school assembly

I had to take pictures of the events at work where we took some presents from this school and handed them to some shelters around the area so that less fortunate people could have presents for Christmas.  When we went to the school to get the presents, we also had to sit through their Christmas assembly.  Being the astute photographer that I am, I took pictures of this assembly as well.  This is what this picture is of-- the assembly.  I like this because in the picture, you can see everything-- the sign with the school name, the kids watching the assembly, and the people on stage.

plain clothes

I was helping my friend take some pictures for a school photography project, so I had to take some pictures of him holding of signs for the lyrics of a song.  It was just a simple project that I wasn't expecting too much out of, but this one picture stood out to me as a really cool portrait of him.  I think it's mainly because I like the faded colors and the dramatic shadow around his face area.

icicles

This was the first icicle of the season that I saw hanging off of the bush in the front yard.  

christmas tree farm

Like I said before, I guess I am drawn to lines of perspective, because this is what this one is.  I took this at the Christmas tree farm when we were looking for our tree.  I love the perspective!

candles

This one actually turned out kind of cool.  I took a real quick picture of the candles lit up in the dark room and I like the aura that came out from the light of the flames.

tree ornaments

I absolutely love how this one turned out!  It was such a simple picture, but I'm in love with it for many reasons.  I love the composition, the detail, the shallow focus, and my self-portrait that comes up on two of the ornaments.  I'm sure there will be plenty more of these pictures this holiday season!

alleyway

I took this randomly on my way out to the parking garage from work one day while thinking about my thesis.  My thesis is all about perspective and different views of how to look at things.  The way my thesis is going to hang, I realized I needed some eye-height views, so I took this.  I don't know if I'll actually use it, but I love the perspective of the alleyway going off into the distance and I love how it demonstrates how even eye- height views can have a different perspective of looking at things.

mosaic fish wall

We had to go to Longworth Hall one day at work to take a picture of some people for the magazine.  Longworth Hall is this huge office complex that caters to mainly artsy places.  All of the offices are so cool and usually creative looking.   Even the outside of the building is creative-- it has a bunch of sculptures hanging out and there were some concrete walls that had mosaic designs on them.  This particular wall had mosaic fish on the outside of it and sculptures of birds picking at the fish on top of it... 

 

flame

I was going to get the candles all lit up, but in the midst of lighting the candles, I decided to get the actual lighter lit up in the dark room.  It's kind of interesting how the picture is just a mere flame with a complete black background.

thumb tacks

I was looking online for some stock photos at work and I saw this picture of a bunch of thumb tacks lined up, with one a different color and in focus.  I thought it was something simple that I could try, so I did and I LOVE how it turned out!!  I'm amazed that I even got the pink one in focus and all the other ones out of focus, just like I wanted to.

pile of firewood

There's not really an explanation for this one.  Just a pile of firewood from my backyard.

plug

Again, close- up shallow depth of field.  I need to expand my horizons!

box of matches

I think this ones pretty cool.  I guess I'm just really drawn to close- up shallow depth of field photos because I tend to take a lot of them!

game controller

This is a pretty boring picture.  I tried to make it more interesting by turning it black and white and leaving the buttons colored but there were so few colors in the picture to begin with that it didn't really do much. 

lizard

Kevin's brother is really into reptiles and amphibians and has a bunch of them in his room.  He recently got this new one from a friend and decided to bring it up to show me.  I thought he was the cutest thing!!!

night time building

Kevin locked his keys in his car the night before Thanksgiving, so I was stuck having to find something to take a picture of in the parking lot of my dad's work.  This is what I settled on.  It actually didn't turn out that bad.  I like the lights lit up on the building, the color of the sky, and the trees in the background and I like the shadowy lines that are in the foreground.

spoon

I always think that pictures showing objects lengthwise towards the camera are really cool.  I tried it with this picture.... but it sort of didn't really turn out as cool as I wanted it to, although Kevin likes it.  So I don't know.  It definitely won't hurt to practice this!

company christmas photo

I took this picture of the office for their company Christmas card.  Everyone was told to wear winter gear and bring presents for the picture because for the card, we put them in a snow globe that said "Happy Holidays."  The end result turned out really cute, but it wouldn't have been as cute without the picture to begin with!!

dead flowers

Once again, I find myself taking close up pictures of flowers.  I don't know why, but every time I see flowers, I have to get a close-up of them.  These particular flowers are way dead.  I'm not sure why they were even still displayed in a vase on the table, but whatever.

dinosaur chew toy

For some reason, I didn't take a picture at my family's Thanksgiving, so I ended up taking a picture of this thing because I needed a picture.  I kind of like it for some reason.  This was one of my dog's very first chew toys.

bricks

This is self- explanatory... not much to say about it.

fountain square

I love my city and I absolutely love taking pictures of it.  Whenever I get to hang out downtown, I definitely take the advantage of getting some cool shots of different things.  After dinner one night down there, I took some pictures of Fountain Square all lit up.  The fountain looked so gorgeous all lit up, so I'm glad I got some good photos of it.

crazy lights

I was trying to take a cool picture of the street lit up at night, but I was having some major problems.  One problem was that my camera was having trouble focusing on one thing at night, since it was so dark, and the other problem was that I had my dog with me.  I had to hold on to his leash in one hand and try to take a picture with the other one.  My dog does not sit still for more than five seconds, so for obvious reasons, I couldn't get a good photo due to all the movement.  Without a tripod it's nearly impossible to get a good night shot anyways, so imagine the impossibility of getting a shot when the dog is moving everywhere!  

Anyways, this is what turned out and I actually kind of liked it.

computer plugs

I haven't posted in quite a while... I have been so busy!!  I'll try to catch up with everything tonight.

This was taken in my office.  My charger, the internet cable, and my camera cord were all plugged into the side of my computer.  I have never seen that many plugs at once plugged into my computer, so I took a picture of it!

Monday: pens

Once again, I was stuck without a picture for the day.  I know I shouldn't have excuses for not taking pictures, but I really am very busy and don't have time to even get my camera out all day.  For this picture, I had just gotten back from scrapbooking and I had all of my supplies out, so I decided to take this photo of all of my colorful pens.

Sunday: mini scarecrows

I saw these little scarecrows in Kevin's mom's garden and I just thought they were so adorable, so I took a few photos of them.

Saturday: goat

We went to a Christmas walk where they had shops open, lots of cookies, and a whole bunch of random things.  We thought there was going to be reindeer, so we got real excited and made the extra trek to go see them because, of course, I wanted to get pictures of the reindeer.  It turned out though, that instead of a reindeer, they had a petting zoo with goats, a llama, sheep, and a buffalo- type thing.  They were just as fun to take pictures of, but very hard because I couldn't get them to look at me!  

Friday: dvds

When I got off work on Friday night, I was so tired and just wanted to lie down, so this is another picture taken inside my house.  It's interesting how creative you have to be to keep taking pictures in the same area, like for me, inside my house!  Who knows what you will come up with when you're in such an uninteresting place.

Thursday: headlights zooming by

Whenever I walk my dog, he enjoys sitting at the end of the street and watching the cars go by.  I have always been interested in night photography and experimenting with it, so when my dog sat down to watch the cars, I decided to sit down with him and take some photos of the cars going by.  I love the look of moving objects at night, especially the look of moving lights, so I played around and took some photos of the cars and their headlights driving by.  It would have probably turned out better with my tripod, but still cool nonetheless

Wednesday: broken fence

I noticed this fence at my mom's house when I went over there the other day.  Kinda creepy.

Tuesday: m&ms

I couldn't really find anything to take a picture of for the day, so at the last minute, I decided to take a picture of the M&Ms bag that was sitting on my kitchen counter.  It is such a random thing, but this is actually one of my favorite pictures I have taken for this project!  

Monday: making cupcakes

Kevin was real disappointed that he never got to blow out candles for his birthday, so on the night of his birthday, I decided to make him cupcakes.  My sister helped me mix the ingredients and so I took some photos of her hands mixing in action.  After mixing, baking, icing, and sprinkling, the cupcakes turned out delicious! 

Sunday: eerie tree

Kevin and I were using my dad's truck to move the rest of the stuff out of my house and after we dropped the truck back off at his work, I saw this tree.  I was so mad that I didn't have my camera because it was such a scary looking tree!  Luckily though, (or not so lucky I guess), Kevin forgot his car keys at home, so we couldn't switch cars.  So, we ended up having to take the truck back home to get the keys and then come back.  When we got home, I grabbed my camera and got a second chance to get a picture of the tree.  The branches are so creepy looking and it even had creepy lighting on it!

Saturday: bridge reflection

I went downtown on Saturday to take some pictures for my thesis.  For thesis, I am taking pictures of the lines and textures of the city, so while taking some bridge pictures, I veered off track a little bit and instead of getting the texture of the metal on the bridge, I got this cool reflection of the bridge on the water.

wall sconce

Every time I leave the office and wait for the elevator, I notice these wall sconces and how the light shines out of them.  I think it looks really cool.  Today, I decided to photograph one of them and I actually really like how the picture turned out.  It accentuates the light that comes out of the sconce, which is the reason why I think they are so cool.

Thursday: wheels & cheese

I don't really have much to say about this one other than it was my dinner for the night.  I don't cook, so when I'm home alone, anything microwavable will do!  This particular night, it happened to be the wheels & cheese dinner. I like this photo because I like the detail of the close up and I like the contrast of the fork with the yellow pasta.

Wednesday: Joey

I think being a pet photographer would be really fun, but also really hard!  It is extremely hard to get a dog to look at you when you take their picture, so I admire photographers who can not only get the pet to look at them in their photos, but also even sit still enough to sometimes get dressed up and everything!  I have been practicing taking pet photos every night of my dog.  I have been getting some pretty decent ones, actually.  I love this one because he looked at me just exactly at the right moment and smiled!  He's such a cutie :)

Tuesday: buttons

This project is really hard when you're as busy as I am!  It's hard to even take a second to find a good photo opportunity.  This week I really struggled because I was really busy with school and work and stuff.  Obviously, as you can tell, I haven't posted in a while because of this!  Tuesday's photo is a close up of my button collection.  I don't actually collect buttons, but I have tons of them due to my hobby of scrapbooking.  I definitely think this picture would have looked better if I dumped out all of the buttons on the table, but at the time, I didn't feel like making a mess and spilling them everywhere.  Maybe I'll do another picture like that another day.

Monday: toothbrushes

I have no idea why I took this picture.  It was getting late and as I was about to brush my teeth, I decided that it would be cool to try and work some close-up shallow depth of field pictures of toothbrushes.  It was harder than I thought it would be.  This was actually the first one I ended up taking and I liked it the best out of all of them because I like how the toothbrushes are off center and both heads of them are in focus, while the rest is not.

blooming flowers

Despite the fact that we're full into fall, Kevin and I just noticed today that there were some really pretty pink flowers blooming outside of our bedroom window.  I love taking close up photos of flowers, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to do that, since I probably won't be seeing anymore flowers until next spring!

Saturday: eerie halloween night

It was getting to be late to take my picture for the day, so I decided to go outside and take some night shots.  I at first took some photos of the setting sun, but the sun was moving so fast, that by the time I got my camera out, the setting sun was almost all the way behind the trees.  Instead, I took a photo of the full moon. Since it was Halloween, I thought a full moon was sort of creepy and also convenient!  The photo turned out so much cooler than the actual sky was because in the photo, the sky look an eery reddish- orangeish- purplish color.  The actual sky didn't really look like that, so I thought it was really weird how different the photo turned out... very suiting for Halloween!

Friday: spinning pinwheel

This is a pinwheel thing in my neighbor's yard.  I always see it, and when I noticed the wind was making the wheel spin real fast, I decided to take a few shots to practice getting the wheel stopped at different points.  In some, the wheel was completely frozen, some it looked like it was moving really slow, and in this one, the wheel is spinning real fast, while everything in the background is frozen.  It turned out pretty cool, although it was very hard to get a good shot because the fence was in the way to get a good angle!

chipped valve

This project is getting hard!  I am running out of things to take pictures of.. but I guess the point is to be able to photograph everyday things.  I really need to practice that!  It's just really hard to stop and photograph things when I'm running around all day long.  Because of that, I ended up taking a picture in the parking garage on the way back to my car. It was sort of weird taking a picture of something so stupid, but I guess that's the beauty of this project-- taking pictures of everyday things.  Everyday I pass these valves in the parking garage and I think they are kinda neat because they are covered with chipped paint.  I am fascinated with chipped paint!  I like this picture because you can see the texture on the valve wheel and in the background, you can see a different kind of texture on the pole.

Wednesday: pumpkins at night

I was so excited all day knowing that I would not only get to carve pumpkins, which I haven't done in years, but also knowing that I would get to take some cool pictures of the pumpkins all lit up at night time!!  Carving the pumpkins was so much fun and they turned out awesomely!!  The only thing is that I worked way too hard on mine.. I spent forever drawing it on, then forever cutting it out.  By the time I was done with mine, everyone else was already done and I still had one more to carve.  It was worth it.  Mine is the tree, I did the paw print for my dog, and the skull is Kevin's.  They all look awesome.. and picture- wise, I love the leaves that are lit up in front of them.

geometric view of the city

I love the view of the city from the top of the parking garage where I park in the mornings.  It's very geometric, line-y, and square.  It sort of reminds me of an aerial view that you would see from a map, but obviously, the view is a little lower down.  The lower down angle gives the view a real neat perspective of all the buildings.  Another neat thing is how the buildings fit together with each other perfectly, just like a puzzle.

 

prototype bridal bouquet

I had a meeting with a florist today for my wedding and she ended up actually giving me a bouquet of the flowers that we picked out for the wedding.  I enjoy close ups of flowers, so I took a few photos of them, especially because I knew I would never see this bouquet until my wedding day and I want to remember what it looks like.  I think my favorite flower is the green one... it's so cool looking!

mastodon crossing

I have been wanting to take pictures at the park down the street from my house, Sharon Woods.  It's really pretty.  When I went for a run today at the park I decided to bring my camera with me so that I could stop and take pictures while I was there, along the way.  The park was beautiful with all the fall colors and I got lots of photos.  I also like tripled my running time because every two minutes I would stop to take a photo.  Because it was such a gorgeous day, it was kind of hard to get pictures without people in them.. I had to keep waiting until everyone was passed me, which made my run even longer.

I think this sign is interesting.  I guess it has something to do with the history of the place, which makes it even neater.  I definitely had to get one of the mastodon statues in the photo, so it looked like they were actually crossing!

Saturday: fall tractor

We went to the pumpkin patch today and did a corn maze and a hayride.  Going to farms is very fall- like, and I was hoping to get some great fall photos!  

Being on a farm, I of course got some pictures of the tractors there.  I just now realized that this picture is actually of the back-end of the tractor, rather than the front end.. but still a pretty cool picture nonetheless.  Farm equipment sort of gives me a horror movie- creepy feeling, so I thought this one would be cool in black and white.

 

puddle reflection

I have had this idea to take a picture of a reflection in a puddle for a long time.  I particularly wanted to take one downtown because I thought it would be cool to get the top of a really detailed building in the reflection of the puddle, as sort of a different take on a building picture.  Finally today, after the downpours this morning, I got the picture in the puddle.  It didn't turn out as well as expected because I was on my way home from work and I had all my bags in my hands and I couldn't put them down because of the wet ground.  The pictures turned out alright.. I think I might try it again on a day when I have the ability to do some different angles and stuff when my hands aren't full.

fighting dogs

Every time my dog and my sister's dogs get together, they aggravate the crap out of each other!  They bark, jump, growl, and bite each other and run around the house.  It's quite annoying hearing them fight and them getting in your way all the time, but it's pretty entertaining to watch.  The funniest thing is, it's the little dog that beats up the big dog!  I sometimes get concerned they are going to kill each other, but I know they are just playing... even though they are really, totally mean to each other.  

I got this moment in the middle of their fighting. I love the look on the little dog's face: he looks so mean!!