I made it through a month of 365. I honestly can't believe it. I haven't blogged everything, because quite honestly, I have been having a hard time getting pictures on the computer. This past week has been hard for me to get pictures at all. There has been so much going on that I haven't really been thinking about pictures until late in the evening.
Here's to 31 days down, only 334 to go.
This week, my motivation and inspiration have been lagging. Tonight it took until 10:30 before I really got the motivation to get off the couch and take a picture. Last night, I just took a picture of our steaks because I was amazed at how big they were.
We're still cleaning up from the sewage back up that happened last Friday, we we're emotionally and physically exhausted. So far, the insurance process has been pretty decent though. Maybe we'll be good as new in a few weeks.
This was only the beginning of the problem. It turned out that the county's sewer line was backed up; however, we did not know that when the plumber started snaking our sewer line. By the time the last person left our house, shortly after midnight, we had spent $1400, had our carpet torn up in one and a half rooms, and had a seven inch section of drywall cut out of our downstairs bathroom and family room.
This was when the water was still clear and not quite as stinky, before we realized it was sewage. Thank goodness I didn't let the kids swim in it, huh?
I haven't been blogging as much lately, but I'm pretty impressed with myself for sticking to this for the past 20 days (21 if you count today's picture).
Yesterday at work, I saw this keychain sitting on my desk. I received it from a vendor. Anyway, I decided I wanted to do something with a level or balance or something, using this keychain.
Tada! My son's blocks and a keychain on a piece of black posterboard.
I still haven't found my remote switch yet. After thinking through the last time I saw it, I'm sure it has to be in our house. At first I was worried that it fell out of my pocket, but then I remembered I used it to take some long-er exposure shots of water going down the drain after I used it at work. So it must be somewhere in my house.
Tonight I was struggling to come up with a shot that I was proud of. I'm trying really hard with this 365 project not to use pictures of my kids, or at least not identifiable pictures of my kids. That was all I had for today though, until I went out and checked the mail.
I didn't check the mail until between 8 and 8:30 this evening. It's the first moment I've had to myself, aside from the two and a half hour nap I took this afternoon.
Anyway, the fog was so thick I could hardly see the neighbors houses, so I ran back in and got my camera. I had to wait for our security light to go off so my pictures weren't overexposed.
I had to mess with the levels a little to eliminate the light pollution from the city. I live about 10-15 miles from downtown, but on overcast and foggy nights, I pick up a lot of pollution in my images.
I've been trying to comment on people on the Flickr group. The past few days, I haven't been finding as many images that catch my eye. I don't know if everybody else is having the same blahs I am, or if I'm just not seeing the same as I usually do.
Nothing fascinating or artistic about todays picture. I was playing with my speedlite, trying to figure out the manual features on it. Grabbed my daughters princess musicbox and put a piece of posterboard behind it to bounce the light from.
I am have been reading about making your own lightbox and am hoping to do that this weekend. I've also been reading about reversed lens macro, so that might be something else I try during my 365 project.
I find it interesting that today, the day I choose to come into work at 6:30 am and take pictures of the rows of cubicles, is pretty much a terrible day at work. I'd say that it was the worst day I've had in recent memory, but that title officially belongs to pretty much every day leading up to Christmas. That's when I had two different customers yell at me on two different days to the point that I cried. I haven't cried at a job since probably 2001, until the week of Christmas.
I originally planned to take pictures of the top of the cubicles to convey the image of the corporate maze, but I much prefered the straight shot down the aisle, instead focusing on the monotony and blah-ness of the office environment.
This is a new office environment that we moved to the last week of August. Our former digs were not-so-affectionally referred to as "the dungeon." At least the 31st floor gave us some light.
I am still amazed by this picture. It was snapped from the 31st floor of my office building just becuase I went on break this morning. I stood up to leave and saw the sunrise and instantly exclaimed how beautiful it was.
Several others stood at the window and looked at it, and one asked if I had my camera and I realized, "Oh yeah, I do have my camera" so I grabbed it and snapped this shot. It caught the pinks and purples perfectly.
Taken after a long day at work, on my drive home. I don't understand this merge. Scratch that; I don't understand the idiots that don't know how to navigate this merge. There are signs for a mile telling drivers that the lane is ending, but people persist on believing that where they need to be is somehow more important than where the rest of us need to be, so they squeeze as far up as they can in the ending lane, stopping traffic in five lanes instead of just planning ahead.
This merge is truly so obnoxious that I generally take backroads home, so my blood pressure doesn't boil at the thought of some pompous idiot thinking he's more important than the rest of us, or I don't pull some stupid roadrage move like jerk my car in front of one of said pompous idiots. I've done that before, mind you. That's when I decided to take another route home.
I spun this top over and over again, trying to capture the motion and color in one. I think it came out of a cereal box, but I'm not sure. It wasn't on the couch when I left this morning, but was there when I got home from work.
I planned to do a bulb exposure, but apparently my remote switch is MIA. Last time I remember seeing it, it was in my coat pocket and I asked what that was doing there. I was leaving work Tuesday or Wednesday of last week. I hope I didn't drop it in the snow.
According to my mom, the last time she remembers the Ohio River being completely covered in ice was when she was 15 or 16, so as soon as my sister came in this morning and said the river was frozen from one side to the other, we hurridly got dressed and headed towards Gallipolis (Ohio).
When we arrived, we discovered that a barge had come through and broken up the ice, but the river was still mostly ice covered. After taking a few shots from the Ohio side of the river, we hopped in the car and headed to Pt. Pleasant, West Virginia, headed through the flood gate, and snapped a few more pictures.
This picture is of the Silver Memorial Bridge, which replaced the Silver Bridge that collapsed in the late 60's.
I was trying to find something to focus on through the decorative glass of my living room window. I'm lucky I didn't break my neck, climbing on a kitchen chair with tripod and camera in tow, trying to line this shot up.
After spending what felt like hours trying to get a decent shot, I finally got this bush in focus through the glass and was satisfied with the outcome. I wasn't thrilled, but it is pretty close to what I was looking for.
I got my daughter this bracelet, her first piece of "real" jewelry, for Christmas. She wore it for the first time today and it struck me that I wanted to get a picture of it. Of course, she wouldn't sit still for a picture, so I took this after she went to bed.
After many pictures of just a bracelet and feeling that something was missing, I thought I'd put my wedding ring in the middle of it, for size comparison, and there it was...the shot I was looking for.
I bought a Speedlite 430ex II today and was having a little fun playing with bouncing the flash off of a white box. Desaturated the color in PSE.
Four inches of snow likely isn't a lot to many people, as they regularly see more than that every winter. However, the intensity that the snow was falling from the clouds this afternoon made the streets very trecherous. My company let everybody leave at 3:00, which is nice, since I didn't get home until 4:45.
As I was sweeping off my car and waiting for it to warm up, I grabbed my camera and snapped some shots from the top of the parking garage. There is a lot of interesting architecture downtown.
Perhaps later in my 365 project, when it's a little warmer out, I'll wander around downtown and get some more creative shots.
Today, I leave you with an image of building tops and a soft layer of snow.
I want to redo our bathroom, eventually, when we're no longer underwater on our house. I didn't realize how rusted out the drain was, until I focused on it.
I think I've mentioned it before, but my kids have been sick for the past week. I've given more baths in the past five days than probably the entire month leading up to this evil stomach bug.
I am ready to kiss this nasty mess good-bye and I hope none of you have the misfortune of encountering it.
I took my camera to work again today, but still didn't find the time to go out during my lunch. It's too daggone cold for me to get super brave, but I keep looking at area's I'd like to stop and photograph. It just seems I never have the time.
It's snowed quite a bit this week. This picture was captured on my way home from work.Stopped at a gas station, saw the light shining through the snowflakes, directly over the apartment building behind it, and pulled out my camera.
Slowly but surely, I'm starting to feel less self conscious about just pulling my camera out. Hopefully by day 365, I wont worry that people think I'm weird for taking pictures of random things.
It's barely winter, and I'm already ready for summer. Snow and winter wouldn't be so bad, if it were 90 degrees or so.
Today we got about a half inch of snow. We're supposed to get another 1-4 inches on Thursday.
Again, I had another idea for a photo, took my camera to work today and everything, but my daughter is still sick so I left early and took her to the doctor, so I didn't get to explore downtown in the snow.
I took this picture shortly after midnight, then decided I'd rather have the shot from in front of the scale instead of above it. I waited until I had great lighting this afternoon, took the picture I wanted, and discovered I have ugly feet.
I still want the picture I had in mind when I took this shot. Maybe I'll rehab my feet for the next couple of weeks and try again later this month?
It was supposed to be a depiction of how I don't believe in New Years resolutions, but instead ended up with this...a commentary on how I hate my weight.
Day two of 365...I saw the snow start to fall just before I went to bed last night. We woke up this morning to a thin coating of fresh snow over everything. The sun was up too, with sparse cloud cover, so the snow had that sparkle to it.
I couldn't get exactly the shot I wanted, but I did manage to capture some of the sparkle, as well as a little bit of a flare from the sun.
I don't know if I'll actually stick to a 365 project, but I happened to come across a group for 365 projects on Flickr and thought I'd give it a shot.
This is not the greatest picture, since I decided around 11:30 PM that I was going to start a 365 project on January 1, and needed something quick to fill slot 1 of 365.
I swear, we cleaned our living room no less than 20 times throughout the day today, both my husband and I being home with the kids. And yet, when they went to bed, I was still left with a pile of toys in the middle of the floor, and I haven't had the energy to get up and put them away, knowing full well that they will be dragged out again tomorrow.
So today, this picture epitomizes my life, and the stress that I've felt all day.
