My 40th Year

May 3, 2008; Day 1. Today I turned 40. The entree is haddock with a little butter and Parmesan cheese. It was magnificent. There were no sympathy cards. The one in front with the sliver of bark came from one of my most artistic friends.

May 4, 2008; Day 2. This is Peter and Molly, my favorite weekend guests. Molly is a pug with a swollen fold of skin between her eye and nose, so she is being cleaned and checked for ticks. He took her to the vet today who said she had a bacterial skin condition. She puts on a proud face despite the prognosis. This shot is in a group of shots I took for an online photography class on composition. In week 1, we’re learning how to fill the frame.

May 5, 2008; Day 3. My kitchen looks east over the Merrimack River valley, which gives me great access to each day’s sunrise. This is particularly true when the leaves are down. Early morning fog and the still-small spring leaves prompted me to try a hand-held HDR shot of the sun burning through the fog. This wasn’t as good as I had hoped. First, I should have noticed the dead branch. Second, I should have been more careful with the compositional preciseness between each exposure…Photomatix had trouble with the alignment. Despite the flaws, this is very close to capturing the beauty of the scene I saw. It’ll do!

May 6, 2008; Day 4. This is me commuting to work this morning in my Audi TT (seven years old and showing it). This was taken with my widest lens, a Sigma 10-20mm set to 10mm. The dynamic range is a bit more than the camera can handle but I’m not sure HDR is viable from a moving car! Astute viewers will observe that the tachometer and speedometer are both zero. Trust me, I didn’t Photoshop the motion you see through the window. My instrument cluster is fried and needs replacement!

May 7, 2008; Day 5. The tulips in my front yard are peaking this week, so this morning I dashed out into the golden sunlight with my macro lens. It bothers me when an image looks better as a thumbnail than it does at full size. The histogram on this image looks bizarre to me (the red channel is blowing out and the blue channel is going black). I’ll be practicing macro photography as much as possible before my cherry tree blossoms, perhaps as early as this weekend.

May 8, 2008: Day 6. I was browsing through the Strobist site and found a remarkable gallery of watch photography by Ming Thein. Impressive. Inspiring. With only an hour of free time tonight, I concocted this setup in my lightbox (thanks Oliver) and fired away. I applied slight saturation and contrast bumps. I have a long way to go before I've got the light down like Ming does, but I enjoyed working this subject. I sure love how much flexibility the D80's commander mode gives me.

May 9, 2008; Day 7. Most people in NH have rhubarb that grows like mad and comes up bigger and better every year. Not me. I’ve been caring for these plants for 7 seasons and I still don’t get enough for a single pie. Bad soil? Bad PH? Bad light? It’s the sunniest spot in my yard, it has good runoff, and I gave it some nice horse manure last year. My sister says that it’s time for a raised bed. Here I’ve gotten down to the stalks of my largest plant with my Sigma 10-20 lens and captured 6 exposures for another HDR composition. This time the alignment was much better; the camera is sitting on the ground. Somehow the neighbor’s cat managed to stay still throughout…lucky me! In the central background is my cherry tree with pink blossoms opening…I’ll be doing plenty of photographing this weekend.

May 10, 2008; Day 8. Here’s a glimpse at the start of another project of mine: Take 4 pictures at the same location to showcase the 4 seasons of New Hampshire. This project was inspired by Bryan Peterson’s critique of another photo I took near this location. I decided that the angle of the original photo didn’t work because the bridge merged with the fallen tree. So I’ve been to this location a half-dozen times trying to find a way to make the tree, bridge, and stream all work together. I am fairly happy with this. There are no spring flowers here, but the small, light green leaves on the trees behind the bridge, as well as the abundance of water in the stream, are just about right for spring. Stay tuned for the remaining 3 seasons! My Sigma 10-20mm lens is wearing a circular polarizing filter (Lee) for this shot. I also tried this as an HDR. I love the cartoonish color and the gnarly lines of the tree from this slightly different angle, but it doesn’t fit the project as well, so I offer it as an alternate daily and yet another fun practice of HDR.

May 11, 2008; Day 9. The cherry tree is in full bloom and the sun is shining. Sunshine is mighty bright and contrasty, probably too much. I'm really enjoying the Tamron 90mm macro lens.

May 12, 2008; Day 10. I'm not always a big fan of foreground bokeh but I think it works here. Thanks to my friend Raymond for lending a hand.

May 13, 2008; Day 11. This is my house in Concord, NH as seen through the Sigma lens at 10mm. This house is a classic "New Englander" design which means the roofline runs perpendicular to the road. I'm standing on a stepladder in the driveway so that the rhododendrons don't block the lower windows. Unfortunately I did not have time to wait for the lovely blue sky of dusk. That would have eliminated some woefully hot spots. You'll see this again when I can get it lit just right.

May 14, 2008; Day 12. I’m hosting a small dinner party tomorrow, so tonight I clean. Oliver suggested that this might be a good time to re-attach the camera to the vacuum. I said I would only if my new 10.5mm Fisheye lens arrived. It did. I think I'm finally happy with my lens collection, which means I can finally put together a “my gear” shot when I have more time. This is my kitchen, my favorite room in the house. That’s a tin ceiling and see-through cabinets. My sister, her husband, and I installed the wallpaper. The camera is taped to a flat section above the main canister of the vacuum. The blur in the photo is due to my actually vacuuming the floor here. A sponge provides vibration dampening, needed since the vacuum is running. Luckily Nikon didn’t adopt the term “vibration dampening” for their lenses…

May 15, 2008; Day 13. Nothing completes a dinner party quite like a cordial. I was drawn to the backlit blue in this shot and probably should have gotten even closer. I’m holding a heavily snooted incandescent bulb at camera left to light up the label. You can easily see the stark color difference between it and the faint remnants of the on-camera flash (which apparently does contribute a little bit of light to the exposure even when you tell it not to). Note to self: Backlit patina is really bright and noticeable!

May 16, 2008; Day 14. For most of the year, this gallery will try to focus on the art of making a picture. But today, it really is a diary. Seven years ago today, I took delivery of my Audi TT. I photographed it heavily on that day, including the instrument cluster. I realized that if I continued to photograph the cluster on the car’s birthday, I’d accumulate some interesting information: miles driven each year, climate change, and patina accretion. (“Patina” is a much better word than “dust”!) Don't believe me? 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Coincidentally, I had the car in the shop today to replace the cluster, just in time for a badly needed patina “reset.” While the cluster was broken, I probably lost 5000 miles off the odometer. I told the dealer this but they didn’t care. For fun, I also shot it with my fisheye. The neighbor’s cat didn’t want to be left out either. I like the way Brian Hart lists his post processing steps. I will too: Raw: Clarity +100 PS: Color Balance: +15 yellow to blue PS: Saturation: +50 PS: Unsharp mask: 20-30-0

May 17, 2008; Day 15. Self portrait with the guys of the “Bad Dog Down” yoga group. If you’re into yoga, you’ll recognize that our name is a play on the “downward dog” pose. I thought it might be fun to get a group shot with the new fisheye lens. The fisheye is not a flattering portrait lens, but it’s fun with group shots since individual people don’t have to be quite as close. Also, if the surroundings fit the subject, it’s nice to include them (mats scattered about on the floor, straps on one wall, blocks on the other). I didn’t notice what was happening in the mirror until after I got home. If I had seen it in the viewfinder, I almost certainly would have recomposed the shot to eliminate ourselves. But after thinking about it, I’ve decided that if I’m going to embrace the fisheye lens, I need to fill that frame with stuff worth looking at. Here, we’ve got the main shot and the “setup shot” all in the same frame! I wish I had arranged us so that you could see the camera itself better. Also, I wish I had taken a shot of everyone sitting in a more yoga-like pose. Namaste would have been a good choice. Dolphin would have been a bad choice. Raw: Exposure +0.3 Raw: Fill Light +5 PS: Color Balance: +15 yellow to blue PS: Saturation: +20 PS: Unsharp mask: 10-30-0

May 18, 2008; Day 16. Peter and I visited a new friend today. Charles LaFond has been a master potter for 25 years and now resides fairly close to us. Here he's guiding Peter through his first pull. The wheel throws a lot of clay and water around, hence the splatter. Another image from today's shoot was submitted in my Art of Composition class. Raw: WB to 4150K PS: Color Balance: +10 Yellow to Blue PS: Saturation: +10 PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0

May 19, 2008; Day 17. Every Monday night I catch up with friends in the basement of this magnificent structure, South Church in Portsmouth. This time of year, dusk falls while I'm there so sometimes I sneak outside to photograph. This HDR is a little noisy, and it suffers from too many light sources of different colors - dusky sky, bluish-white street lights, and sodium vapor street lights. But I do like the lighter sections of this shot. Note to self - Check ISO before you shoot. ISO 400 might explain some of the noise here! Here's the middle exposure of the set for reference. PS: Unsharp mask: 10-30-0

May 20, 2008; Day 18. This idea has been stuck in my head since March. I took a class on the "art of seeing" and our last assignment was conceptual photography. We were given a list of words and were asked to pick 3 of them and locate representative subjects. The trick: No people or animals. This was my idea for the word "Loss". But back then, there were no cherries in the store. Now that I've shot it, I must admit, the lone cherry doesn't look very sad about losing his twin. Conceptual photography is tough. In the class I had mixed success with the words I had picked: Access, Abandonment, and Risk. (Risk should have been disqualified since I put a person in it.) Anyway, even if your ideas end up being only so-so, you've got to shoot them, or you'll never get them out of your head! Since I came up with ideas for all the words, expect more conceptual photography in the months ahead. Raw: Exposure: +1 Raw: Saturation: +30 PS: Color Balance: Yellow to Blue +15 PS: Unsharp Mask: 10-30-0

May 21, 2008; Day 19. Remember the first time you held a mirror in front of another mirror? I wanted to capture that same "tunnel to infinity" effect, with the camera itself as the subject. I also wanted to answer the question, "what color is a mirror?" Question answered? Raw: Exposure: +1 Raw: WB: Auto (3000K) PS: Rotate 0.5 degrees PS: Crop: 33% PS: Color Balance: Yellow to Blue +15 PS: Saturation: +10

May 22, 2008; Day 20. I'm on a little vacation at a bed & breakfast on 86 acres in Vermont. I took a hike and found this sign. It made me laugh out loud with the camera and all. I could have paid more attention to my composition and my background, but... well, I'm on vacation. I'll be taking lots more photos tomorrow. No post processing...JPEG from camera.

May 23, 2008; Day 21. The Moose Meadow Lodge in Duxbury Vermont is where I'm staying this weekend. It's a very comfortable log cabin with 4 bedrooms. When we arrived home from dinner there was just the slightest bit of dusk remaining. I considered doing an HDR but found that a severe yellow to blue color adjustment (+74) seemed to both bring out the blue sky and reduce the hotness of the light. There's more to be done here (clone out the red tape, rotate slightly), but I'm really enjoying this vacation.

May 24, 2008; Day 22. I took many pictures on my last full day here in Vermont, including a bunch finally taken with my 300mm exotic (the baby of that family). I was very pleased with its performance. Blue Jays are a dime a dozen here in New England but they're skittish. I had to sit out at the edge of the woods for about an hour to get a decent set of photos to choose from. This was long enough to realize that the song of the Blue Jay is not necessarily shrill and annoying. I detected 3 distinct songs, two of which were pleasant. No post processing; JPEG from camera.

May 25, 2008; Day 23. Before arriving home from a very pleasant stay in Vermont, I stopped at a classic car show hosted by a friend of mine. A growing number of my friends have picked up a classic car and are now suggesting that I join them. Someday, perhaps, but at the moment, one expensive hobby is enough! This beauty is a DeSoto that everyone swoons over whenever it appears at these gatherings. Most of the pictures I took at this show were like this: macro details captured with my Sigma ultra wide lens. Now that I've studied them, I think this lens distorts these subjects too much. I did like this shot because it makes the fins and the car look big, which they are. Raw: Exposure: +1 Raw: Fill light: +15 PS: Unsharp mask: 20-30-0

May 26, 2008; Day 24. No fun plans today…just laundry, chores, and the sorting and purging of hundreds of pictures from my vacation. I did step outside to enjoy the weather for a while, and noticed the bumble bees trying to pry open the flower buds on the rhododendrons. I hoped to catch one in action but didn’t get lucky. These will open soon and should be nicely fragrant over the next couple of weeks. I plan to get lucky with an insect/flower macro shot. Raw: Exposure: +0.6 PS: Crop: ~5% PS: Saturation: +15

May 27, 2008; Day 25. Dandelion seed stems produces some great photography. Today I noticed that most of my dandelions have packed it in for the year, so I had to crawl about my yard for one that still was fresh. I decided to pluck all but a single seed and try for another conceptual photograph. Does this say stubbornness to you? Perhaps instability? Abandonment? If you’d like to see how I shot this, click here. The strobe is wearing a diffuser and is less than 2 inches from the stem. The background is an old green coat. Not shown is a half-sheet of paper being held as a reflector; the strobe is running at 1/4 power. Raw: Recovery: +20 PS: Saturation: +20

May 28, 2008; Day 26. Sometimes I let my photography get in the way of my life. Someone once asked me, “If you died today, would you want your parents to see your house as it is right now?” I thought of that this morning when I saw this. Being driven to learn a craft and excel at it is mostly a good thing. But I have to remind myself that I have a career, friends, a partner, and…dishes. So creativity and imagination will wait for another night; tonight I caught up with my life. But I did try to be playful with this shot...if you look closely, you can see yesterday’s subject still intact among the refuse! Raw: Exposure: +0.7 Raw: Saturation: +15

May 29, 2008; Day 27. Today I found a great new spot for shooting. This new pedestrian bridge is called "Hands Across the Merrimack." To the right of this shot is the skyline of Manchester, NH. Running beneath is the Merrimack River. Along the river is the Everett Turnpike. The deck is new pressure-treated lumber. The lamps are lit before sunset. The possibilities are endless. I'll be back. Raw: Exposure: +1 Raw: Fill Light: +20 Raw: Saturation: +30 PS: Color Balance: Magenta to Green: -10

May 30, 2008; Day 28. In NH, all vehicles must pass an annual inspection to stay on the road. My car is 7 years old and for the last couple of years it has needed a little work in order to pass. Today I had to sit for 2 hours while they replaced the rear coil springs. The appointment time completely overlapped the Jerry Springer show, which was playing on the TV in the waiting room. The last time I had seen this show, I promised myself that I’d never watch it again except under duress. So outside I went, in search of art in new Audi automobiles. (Here and here.) Not completely successful in the harsh mid-day light, but fun. The sun was burning my scalp, so back inside I went. The show is even worse than I remember, so I definitely renewed my self-imposed rule...just as soon as the show was over... Raw: Fill Light: +20 Raw: Saturation: +20 PS: Merged a much better screen capture from a more poorly composed image into this one.

May 31, 2008; Day 29. Once each month, my friends gather for a potluck supper. This month, we gathered in Deerfield at the home of my friend Bob. His house is a converted barn with a two-story tall great room. Along the walls are a myriad of plants and artwork. I'm using the fisheye to get really close to this piece, and I liked that this shot doesn't shout "fisheye" too much. I like that I included the original barn beam, but I wish I had observed the merge with the statue. And yes, I ate too much. My friends really know how to cook! Raw: WB: 2850K Raw: Exposure: +1.5 (hand held) Raw: Fill Light: +20 Raw: Saturation: +20 PS: Rotate: 1 degree CW PS: Crop: Just enough to remove the black bands from the rotation PS: Color Balance: Yellow to Blue +20

June 1, 2008; Day 30. Peter and I enjoyed a beautiful late Spring day by taking a short bike ride through a neighboring town. I quickly metered with the camera to my eye (that’s as close to living on the edge as I get), then let it hang as it fired away. I like the angle of the horizon and the motion implied by the road. I’ll be doing much more biking starting now…I’m planning to ride my first century (124 miles, actually) in September. No post processing…JPEG from camera.

June 2, 2008; Day 31. It’s Monday which means I’m in Portsmouth, NH. Some of you may recognize this as one of the Wyland Whaling Walls. This one is number 37, painted on June 14, 1993. This scene depicts humpback whales near the Isles of Shoals, a set of 7 little islands shared between NH and Maine. This HDR was created from six exposures. The aperture was held constant at f/8; the shutter speed varied from 1/30s to 1/1000s in one-stop increments. Photomatix did the work. I also shot this wall using my fisheye lens. (Note to self: The fisheye really exaggerates an unlevel horizon!) You can see a lot of repairs to the building that are slowly obliterating this painting. PS: Rotate 2 degrees PS: Crop away black bars PS: Color Balance: -5 Magenta to green PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0

June 3, 2008; Day 32. Oliver alerted us to the Orton technique last week. I had never heard of it before but I was atwitter to try it. For this first attempt, I was blessed with overcast skies, a nearly dead calm atmosphere, and lots of rhododendrons in full bloom. This is a blend of two exposures. The first is at f/16 and focused on the front flower. The second is at f/5.6 and focused at infinity. Due to my proximity to the front flower, the first exposure was blurry at infinity. This seems to have made it possible to have a front-to-back Orton effect. This first attempt is a little hot in the front and there is some ghosting that may have been caused by my batting away the dive-bombing mosquitoes during the long exposures. Still, I see lots of potential with this technique and will add it to my list of things to try when I’m working a subject. If I hadn't known about Orton, I almost certainly would have posted this as my daily. PP after the blend: Color Balance: -40 Yellow to Blue.

June 4, 2008; Day 33. Please forgive a second rhododendron shot in a row, but I got even better conditions than yesterday: raindrops and fewer mosquitoes, in addition to overcast light and no wind! Oliver suggested that I try the Orton technique with a single exposure where everything is in focus, then apply the Gaussian blur and blend them. This is what I got. The greens are WAY better than yesterday, and so is the flower. I had taken several bracketed exposures of this flower for HDR practice. The HDR wasn't so great (it flattened the flower too much). Not surprisingly perhaps, the most correctly exposed original was the best for Orton. (I used the Apply Image->Screen step to lighten the originals.) Here’s the original photo. Before applying the Orton technique: Raw: WB: 5500K (daylight) PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0 Post-Orton: PS: Cloned out hot spot in lower left.

June 5, 2008; Day 34. Bitter Harvest. Today I harvested the biggest stalks of rhubarb from my rhubarb patch. As you can see, they all fit comfortably in a 1-cup measurer. At this rate, I’ll get a pie every four years. Sigh. Here again I’m having fun with wireless flash, holding it low in the leaves. I love how the light brings out the red of the stalks, the vein of the leaves, and the grain of the table. Here is a shot of my rhubarb patch before the harvesting. Only the skinny little stalks remain; we’ll see if they improve with the competition removed. You probably know this but rhubarb greens do NOT make a festive addition in your salad! The leaves have oxalic acid in them which is fatal in sufficient doses. JPEG from camera. PS: Rotate 3 degrees to better align cup top, then crop out black bars. PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0.

June 6, 2008; Day 35. Tonight I spent several hours helping my very good friend Dennis set up his new PC. He's an artist with a deadline and I was happy to help. Luckily, he let me set up my camera in order to grab this self portrait, the only photograph I was able to capture today. The gem of this shot is the artwork on the wall, particularly the stunning tribute to Mel Blanc. Raw: Exposure: +1 Raw: WB: 4300K Raw: Saturation: +15 PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0

June 7, 2008; Day 36. Tonight I enjoyed a very pleasant dinner party hosted by friends. I had actually never been to their house before, a mid-18th Century ranch with attached barn. This is the first thing you see when you step into their kitchen. At first glance, I thought it must be much older than the Copper Clad wood stove that my parents own (since this one is “rounder”), but it’s actually a hybrid wood and gas stove, which ought to make it much newer. If its shape doesn’t grab your attention, its complimentary color will. My friends also raise chickens. This rooster had a uniquely shaped comb and was a serious contender for the daily. PS: Color Balance: +40 Yellow to Blue

June 8, 2008; Day 37. Peter came over to push me into the gym so that I continue to burn away some of my winter fat. It was a brutally hot day in New Hampshire (96 degrees) so afterwards, we arranged the chairs so that my sole window A/C could wash over us. Peter thought he'd read the paper but decided to doze instead. It is a really comfy chair. Yeah, that's a hot window. The graduated ND filter would not have helped, and an HDR would have revealed a lot of diffused light coming through blinds. Sometimes you have to live with life's compositional hurdles. No post processing...JPEG from camera.

June 9, 2008; Day 38. Tonight my friends decided to wander through Prescott Park, a very nice place in Portsmouth. There are several gardens and fountains, and the park lines the Piscataqua River, which separates Maine from New Hampshire. This river may have the fastest tidal current in North America. From the park you can easily observe Memorial Bridge taking U.S. Rte 1 traffic from NH to Maine and back. This bridge is well-lit at night so expect a nighttime shot once the days get shorter. The middle section is periodically raised to allow tall boats to pass through. You can see the M.V. Thomas Laighton approaching the bridge. Raw: Crop ~5% Raw: Vibrance: +100 (just having fun) PS: Color Balance: +10 Yellow to Blue PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0

June 10, 2008; Day 39. Is this a dolphin captured during the last ice age? Or is it a sweaty tumbler with a slice of lime? Hint: The temperature climbed above 100 degrees today. This was refreshing. PS: Crop: ~40% PS: Color Balance: -100 Cyan to Red; +23 Magenta to Green; +100 Yellow to Blue PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0

June 11, 2008; Day 40. Friends from my first online class at the Perfect Picture School of Photography gave me some ideas of fun places I could take my fisheye lens. The stainless steel walls of my dishwasher reflect a lot of light but don’t disperse it much, so my flash is wearing a diffuser and is pointed at the “ceiling.” If not for my third online class at the PPSOP (The Art of Food), I wouldn’t have any color in my dishware. Still, it can't hurt to check out local yard sales and augment my collection with some more colorful pieces. Raw: White Balance: 4600K Raw: Exposure: +0.3 Raw: Fill Light: +5 Raw: Saturation: +40 PS: Color Balance: +8 Yellow to Blue PS: Unsharp Mask: 10-30-0

June 12, 2008; Day 41. I’m scouting for just the right place to put my camera when I start the “Four Holidays” project, which hopefully will be ready to go on July 4. I must think ahead for this, as each holiday will have separate lighting requirements as well as ideal placement of subjects that identify the holiday. In this spot, I have a lot of flexibility for a subject dancing around with a sparkler. But if I want to see kids in costumes standing at the door next to the Jack o’lantern at Halloween, I might need to get a little closer. This is an HDR image taken from 6 exposures and assembled with Photomatix. The aperture is a fixed f/8 throughout; the shutter speeds were 25s, 13s, 6s, 3s, 1.6s, and 1/1.3s. Within Photomatix, I increased the white point and saturation but decreased the smoothing (more “glow” near the top of the house) and luminosity (less noise). Bet you wonder how I got this shot with a 1000mm lens! (Actually, the EXIF is wrong, the Sigma was at the full 10mm for this.) PS: Used healing brush to remove power lines. PS: Unsharp Mask: 10-30-0

June 13, 2008; Day 42. I took a stroll through the grounds of the local Unitarian Universalist church today. The trees in these woods are quite tall. I knew that the sky would be hot, particularly as the late-day sun is in the frame, so I took a bracketed sequence. The resulting HDR composite produced some nice colors, but it also burned some leaves, so this softer original will have to do. No post processing; JPEG from camera.

June 14, 2008; Day 43. Did you know that the Summer Solstice is a 3-stage event? I didn’t either until I started studying the Skygazer’s Almanac. Today marked stage 1: Earliest Sunrise. In Manchester, sunrise was 5:06 a.m. I had planned in advance to capture it today as my daily. To do this, I set my alarm for 3:55 and made my first shot at 4:47 a.m. At that hour, unfortunately, I’m not thinking clearly and forgot to check whether auto focus was on. Next, I should have scouted for better location. I picked a nice, high spot from which the downtown skyline is easily visible. But the sun is rising too far from downtown to allow it and the skyline to co-mingle in the frame. Plus there’s the 10-foot chain link fence along this stretch, without a hole in it anywhere. The sky was great for a sunrise, though. Too bad the foreground is a ho-hum roof access tower. It is possible that this will be a great spot to mark the Latest Sunrise next January, but I'll check first. After the sunrise disappointment, I proceeded to the location you see above, which is Sewall’s Falls bridge in Concord. This Pratt thru-truss bridge was built in 1915 and is in pretty rough shape. Its still being used, and its steel-grate deck reverberates with each car that passes over it. HDR was necessary to bring the sky down and the underbelly of the approach up. The low still-golden sunlight really brings out the rust. This shot was created from 7 exposures, all at f/11. The focal length is 14mm. Note to self...time to clean the sensor!

June 15, 2008; Day 44. Today we treated Peter’s parents to brunch for Father’s Day in Tilton. This is the Tilton town hall building, next door to the restaurant. Lots of wide angle distortion here. I wish I had also shot this with the base of the door perfectly horizontal for comparison. It might have looked more "natural." It was a good day for photography. Here I am catching the brunch party while pretending to photograph just a flower. (The shutter speed is so long that I didn’t bother to focus on them.) Afterwards we visited a marina. And with a lovely layer of dew that lasted all day, I got to crawl around in the yard too. Raw: Exposure: +0.3 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Color Balance: +10 Yellow to Blue PS: Saturation: +10

June 16, 2008; Day 45. Baby pine cones? I'm not sure; most plants instinctively know that mine is not a very green thumb. This was taken on the grounds of this church in Portsmouth where I am each Monday evening. I enjoyed overcast lighting and pulled out my macro lens for this shot. I have figured out that breezes only blow through your subject when the shot is actually ready to be taken! PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0.

June 17, 2008; Day 46. I was struck tonight by how my car looked during the last few minutes of dusk. It stood out sharply against the much darker foliage behind it. So I dashed into the house for the camera and fired away. It also gave me some practice photographing cars, which is a tricky business. What angle? What height? What background? What lens? What's in the reflection? Etc. The un-doctored photos came out okay. Just for fun, while I had this image in the raw converter, I grabbed the temperature slider and went all the way to the left (2000K). This is the result, plus sharpening (20-30-0 unsharp mask in Photoshop). Ironically, when I moved the same slider all the way to the right (50,000K), I got an image remarkably close to what I saw originally (bright, sharp car in front of dark foliage). Makes sense considering how blue the light really was.

June 18, 2008; Day 47. I spent another pleasant evening with a friend tonight, tweaking his computer and helping him get the most out of it. Although he’s in the uncropped version of this photo, he’s in the left "distortion wing" of the image…not so flattering. I know the evening was successful because he let me add a bookmark to my daily page. :~) The main source of light is coming from the wireless flash to my left, angled up towards the wall. The flash is in the manual mode at 1/4 power. I was pleased with the “large light source” effect this provided. Another shot with the flash pointed directly at me wasn’t so great. PS: Crop ~30 percent PS: Unsharp mask: 10-30-0

June 19, 2008; Day 48. I received this scarf as a gift from a woman I adore. I met her when I lived in Syracuse, NY, from 1990-1994. While I lived there she would grind up fresh parmesan cheese and deliver it to me in Mason jars. Yum! She turned 90 last November and I was delighted to be able to attend the celebration. I wanted to include a photo of it in my thank-you note; this is the one I will send. This is lit by my wireless flash held about 2 feet above the subject. I put the flash near the wall to keep the chair from casting shadows. This brought out a lot of texture from just about everything: scarf, chair, wall. I haven’t decided whether including the corner was a good idea. I was glad that I managed to keep most of the abundant white trim in the room out of the frame. PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0