Perfect Wave

Day 27
As I was walking home after dropping my daughter at school, I noticed a man standing on the curb. He was staring out at the ocean. I was taking photos of the houses, trying to get a streetscape and suddenly I noticed the man sort of gasped. I followed his gaze and saw this perfect wave starting to peel off.

Day 26 Cents

Day 26
I waited all month to do this shot. I found a quarter, that's not even really very old, but it's all blackened,and dented. I paired it with a 1944 wheat penny that I found awhile ago, and took a macro photo of them on my piano, with the sun coming through the window. I really wanted to use this sooc, but when I saw it sharpened and saturated a little bit, I just had to keep it!

Cure For What Ales You

Day 25/365
This was fun, I wanted to shoot this bottle as soon as I saw it. My husband drank one glass, and decided it wasn't really for him, so I made sure the bottle got stopped and put in the fridge until I was ready to shoot it. I chose the bar at the top of the stairs because of the retro faucets, but I had a hard time balancing, because I had to stand on the penultimate step to get far enough away with my 50mm lens. I couldn't put a tripod up either. At first I was trying to get the top of the bottle in the shot too, but decided it didn't add anything to the photos, so I cropped it in a bit cosier. Running the old west action on it gave it a nice blurry look, and then I added the vintage texture that I got from kim klassen cafe, and I was really happy with how this looked.

West Basin

Took a field trip to the West Basin Municipal Water District with the Grades of Green docents today. It was really interesting learning about where our recycled water goes. During the tour, I took a bunch of photos, it was such a sunny day, and all the machinery looked pretty amazing. I played around with an HDR treatment in Photomatix and fell in love with the way the metal in this pipe looked.

Day 24/365

Potato Medley

I was actually quite proud of this photo, for a change. I bought these colored potatoes at Trader Joe's the other day because I loved the colors. I had a photo in mind, but hadn't formulated it yet. I had some time to devote to it today, so I put up the (grossly underutilized) tripod, and set the potatoes up in the light of the window. I tried some bracketed shots, and was really taken with the way the potatoes looked in the highest exposures against a nearly white background. So I performed a light HDR on it, then took it into Photoshop and brought up the contrast, saturated it a bit, then I made a lasso'ed the table only and duplicated the layer and did gaussian blur to it until I couldn't see any of the grit and noise anymore. The bowl was already white and pristine, so as a contrast to all this clean white background, I turned up the sharpness on the potatoes again to give the skin and eyes and scars a realistic, gritty look. Maybe not the way a stock photographer would do it, but I really liked it this way.

Day 23/365

LA's Garment District

I drove around downtown looking for great streetscapes. I love how many wonderful photo opportunities are there. I came across two different music videos being filmed, and the crew were very kind to me, letting me take photos, and one of them even gave me a CD of the band's music. I gave it to Chanel, I think she'll enjoy it. I finally went with this one because the street was so colorful, and every singly shop was closed. At 5pm! I'm sure they were closed all day, as there were virtually no cars, and I was able to walk down the middle of the street safely. A security guard one street over looked lazily over at me and then went back about his business. I hit the grunge button in Photomatix and really liked the effect. The shot I wanted was ruined from my handshake due to my stubborn neglect to use a tripod. It was of a parking meter, with the street in the background, it was fabulous. Except for the blurry ghosting, that is. This one is a close second, although I felt like the perfect symmetry was a bit boring. My mother loves it though, and wants it blown up.

Day 22/365

Embrace

This one is bittersweet because I worked on it forever, I think I spent a total of six hours trying to get the texture and fonts right. It was really a nice photo to begin with, I probably should have left it alone, but when I saw it with the golden texture, I fell in love, and devoted my whole day to getting it 'just right'. I didn't ever manage to get it to the point where I was really proud of it, the white font bothered me a bit, and my original fadey part into the frame got lost in the layer shuffle, and I couldn't bring it back. But I do like it, and I'm glad I did it.
Day 21/365

Solar Eclipse

Have always wanted to stake out the oil refinery and take the perfect photo. It's so retro looking, just awesome. I am definitely going to revisit this place when the sun is lower in the sky.

Day 20/365

Fleeting

Tried another, this time it was a triple exposure. I took a macro photo of some water on the screen in our kitchen, and I liked it, but was grossed out by the close up of the dust on the window sill, so I kept shooting. Kaiya's schoolmates were playing on the foggy playground, and made a nice silhouette, so I took a photo of them too. But I thought I was really getting some epic photos of Quinne on the grass outside her school until I uploaded them and they were all overexposed. Hmmmm, what do do. I put all three together, and suddenly it all made sense. Was a bit worried I wouldn't want to go back to mere single exposures after this. Good thing the weekly theme was about to change...

Day 19/365

Dreams

The wave was nice, but not quite right. The photo of Quinne reaching for the giant moon was nice too, but not quite right, even when I edited it with old west to make it look more dreamy. But when I put them together, I liked the effect very much. My first 'double exposure'.
Day 18/365

Beach Volleyball

I already had a couple photos from today that I was going to use for my 365, but Kaiya and I took one last skateboard ride down the strand before the sunset and I saw these girls playing a very animated game of volleyball. On a whim, I went over and asked them if it was okay to take their photos. They happily agreed and returned immediately to their game. Kaiya sat front and center, cheering them on and really enjoying herself. I nearly had to drag her away after I'd taken a bunch of photos. It was sooo hard deciding on a favorite, but I went with this one because I really like the symmetry and it really popped in sepia.

17/365

Princess emerging

I had fun with this one, I took a photo of Kaiya when she was 6 days old and 'tore' it open in Photoshop and planted a new photo of her at 6 years and 354 days old inside.

My husband thought it was creepy, and didn't like seeing his baby with 'her head cracked open' but I thought it was really cool, and so did my mother in law.

16/365

For me?? You shouldn't have...

Did a 'run-through' before her actual birthday, that's why there are no candles on the cake. I made her wait in the next room, checked the lighting, then led her over with her eyes closed so I could capture genuine surprise.

15/365

Old Age

This dandelion turned out to be way more photogenic that its younger neighbors.

14/365

Quinn the Eskimo

I was walking home the other day and I ran into our neighbor and his beautiful dog, Quinn. We first met Quinn over the summer, he was a rescue dog, and such a beautiful one at that. I love Alaskan Huskies with the light eyes, this is my dream doggie. I promised to share some prints with our neighbor if he let me take photos. I just wish I'd had my 50mm lens with me, hopefully I'll get another chance.

13/365

4 Ingredient Crock Pot Recipe

I made this for dinner and snapped a couple pics in the morning for TPW. I ended up liking them a lot (after dodge and burning the fat on the meat a little bit) and decided to make this one my 365. I love the way my crock pot looks in the background!

12/365

Potpourri

I couldn't think of a clever title for this (petrified yarn? no...), it actually is a ball from the potpourri dish in the guest bathroom. I've been looking at this little guy for a few weeks now, and was planning to photograph him in b&w or sepia. But the teal color looked surprisingly fresh and I liked the way my 2 year old's shirt and sweater blurred in the background too. She was coloring in her book and totally ignoring me for a change.

Day 11/375

How Spike Sees Us

I try not to be offended, but it's a fact of life. Same with Sydney and Cleo.
Day 10/365

Olivera Street Market Guitars

Had lunch with my mom at Olivera Street before sending her back home on the train. I love all the colors at the market.

Day 9/365

Union Station

Picked up my mom for a quick 24 hour visit from Union Station.

Day 8/365

In Rememberance

Today I took Kaiya to the cemetery to visit Patrice's grave.

Day 7/365

Good Friends

This was a very unusual day. The clouds were fluffy all day long, I took about 400 photos. But the sunset was amazing. Red and orange clouds separated to reveal all four of the Channel Islands, the waves were tinged with a silver light, the seagulls were all sitting around on their reflections because a large expanse of sand was still wet, a mother and her small child were playing together in silhouette, a lone surfer was carving up the waves, and as if that wasn't enough, there were two dolphins frolicking! It was almost unbelievable, and I could barely shoot, my hands were shaking with excitement. On the way home I sobbed, feeling honored to have been witness to it all. When I got home, I wondered briefly if somebody I knew had died, because I have seen similar things happen when special people cross over. The next morning, I found out a very good friend of mine from London had died on this day, knocked off his bike by a reckless driver.

Day 6/365

Windy Day

Quinne was showing me 'her moves' at the path behind her school. She did this about 30 times until I got the right shot. She's a good sport.

Day 5/365

Beachside Seating

Stopped to snap this unusual bench on the way home from taking Kaiya to school.

Day 4/365

Rainy Day

In between rainstorms, I took this photo of Quinne. We were on the top floor of the parking structure next to my doctor's office. The asphalt is almost white, the sky was bright overcast, so the light was phenomenal. Like being in snow without the snow.

Day 3/365

Fräulein Steinbach

Quite a few years ago, Chanel decided that her Aunt Patrice needed a female nutcracker to complement her rather extensive collection. We searched all over the net looking for one, and found this one on Ebay. It's an authentic, numbered Steinbach, so it was really expensive. We bit the bullet and bought her anyway. Patrice was thrilled, and placed her front and center every Christmas, flanked by her army of male nutcrackers. Ironically, a few weeks after purchasing this beauty, we saw another female nutcracker. This one was at Target for about $12. It was a pretty ballet dancer, which would have been perfectly fine, if only we'd seen it earlier. So we bought the $12 one for ourselves.

Day 2/365

day 1: A New Beginning

I'm posting a photo a day for 365 days. The challenge of taking a photo I like every day is going to be interesting. I started the new off by planting two lavender plants in my empty flowerbed.

Day 1/365