Well, I made it to 60 days and then I forgot to take a picture.  Oh well, I wanted to mix things up anyways and focus on the fundamentals a little bit more.  Here are the last few pictures:

Day 54 – Here it is! twice.

ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/160 sec.

and again

ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/160 sec.

Day 55 – More light painting

ISO 400, f/8, 20 sec.

Day 56 – A little Olympic Spirit

ISO 3200, f/3.6, 1/50 sec.

Day 57 – Beyond the backyard

ISO 800, f/8, 1.3 sec.

Day 58 – More Olympic spirit

ISO 800, f/4, 8 sec.

Day 59 – Flower

ISO 800, f/5.3, 1/8 sec.

Day 60 – mmmm Schnitzel

ISO 400, f/8, 0.4 sec.

So thats it for that.  I’m working on something else to develop my skills.

We had to get up early to get ready for our flight home and We went out on the beach to catch the later part of the sunrise.

ISO 400, f/11, 1/4000 sec.

The over exposure wasn’t totally intentional but I really like how this turned out.  My only problem with this is that the horizon was not level.  I think the overexposed sky makes the weather look nicer than it really was.  It’s a fun photo.

ISO 400, f/7.1, 1/200 sec.

Yes, this is exactly what it looks like!

and no this is not staged, I used the setup for a picture as part of the surprise.

We went on an excursion on one vacation day and I got these:

ISO 1250, f/4 , 1/200 sec.

This one is inspired by some IKEA pictures we have that are B&W except for one object which is colour.  Taken quickly from our bus as we passed through Puerto Plata.

ISO 400, f/8 , 1/320 sec.

We went for a walk down the beach passed a large number of other resorts.  There was a small marshy area in between a couple hotels and this egret (I think thats what it is) as just walking around looking for food.  I thought the reflection in the water was cool, but there were a lot of distracting background elements also being reflected.  When post processing I thought I’d give black and white a shot since the bird had no colour in it anyways.   I think it works this way and there are only some subtle hints of the bridge in the background.  Again I seem to be enjoying the use of negative space in this crop.  I found a closer crop to the bird to be somewhat boring.

ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/320 sec.

I think this is my first appearance in these pictures.  I set my Gorilla pod up on a wooden railing and ran to get myself into the picture.   I think we took a few shots and this was my favourite because it was fun.  I manually exposed for the overall picture and then popped up the on camera flash to get some fill light on us.  Unfortunately the beach was still cluttered from the storm, but that was cleaned up within a day or two.

ISO 200, f/8, 1/50 sec.

I really like this one.  It is actually a fairly small crop from a much larger picture so it can never be very high resolution and I wish I had shot closer to this originally (I guess that is part of the learning experience).  I used my polarizing filter here which lead to the brilliant blue sky.  In Camera Raw I used the negative part of the clarity slider ever so slightly to add a bit of a dreamy haze that I think really makes the breaking waves look good and fluid.  I seem to really like the use of negative space.

ISO 200, f/8, 1/250 sec. Cropped from a wide angle 18mm shot.

I only took a few pictures the first day in the Dominican Republic (Playa Dorada, just outside of Puerto Plata).  The waves in the Atlantic were pretty big but crashed pretty far out from shore and they were much smaller closer in to shore.

ISO 200, f/16, 1/250 sec.

I haven’t given up on my photo a day thing, but I do seem to have given up on posting them.  I was busy grading essays one week and then went away for a week.  I will try to catch up by combining several days into one post.  This one is for the pre-vacation pictures and is somewhat random.  I will post the ones from the Dominican later, after I do some editing.

Day 36 – Candle

A candle nearing the end of its burn.  Did some Photoshop work to add some negative space. Difficult to get the exposure right on this one.  Will require some more experimenting.

ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/400 sec.

Day 37 – Canal

We went down to do some skating on the Rideau Canal and I brought the camera along. It was crazy busy and difficult to take decent pictures from ice level.  I tried to use the new Corktown pedestrian bridge (I think that’s what it’s called) to frame the Chateau Laurier.

ISO 200, f/11, 1/200 sec.

Day 38 – Outdoor rink.

Jessie and her brother were just shooting around on the outdoor rink.  I played around a little bit with the gradient filter in Camera Raw to tone down the over exposed houses in the background.  Need to play with that function a little bit more.  It would be so much better if her indoor hockey had the same lighting conditions.  I wish I hadn’t cut off her foot.

ISO 200, f/8, 1/1800 sec.

Day 39 – Light painting

Just playing around with some light painting with longer exposures and a bike light.  I will try some more of this in the future.  Just fun.

ISO 200, f/8, 30 sec.

Day 40 – More Light

Was spinning the bike light on my desk.  Didn’t quite turn out as I hoped but still an interesting experiment.

ISO 200, f/5.6, 0.5 sec.

Day 41 – Ultimate

Another indoor Ultimate picture.  It’s much easier to take pictures of the handler than it is of a receiver.  Crazy high ISO and some serious noise reduction.

ISO 6400, f/5.6, 1/250 sec.

Day 42 – Dashboard

Was trying to get the tachometer moving on my Honda Insight.  Was just in park.  Getting relatively horrible fuel economy in winter city driving.

ISO 1250, f/5.6, 0.3 sec.

Day 43 – Marking

The reason I am behind on my posts… marking ethics essays.  Should have picked one with red edits all over it.

ISO 1250, f/1.8, 1/60 sec. 50 mm lens.

Day 44 – Book

Playing off of yesterday’s, another book closeup with a narrow DOF.

ISO 800, f/1.8, 1/200 sec.

Day 45 – Hockey

Another hockey picture with the goalie making a save.  They did clean the glass but it is still not fantastically clear.

ISO 1400, f/4.8, 1/250 sec.