Week 52 - 52 on 52 for 52

It was just over a year ago that I bought my first DSLR camera -- a Canon T1i/500D. I spent a couple of months familiarizing myself with most of its features, and finishing reading a couple of books that I bought a year earlier: Understanding Exposure, Learning to See Creatively, and Understanding Shutter Speed, all three written by Bryan Peterson. (excellent books, by the way)

After that, I felt that I needed a goal. As you can read in my first project-related post, I've always liked the concept of Project 365 but I didn't think I'd have the time and commitment to shoot and post a new photo every day for a year.

Enter Project 52.

52 weeks, and 4523 photographs later, my first Project 52 comes to an end. Although I still have a lot to learn, I'd like to think that my photography skills have improved since. Overall, that is, there are still some shots that I've posted that don't really do much for me.

On to this week's photo.

I have to thank my wife for the inspiration. I was wandering around my house, searching for something interesting and thought aloud, "I need something 52 to take a picture of..."

My daughter left the room and returned to place a small scrap of paper on the table in front of me. '52' was written on it. "Thanks, but I don't think that's gonna cut it..." :)

My wife said, "What about a deck of cards?"

Bingo.

I fired off about fifteen shots from different angles and narrowed my choices down to two. I tweaked the contrast and color and then cropped it a little. That's it, that's all.

Will I begin another Project 52? I don't know yet. One of my friends thinks I should go for 365.

I think what I'll do is shoot and post when I feel like it. Rather than wait for Sunday to make my weekly post, I'll just post whenever I feel that I've taken a good shot worthy of attention.

Let's see how that goes. :)

If you're reading this on my Posterous site, you can click on the Project 52 tab along the top to see all of the shots I've taken for the project.

Screw Yer Buddy

If you try to access my pool rules site, ScrewYerBuddy.com, and get a Connection Timed Out error, it's due to the DOS attack issues that Posterous was having. They’re working on fixing it.

Week 51 - Three x 2

Oops. A day late.

This was a really easy choice for this week.

It turned out surprisingly better than I expected. One of the comments pointed out the two different areas of focus in the photo: the furthest pin and the closest reflection. I have a few different shots of the pins and that's the only one like that. It was completely unintentional and a cool surprise.

Week 50 - Angled Steps

The pickings for this week were very slim. I've got photographer's block, even with the help from The Daily Shoot to try and inspire me.

Another of my DailyShoots gets picked for the project. These are our blog-famous reno'd stairs:

Two weeks left of Project 52. Unfortunately, the really good possible shots will come the week after the last posting when we take a trip to Toronto and visit the zoo and other sights. That's a bit unfortunate. I'm sure I would have a great shot to finish it off with.

I'm still debating whether to start up another Project 52 or go for a 365.

Hello from Posterous

I am debating on moving my blog over to Posterous. I really like the way it handles my photographs as well as Flickr sets.
All of the entries have been imported into my Posterous blog. For the time being I'll keep both locations and have Posterous auto-post over to the Blogspot location to keep them in sync. If you're reading this on Posterous, click on the Project 52 or Daily Post tabs and have a look at the Flickr sets. If you're not reading this on Posterous, or you're not sure, click here: http:/scottpaterson.posterous.com

Week 49 - Hot Dog

Week 49 - Hot Dog, originally uploaded by Twister65.

I threw this shot together quickly for The DailyShoot earlier this week. The assignment was to take a picture of food (duh). I nearly forgot until after we were finished eating supper. As luck would have it, there was a lone hot dog left in the pot.

It was barely warm, but good enough to use for the shot. I don't normally dress my hot dogs up this much; I tend to keep it simple and just put mustard on them. But, as I noted in the comments of the photo, I needed more colour.

I fired off four of five shots before putting the hot dog out of its misery (I ate it) :)

Apparently this month is National Hot Dog Month in the U.S. and tomorrow is National Hot Dog Day.

It is/was a coincidence.

Week 48 - Marbl(u)es

Marbl(u)es, originally uploaded by Twister65.

This weeks pick was easy and was from another DailyShoot.com assignment.

The theme was "blue". I first started with taking close-up shots of my daughter's eyes. By definition, they are blue, but I wasn't able to get them to "pop" and look as blue as I would have liked them to be.

My son suggested his marbles. He got a selection of blue ones, I grabbed a sheet of white paper from my printer, and we went out to the front patio to see what we could do.

After leveling the table, we placed them on the sheet of paper in whatever layout would keep them from rolling around. I fired off various shots with my 18-200mm lens, switched to the 100mm for a few more, and then back to the 18-200mm.

In the end, the best shots came from the 18-200mm. Had I taken the time to use a tripod with the 100mm, I'm sure I could have gotten some good ones.

This was all natural lighting from a somewhat cloudy and hazy sky. The only adjustments I made to the image was a crop and a slight boost to the saturation to bring out the blue a little more, all done in Picasa. :)

I'm very pleased with the results. It's one of those photos that makes you want to keep looking at it.