365/365 The grand finale

Take a look at the title of this post.

365/365.

That's right! I made it successfully through Project 365.

If you're a new visitor, or fairly new, welcome! You can learn about Project 365 -- and maybe become inspired to try it yourself -- at Photojojo. I'd also suggest typing "project 365" into your search engine of choice and perusing the listings that pop up. Flickr has a group devoted to it as well.

It's been an amazing year. I picked up my camera every day for a year, except for a week following my eye surgery, during which I realized it was a wasted effort when I couldn't see well enough to see the photo, let alone tell if it was in focus.

To cap off the year and the project, I'll share my personal top 10 favorite posts from the last 365 days, in chronological order:

79/365 A day of girlfriends, in person and on the silver screen. My second solo portrait photo shoot. I did my first solo shoot earlier in the year, in April, with another girlfriend. I consider both shoots to have been successful, but what makes the shoot on day 79 especially rewarding is I can look back and see my hands-on knowledge improve.

96/365 Second outdoor portrait shoot. And then came this second shoot. I was able to take what I'd learned from the first two shoots and stretch my boundaries for this one. Now I can't wait to see what I can do this year!

113/365 Fields of gold. Wheat fields in central Indiana. I love the monochromatic quality of this image. It consistently comes up as one of my favorites.

127/365 Rocky Mountain National Park. Ah, vacation! I had the chance to get some very different photos on this trip, and the mountains in this park were stunning.

169/365 Light up the skies over Indianapolis. Sky Concert, one of my favorite events of the summer. I photographed real fireworks for the first time, and I had an excellent seat to get photos of downtown Indianapolis. What a great night.

198/365 Fall bouquet. This sunflower has to be one of my all-time favorite flower photos (and that's saying a lot, because I have hundreds of flower photos). My mom loved it so much that she had a 16x20" print made for her kitchen.

261/365 Toys from Christmases past. A macro shot of this koosh ball is just plain fun. It's unlike anything else I photographed over the year.

311/365 Mouth-watering dessert. I didn't initially think that a photo of two bowls of ice cream would be in my top ten for the year, but there's something about this shot that I really love (aside from the subject). I like the composition, the lighting, the color... It's just a pleasing shot, and that qualifies it for one of my favorites.

313/365 Now THAT'S what I call snow. Twelve inches of snow, followed by a gorgeous, sunny day. A perfect opportunity for photos!

361/365 First spring crocus. And finally, a photo from this past week. I love this photo so much that I've made it my desktop background at both home and work, and it's my wallpaper on my iPhone as well. I love the foreground elements, the completely out-of-focus background, the color, the water droplets, the spot-on focus... lovely.

If you've been a devoted follower, I'd love to hear what your favorite posts/photos have been over the last year.

I've decided (and have been persuaded) to restart Project 365 and take on another year. I'd been wavering between another P365 or just making this a regular photo blog, but I chose to go with the former.

But now, I think I'll take Sunday as a day of rest -- a one-day break -- then pick up Year 2 of Project 365 on Monday.

Stay tuned...!

Camera settings for this post, 365: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens, 1/500, f/4 at ISO 100 at about 5:00 p.m.

300/365 300th Post of Year 2

Believe it or not, today's photo is the 300th of this project! And that means only 65 more to go before a successful second round of Project 365.

I have to say, the second year is tougher than the first! I have to consciously work to not just rephotograph all the subjects I did the first year. Gotta make them different. I suppose that's kind of the point, though, right?

Ready for a round up of the best of the last 100 days?

214/365 Golden leaves -- Wow, remember what it was like to actually have some color outside? This photo makes me long for winter to be over!

216/265 Portobello mushroom -- Macro fan that I am, I love the texture in this photo. And it makes me hungry.

239/365 A rainy day in Chicago -- A beautiful end to a long day spent dodging in and out of stores on a marathon shopping trip.

240/365 A lovely walk around Chicago -- I can now mark a visit to the Cloud Gate off my photographer's bucket list.

276/365 Chilly morning -- This one is for Mom. She mentioned that she hadn't really seen this angle of the pond before, so she liked it.

279/365 Frosty morning -- Apparently we had a couple beautiful mornings fall quite close to each other. I love thick frost like this, especially when the sun hits it. Everything just sparkles.

290/365 First footprints -- My first really noticeable use of my new wide-angle lens.

296/365 Life is rough -- I choose this photo just because it warms my heart and makes me smile.

And what about the photo that goes in this post? These are an "after" shot of the new pendant lights that Dad installed in my living room. The old ones were rather ugly, 1970s throwback, brushed gold cones on the ceiling. Ick.

What's next in the final 65 days of this year? Look for week-long themes, helping me with inspiration in the final stretch!

Camera: Canon 40D with 430EX Speedlite, 1/80s, f/4 at ISO 200

100/365 First 100 days

Believe it or not, the first 100 days of my second trip through Project 365 have passed! You can tell Buster is excited, right? Don't let him fool you with his "I'm oh-so cool" face.

As has become my tradition, at the conclusion of each 100 days, I share some links and thoughts on my favorite photos of the period. Shall we get right to it?

12/365 A willing model: One of the subjects I can't avoid is my darling Buster. And this photo of his perch at the top of the stairs has become a favorite.

32/365 Cherry blossoms: I love the crisp white and vibrant spring green in this photo. Those colors alone bring back that early spring-is-coming excitement.

36/365 Flowering redbuds: I often get close, within macro distance, for flora photos, but I backed up for this photo. It has a soft, pretty feel from being intentionally overexposed, and I like it.

58/365 Along the iris spectrum: Can you tell it's spring time by the quantity of blooming plants in these photos? The opposing moods in these photos -- one dark and dramatic, the other soft and ethereal -- bring me back to them as a favorite.

64/365 Perfect peonies: This photo is completely monochromatic and completely one of my favorites. I intend to have a print made of this and frame it, I like it so much. Hmm, where to hang it...?

87/365 Recovery in New Orleans: Now for some completely different subject matter, and one which can only be achieved through travel. My day volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans was eye-opening, from the day spent in a recovering neighborhood to the stroll along the beautiful riverside that evening. The dichotomy of the city is striking, even after nearly four years since Hurricane Katrina.

89/365 Final morning in New Orleans: I spent several minutes getting photographs at the Gulf of Mexico tank in the New Orleans aquarium, and the bottom photo in this post is my favorite of the day.

Whew! Now what's ahead in the next 100 days? The Fourth of July this weekend, the hottest days of summer and the activities that come with it, a garden overflowing with produce, and Labor Day, to name a handful.

And on we go.

Camera: Canon 40D, 1/60s, f/4 at ISO 1600 at about 8:00 p.m.

284/365 Closing out 2008

Goodbye, 2008!

What a year it's been!

From what I've seen online, the most common way to take on Project 365 is by starting it January 1. But in my case, it took me a couple months to decide, "Yes, I'm going to commit to taking a photograph every single day," so I still have 81 posts to go.

I don't make New Year's resolutions -- instead, I set goals for the year. It's a more positive way of thinking about what I want to accomplish in the coming year.

This year I have a long list of goals, most of which involve new activities I want to try, but one of the items on the list is finishing Project 365. I haven't decided yet whether I'll restart a new 365-day project or just maintain regular posts, but I can tell you I'll be continuing this blog.

One item that I plan to finish within the next month is my portfolio for my Photography Certificate. The photo on this post, a self-portrait, is the last one I needed to do before printing and submitting samples of my work.

Now I'd like you to tell me this: what kind of photos and posts would you like to see more of? What are your favorites?

Happy New Year!

Camera: Canon 40D with Calumet studio light, 1/60s, f/8 at ISO 250.

1/365 A new year

Yes, it's the middle of March (wow, time is flying, but that's another subject altogether), but it's a new year for this project.

Year 2 of my Project 365 begins now! It felt strange to label this post 1/365, starting over in the single digits. But there you have it.

I've got some rough goals for this round:

• More portraits, including both self-portraits (which prove to be handy for experimenting with a patient, willing model) and portraits of others. I'd like to improve my working knowledge of both foundation poses and portraits that are looser and more creative.
• Continue to improve my lighting techniques and exposures, concerning both natural light and that I construct manually. I'm getting better about reading my histogram to get a better exposure at the scene of the crime, instead of having to adjust it later in Photoshop. And I'm all for needing less Photoshop!
• But speaking of Photoshop, I want to improve there as well.
• And of course, I want to continue to push myself outside of what the "rules" say a good photo should be. I want to play with longer exposures (like the photo in this post), different focal points, intentional blur... and just exercise my creative juices.

It should be a challenging, but fun, year!

I set up this shot by placing my camera on a tripod, using my remote trigger, and walking slowly while hanging over the front of the treadmill with trigger in hand. I played with exposures as long as five seconds, but I liked this 1/2-second exposure the best because it still shows some detail in my shoes.

Camera: Canon 40D 1/2s, f/5.6 at ISO 800

64/365 A new project in the kitchen

I have a new project.

I almost always have a project or goal I'm working on, so this isn't an unusual statement for me to make. You've been seeing quite a bit more food photography here in the past few months. I cook dinner at home nearly every night of the week, so it's a handy subject! And when you consider that most of those dinners involve working with fresh produce, you can understand why it catches my eye.

Inspired by Julie & Julia (an excellent movie if you haven't seen it yet), Mom and I have embarked on this new project together: using our respective libraries of mostly unused cookbooks, we're each fixing one new recipe per week.

It's not as ambitious as Julie's project is in the movie -- cooking her way through a 500-recipe Julia Child cookbook in a year -- but it's still a fun challenge. So far, I've made a couple Curtis Stone recipes, a Rachel Ray, and we made a baked eggplant parmesan together this past weekend.

This photo shows the prep for one of those Curtis Stone recipes: caramelized nectarines with yogurt and honey. Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Well, I have to wonder about the directions, because as simple as it was (just four ingredients), the sugar burned and it just didn't work out.

Undeterred, I'm on to the next recipe!

Camera: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens and 430EX Speedlite, 1/125s, f/4 at ISO 400

1/365

Welcome to the first day of my foray into Project 365! For the next year, in an attempt to improve my photography skills, posting to this blog is my motivation to take at least one picture every day.

Today's photo features the roses that my dad gave my mom for their 25th anniversary one week ago.

307/365 Hanging on

As I mentioned in my 300th post of this round of Project 365, I'm going to throw some week-long themes into the mix. It's time for an extra challenge -- and some new inspiration!

First up: Photos before noon.

That may seem like an odd first choice, but here's my rationale:  I've found myself falling into a bad habit. Though I have a camera with me all day long every day, I don't think to get my photo of the day until I'm home and it's after dinner.

I'll tell you what, that gets a little stale after a while. Especially when it's dark at that time of day and it's the dead of winter.

So, the first theme -- photos before noon -- is my personal kick in the pants to be looking for photo subjects in the morning.

A bonus: it means I have more time free in the evening. And when is that a bad thing?

The photo in this post is the first of this theme. I made this photo right after I exited my car at work, a little before 8:00 a.m. Dirty ice clumps like this are a common sight on cars at this time of year. After the last snow storm, they built up on my car enough that they rubbed the tires when I turned.

A true pain, but it just comes with the territory.

Camera: Canon 40D, 1/60s, f/3.5 at ISO 640 at about 7:45 a.m.

170/365 Eye spy

One of my rough goals for this year's Project 365 is to do more self-portraits. About halfway through the year, I haven't done many so far. Part of the reason is I need to mentally get past the resistance to do such a photo when my hair isn't behaving, I'm not wearing a favorite shirt, it's too late in the day, etc. etc. etc.

I know, it sounds pretty typical. Just get over it already, huh?

Well here's a little twist on a self-portrait, featuring just one part of me: my eye. I did this photo around 10:00 p.m., so what makeup was left at the end of the day was quite impressively hanging on.

Like much of my physical appearance, my eye color is neither exactly like my mom's nor exactly like my dad's, but very much a mix of the two. (I've often said that when you look at my brother and me, you can have no doubt that we're siblings or that we're the children of our parents. We're a definite blend of the two.) Dad's eyes are more green and on the lighter side, while Mom's are more hazel leaning toward brown.

I didn't realize until I looked at this photo, magnified many times, that I had so much yellow in my irises. And when I get hungry, they turn black.

(If you're familiar with the traits of sparkly vampires, you'll get the joke.)

Camera: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens and 430EX Speedlite, 1/125s, f/2.8 at ISO 400

360/365 New theme: movement

Time for a new theme, and this will be the final theme in Year 2 of my Project 365!

The theme is: movement.

Why does it seem like gas stations often have the largest American flags? In comparison to the bit of  roof you can see at the bottom right, you can tell this one is huge -- meaning it took some seriously strong wind to get this flag blowing horizontally.

I'd call that movement, wouldn't you?

Camera: Canon PowerShot SD1000 at about 6:00 p.m.

1/365 Year 3 - Redbud trees

Welcome to the first post of my third year of Project 365!

I wanted to jump in right away so that I could take advantage of all the beautiful spring life that is bursting [and filling the air with pollen] right now. Blooming redbud trees are some of my very favorite signs of the season, so I couldn't wait any longer to photograph one.

What's in store for this year? Your guess is as good as mine! I plan to incorporate more themes, because that offered a new challenge and way of looking for inspiration. But I'm going to hold off on that for a little while, because honestly, I can't stand the idea of ignoring the outdoors in the spring!

I will tease you a little bit though: I've got some big, new subject matter coming soon -- in the next few weeks -- but I'm going to keep it a surprise. You won't have to wait very long. And you'll know it when you see it.

Now, did that get your curiosity up, or what?

Camera: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens, 1/250s, f/2.8 at ISO 100 at about 6:00 p.m.

364/365 Ditching my theme for a crocus

Two photos left in year two of Project 365, so I'm going for my favorites and am ditching my theme. Call me a quitter, whatever you like, but I want to end on a grand note! I just had to get down low and photograph this crocus. It would be against my nature to ignore it.

I feel better now. One day to go!

Camera: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens, 1/125s, f/4 at ISO 400 at about 6:30 p.m.

117/365 Corners

The challenge for week 24 on the Flickr group Project 365 was "corners," so that's my inspiration for today.

This is one of the few corners on our house that does not have a rain spout attached (which I didn't realize until I went looking for one). It's actually on the front porch and is under the roof, but at the hour I took the photo, it was in full sun as it set.

I like texture photos, and that's my focus in this particular photo.

Camera: Canon 40D, 1/250s, f/4 at ISO 100 in direct sun at about 8:00 p.m.

66/365 Wishing for more wheat fields

I don't hold anything against fields of corn and soybeans, but I do wish that more farmers in central Indiana grew wheat. It's beautiful in both its alive-and-growing and ready-to-harvest forms.

Right now, fields like this one are awash with waving, healthy greens.

It's attractive up close, too.

Then when the crop matures and is ready to harvest, these same fields evolve into a warm, golden sea. I caught that stage in time to photograph last year, and it's one of my top ten favorites from the first year of Project 365.

You can bet I'll be revisiting this field with my camera in the coming months.

Camera: Canon PowerShot SD1000 at about 5:45 p.m.

99/365 Fun shipping boxes

Every once in a while at work, we have to do some manual labor and become a packing/shipping/mailing house for a client project. One such project came up in the last couple of weeks -- I'm not even sure what client it was for or what the project was -- but these FedEx shipping boxes were a constant presence near the reception desk for a few days.

I walked past them several times, and the repeating triangles caught my eye each time. I finally remembered to grab my camera on the last day they were here, before they were picked up and sent on their merry way.


Camera: Canon 40D, 1/500s, f/4.5 at ISO 100 at about 1:30 p.m.

Changing things up on SightSalad

Time for some spring cleaning! What better time of year to try something fresh and new?

I'm ready for a change. Fresh air. New growth. Variety. New challenges. Different perspectives. With that spirit, things are going to change here at SightSalad.

I've been doing Project 365 since March 15, 2008 -- exactly three years to the day, which is purely a weird (very weird) coincidence. After 901 posts, I've decided to try something different.

I'm going to continue blogging here, but it won't be focused on a daily photo. (Let's be honest, life has been getting in the way recently, and I haven't been very good about "daily" photos anyways!) Instead, I'm going to open up the blog and allow more freedom for myself. I want to see where it takes me.

What might you see? Plenty of photos, that's a given. You could see cooking and recipe posts. Perhaps some cookbook reviews. Commentary about life in general. Reviews of books I've read recently. Happenings around town. And who knows what else? That's the beauty of it -- even I don't know.

Where and how will inspiration strike?

I'm excited about this new venture, and I hope you'll stick around with me while I explore this new road.

Away we go...

361/365 First spring crocus

If this sight stirred an excitement in me, then seeing the first crocus blooming makes me want to jump out of my chair and dance, singing "Flowers! Flowers!"

I won't, but that's how happy I am.

I challenged myself when I set out to photograph this crocus, because at the beginning of this project, in March 2008, I photographed the crocus in this same garden. So my challenge was to make this year's photo both different and an improvement, meaning my goal for this project would be realized: I bettered my photography skills in a year.

Here's last year's post, day 12, and photo:


On the first point, the two photos are different, so that's a definite success.

Is it an improvement? I like last year's photo, but it's underexposed (too dark), and I would probably compose (or crop) it a little differently now. By no means would I scrap it, though. The 2008 photo was done in the shade, so the lighting is different right from the start, but I have a more thorough understanding of how to get a better exposure now.

Overall, I'd say I rose to my challenge and produced a very different photo. Now if all the other flowers will hurry up and sprout, I could work on improving my view of them, too.

Camera: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens, 1/125s, f/5.6 at ISO 100 at about 6:00 p.m.

165/365 Light painting experiment

As much as I enjoy photographing my favorite subjects, it's definitely fun -- and refreshing -- to step out and try something new. Experiment a little.

This week I was inspired by one of the photography blogs I check daily -- Digital Photography School. A contributor suggested a fun project in light painting.

The project was simple: hang a flashlight from the ceiling, turn it on in a dark room, place your camera directly underneath pointed upward, and send the flashlight swinging.

I have a lot of randomly placed, bare hooks in the ceiling at my house, so setting this up was a piece of cake. I used a pocket Maglite as my flashlight, whose beam is only about half an inch in diameter.

By lengthening the shutter speed, and letting the image be captured over a span of 20 seconds or more, and varying the length of the string suspending the flashlight, I got a different result each time.

Cool! These are my two favorites.

Camera: Canon 40D, 25 seconds and 62 seconds, f/22 at ISO 100

348/365 Construction project

As a person who knows very little about construction, it's interesting to watch this scene out my window at work every day.

My office window faces a main road, and across the street is a big construction project in-progress. For the last two months, the workers haven't seemed to be doing anything but pushing dirt around. But in the last week or two, they seem to be making some progress.

Take two days ago: a cement mixer came in and spread what I'm guessing was lime. A guy in a different machine followed him and broke up the dirt, distributing the lime into the ground farther.

Then this tanker came in and sprayed water over the whole area. After that, they smoothed out the dirt and started surveying the area.

I still have no idea what they're doing, but it's an interesting process to watch. I have to turn around and check it out every once in a while when a new noise catches my attention.

Camera: Canon PowerShot SD1000 at about 11:00 a.m.

60/365 Construction season

It's construction season in Indiana.

It happens every spring/summer. It feels as though you can't drive anywhere without running into construction of some kind. We Hoosiers have become very familiar with those orange and white barrels.

This photo shows some construction in Brownsburg, but the worst right now has to be the west side of Indianapolis on I-465.

Dubbed "Accelerate 465" (fancy phrase to make us all feel better about the headache), every interchange along the busiest interstate in the area is being redone. The project will span over many years, and I know it will be nice when it's complete, but boy oh boy is it a pain now.

Navigating the project will be especially interesting this weekend when hundreds of thousands of people come to Indy for the 500.

I'm glad I'm staying home!

Camera: Canon PowerShot SD1000 at about 5:45 p.m.