Jason Daniel Photography

I was driving by this empty/abandoned/hit-by-ressession restuarant, and saw some interesting characteristics of the building. The one the jumped out at me was this door.

This will probably be the first of many photos of Molly’s Pond during this Project 365 effort.  Molly’s Pond in the pond right outside our house.  I woke up “late” on Sunday morning — I had my alarm set for 5:30am, but either I didn’t hear it, I turned it off without knowing I did that, or it just didn’t go off period. 

It was 7am when I woke up, and I stumbled down to the kitchen.  I saw an amazing sunrise, fog on the still pond, and ducks going for a swim.  It was game-time for me!  I *very quickly* put some shoes on , grabbed my Canon XTi, and went outside. 

130 shots later, I had a plethora of photos to pick from.  I’m rather proud of myself, because I usually just shoot on Program mode and go nuts. Afterwards I either disappointed with the shutter speed (too slow and a bit blurry), DOF (too shallow for landscape), or wrong exposure (Program Mode overcompensating for something like the sun in this shot).

This time I was smart.  First off, made sure I had the right aperture.  I tried to stick around f/11.  f/11 then pushed my shutter speed to 1/10 of a second, which would not work for handheld shots.  I could grab my tripod, but that would have killed another 5 minutes. With time ticking away with the sunrise, that was not an option. I kicked the ISO up to get around 1/60 to 1/100 second. 

Second, when the sun was directly in the picture, I went to manual and metered with the sun out of frame, set the shutter speed to *that* proper metering, and then brought the sun back into the shot.  This was one of my last shots, and thought it was the best.

I’ll post the “rejects” from today and other days that the rejects I thought were “Project 365-worthy” in the coming weeks when I accrue enough rejects for a separate post.

Since it was a sweltering 70 degrees in Chicago today, the family and I went down to the local Tastee Freez to get “squirrel” ice cream cones for the kids.

This shot is from my office complex.  It was 10pm, and I was leaving work after a long night.

I thought the lighting along with the eating area  created an interesting photo.  I placed the camera on a light pole (similar to the one left of the table), set the f/stop to f/13, set the timer, and let it do its thing. 

I’m continually amazed at how I find photos now.  I shouldn’t be amazed — because that’s one of the goals of this project – to get a better eye for photos due to the constant pressure to produce.  It’ll be December before I stop being amazed. 

I walked in my bedroom and saw the morning light hit our bed.  My clothes from the night before were out (gasp!), and I found it interesting how the light hit my shirt and jeans.

At times during the week, my wife expands her sewing work area up to the dining room.

With the natural light flooding the room and the interesting colors and textures, I had to grab a shot.

With the nice weather, I’m going outside to photograph more.  Yeah!

Our hose real died last fall, and I left the hose out all winter (gasp!).  The hose along with the birdhouse on a window well made an interesting shot.