pretty like hers did.  I made the topping and in the middle of that had a distraction.  The chocolate for the top ended up getting too hard and when I tried to stir in the rice krispies, it was like molding clay.
My version isn't nice looking, but it tastes OK.

 Back to Grandma's fudge.  After cooling for a few hours, it is a pliable substance.  Not hard enough, not extremely soft.  I'm currently on batch number 3 trying to figure this out.  Any ideas?

Not posting EXIF info today.  I'm too busy getting fudge burns and trying to get things ready for tonight.

Day 21/365 Bird Garden

I had an AMAZING day!  I decided to go to the Botanical Garden today since I was off school for a snow day.  I bundled up in long underwear, a snow suit, sweatshirt and coat and headed out.  It was absolutely worth it!

I headed to the Garden and was amazed at the beauty of the snow all over everything.  Because it's so cold, I think I was one of 3 people out there today.  It was so very quiet and calm.  I was very happy to get lots of pictures of the beautiful snow on the sites that are so familiar.  I was having a wonderful time just walking around in pure peace.

I happened to spot a cardinal when I was in the Japanese garden.  I took a quick shot of him but it blurred because I wasn't expecting to see any birds at all, let alone a cardinal.  As I walked through the walkway with the slats of wood I saw a ton of birds sitting up in a tree and decided to check it out.  To get to the birds, I had to cross a bunch of snow, and I wasn't sure it was even a path. I was sort of afraid that I was trying to cross a little pond or something, but I figured that it wouldn't be that deep even if I did manage to fall in.

Well, I am so happy I did because I found a part of the garden that I never knew existed before, the bird garden.  There were so many birds over there it was unreal!  I found 3 more cardinals, the pictures I am posting here today, and they just sat and ate things off of the bushes they were on.  I was very excited to find this spot and can't wait to go back again.

Somehow, I think that taking pictures of birds might be the most exciting pictures for me to take.  The sheer thrill of capturing one clearly on a camera is much more exciting than taking pictures of flowers, trees, candy, people, etc.  I don't get this excited when I take the other pictures!  What fun!  I'm so happy we had a snow day today, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten to have this experience. I am still freezing and I've been home for 2 hours.  I might have to put an electric blanket on to get warmed up again!

EXIF info #1, #2 and #3: T2i, Tokina 100mm lens, f6.3, 1/400 sec, ISO 100, +.7exposure, no flash

Day 20/365 9 inches

Yup- 9 inches and counting.  It's still snowing and I can't believe it!  I don't think we've had this deep of snow since I was little in like 1982 or something.  I want to go take pictures outside really bad right now, but I'm going to try and take a little ride to Walmart first to see how bad the roads are.  I'm hoping (praying, begging, chanting, whatever) that we don't have school again tomorrow and then I will definitely go out to the Botanical Garden or something and get some sweet snow pictures.

Snow is obviously very hard to photograph.  I think I have the right color of snow in this picture.  Since I'm shooting in RAW now I can adjust the white balance very easily.  It looked too blue when I saw the shot and so I changed the color temperature and white balance.  I just never know if what I see on my screen is the same as what others see. 

If I get some awesome pics later I will post them as a Day 20 part 2.
EXIF info: Canon T2i, 100mmTokina lens, 1/1000 sec, f8, ISO 400, flash off.

Day 19/365 Yahooooooooooooo!

Yahoo for Mountain Dew!  I did get to take my picture for the day because we are off tomorrow!  Yahooooo!
I'm excited that I didn't have to slack!  As soon as I found out we were off, I posted my facebook status as Yahooooooooo!  That made me think of Yahoo for Mountain Dew!  So, when I saw the Mountain Dew can, I knew that I had to take the picture.  It was all too perfect.
Of course, looking at my blog and seeing one post is a picture of Nerds, another is a picture of Mountain Dew, I'm sure that we're getting the picture on why my rear end is so large that I can't balance myself while taking eagle pictures...
Anyway, you know the drill:
EXIF info: Canon T2i, Tokina 100 mm lens, f5.6, 1/60 sec, ISO 400, external flash on and fired to right.

Day 18/365 Bruised

Here's my leg.  This is right under my left knee and hurts!  However, I guess it provided many good laughs, so all in all it's a good memory...Don't you love the way you can see the stubble if you look close enough?
I am actually feeling fine after my little spill last Friday- all except for this bruise. 
Anyway, not the best picture in the world- it's kind of hard to take a picture of something under your knee- but thought I'd post it since I've had several requests to see it.
EXIF info: Tokina 100mm macro lens, f9, ISO 800, 1/50sec, extermal flash on, fired ETTL

Day 17/365 Nerdy

I have been insanely busy today taking apart, cleaning and then re-hooking-up all of the wires, technology, etc. in our technology closet today.  I finally got that finished and realized that I hadn't taken a picture today.

I took a little rest, ate some lunch, took a bath and decided what I needed: some candy.  I looked through the stash we have and decided that some Nerds sounded OK.  Since I already had the Nerds out, I decided to take my daily picture of them today.


So, I spilled some Nerds out and put the box in the back so that the Nerds label could be seen, but not clearly.  I focused on the middle of the pile and used a wide aperture to solely focus on the candy in the middle and get some blur in the front and the label.  I think it turned out OK.  I ate my Nerds and now I'm posting the picture.

EXIF information: Canon T2i, 100mm Tokina lens, f 2.8, 1/50 sec, ISO 400

Day 16/365 Eagles looking at the moon

Obviously I'm eagle-obsessed.  Actually, I just like this time of the year and the fact that the eagles are giving me something new to photograph.

I went with my family to Clarksville, Missouri today thinking that it was "Eagle Days"- I had the wrong weekend.  So we drove 2 hours there, saw a few eagles, headed across the river to Illinois and ended up back in Alton.  Of course, we saw eagles the whole time we were driving along the road in the morning.  They slowed down in the afternoon and started to pick back up when it was closer to evening.

This shot happens to be my favorite of the day.  I can't believe that two eagles were sitting on this branch and the moon was in the background!  Oh how I wish I had a better zoom lens to have gotten a little closer to them!  Anyway, they stayed put for a long time and I got several pictures of these two eagles and other eagles from today also.  If you like this one, check out my others at eagle photos on flickr.

EXIF info: Canon T2i, 100mm f2.8 Tokina lens, 1/640th sec, ISO 200, flash off, RAW.

Day 15/365 A peaceful morning

This morning I left the house about 6:15 am and headed out to Horseshoe Lake Park because I saw a picture on Flickr of an eagle out there and thought that might be a cool place to try.  I was hurrying because I wanted to see if I could get some sunrise pictures also.

I really lucked out!  The sunrise was absolutely gorgeous this morning- much prettier than the gray day we're having.  I rode around the park taking tons of pictures of the sunrise from different viewpoints.  I didn't see any eagles around there though, and was a little disappointed in that.

I left Horseshoe park once the sunrise beauty was starting to fade.  I knew that my kids wouldn't be awake yet- it was only about 8:30 am and it's a Saturday morning.  I still had about 2 hours to mess with.

I decided to head back to the Alton area to see if I could see some more eagles this morning.  I've read that the most active times for them are sunrise and sunset because they like to eat at those times.  That must be true because last night's eagle adventures were successful and this morning's as well.  I am very very excited about this picture in particular because it is the clearest one I've gotten thus far:


Not too long after I took this one, the eagle took off and although it's not crisp and clear, I like this shot too:

 I know that this is supposed to be 1 picture a day, but I got too many good shots to just pick one today and wanted to share all of them.

I'm not going to post EXIF information because I don't want to have to look that up for each of these pictures.  When shooting sunrises and eagles, I think that most of the time it's just pure luck when getting a shot instead of settings on a camera anyway.