Jason Daniel Photography

This was a quick shot as I got up one morning. I just love how the buildings & trees came out. You don’t have trees and buildings like this in Chicago.

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.

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.

I thought this shot was going to come out a bit better than it did – but nonetheless it’s the best for the day. 

It’s so nice to drive home in daylight!  Gone are the days of driving to work *and* back in the dark of night. 

This shot is of Gray’s Lake, the lake for which our town, Grayslake, is named. The sun made me pull the car over and grab a quick shot with our Nikon S52 point-and-shoot.

From my office, I have a great view of power lines, parking lots, and the Edens expressway.  As I was about to leave for the day, the sun hit behind the cloud creating this neat affect.

The kids made crafts with my parents on Thursday when they were over babysitting.  The next morning, I noticed the morning sun catching the crafts on the breakfast table.