Day 29

For the final day of February I decided to do a self-time portrait shot (my hair is a little wet, but I think the shot still came out fine).

Some upcoming posts to look forward to:
Tomorrow: a recap of my Daily Pfoto month.
Soon: my ideas for continuing this blog.

Day 28

While I was waiting to pick up Elise today I decided to shot some reflection shots in the side view mirror of the car.  I stayed seated in the front seat and rolled down the window to shoot.  I had two different ladies approach me and tell me I couldn't photograph because people were around.  One even yelled at me and said I was breaking the law.  I was not.  I would recommend anybody out there who does photography, amateur and certainly professional, understand their rights.  Here is a good place to start.  It startled me how uninformed these people were and they came just short of actually threatening me.  Here are two photos.

Day 27

I decided to piggy back off of what I did last Thursday.  This time, because of the rain, I took all of the shots indoors (which led to my theme).

Day 26

Today I shot some pictures of flowers with the zoom lens right after sunset.  The lighting was low so I used my tripod to offset my shake with the longer shutter speed.  I also snapped some pictures of my parents dogs (Flurrie and Blizzard).  My mom managed to get them to stay still long enough to get one good shot of each one; this would have been much easier in better light.

Day 25 (The Zoo)

Elise and I visited Irvine Regional Park today, home of the world-renown, galaxy famous Orange County Zoo. I took a lot of pictures, a lot.  With their wide variety of animals there I had to adjust to a myriad of settings on the fly.  I used the zoom lens for all of the animal shots.  One of the bigger challenges was the fences in the way.  It was hard to get shots in focus; however, about halfway through I remembered/figured out how to use manual focus.  I had a lot of fun using that and snapping the pictures.  I attempted to narrow down to one picture of each animal but couldn't always.  I also included some shots of Elise and self-timer shots of both of us at the end with the 55 mm lens.

Bobcats- I had some nice shots of them cleaning themselves but then one of them went to clean the other and they played around.

Coyote

Ocelot- I don't think the pictures even manage to capture how beautiful the coat of the ocelot looks.  I got a nice action shot of it and one of it through the bushes waiting for its feeding.

Mountain Lion - she was in the back of her enclosure so I couldn't get a good one of her.

Collared Peccary - got a nice picture of two them nibbling at the bush and something on the ground.

Black Bear - we got to see them feeding the black bear but most of those shots had the zookeeper in them. Here is one of the large one sitting and one with Elise and the bear in the background.

Beaver - I guess we got lucky with our timing, almost all of the animals were active in some capacity.  Caught some shots of the beaver swimming and then diving underwater.

Bald Eagle - my favorite animal and the National Bird of the United States.  The top shot captures the eagle in a pensive stage.  In the middle one I got a nice shot of the bird's nobility.  I had Elise snap one of me with the eagle in the background.

Peacock - if you have been to the Orange County Zoo then you know that peacocks aren't enclosed there.  They just live there.  I captured some fun shots of one of them strutting his stuff on top of an enclosure.

Raccoon

Coati

Golden Eagle - This is my favorite animal shot of the day (my favorite shot of the day is coming later).  The eagle was sitting erect just before this.  I'm not sure but I believe he looks poised to take off in flight (although in his cage he can't really fly).

Hawk - the zoo has two hawks.  At different moments while we were standing there each hawk spread its wings to hop around.  I got pictures of both of them, but one came out too dark and the other was blurry.

Beautiful Lady - after leaving the zoo we walked over to one of the ponds at the park.  I saw some roots on the ground and thought it would be fun to frame Elise in them.  This is my first attempt at people photography.  The top one I focused on the roots and the bottom one Elise.

Self-timer shots - we sat on a bench to enjoy the scenery.  Since we had brought our tripod I decided to set up some self-timer shots of us from behind.  To position the camera I had to lie on the mulch but they came out nice.  We did three: one looking away, one looking towards the camera and one kissing.  After the first shot I went to set up the second one and instead of going behind the camera and getting dirty I just bent over the front.  Elise turned around and got a great view of my butt.  I decided to snap some shots of her laughing to catch a natural smile.  That photo (#2 below) is my favorite of the day.

Ducks - I took this shot while we were walking and like the way the sun sparkles off of the water among the ducks.

Day 24

I decided to play with lines around the apartment today.  I took close-up shots of a few different things on the wall.  I wanted to see how the focus would work being so close up.  In most of the pictures the center is focused and it gets blurry as you move towards the edge.  I guess the subjects themselves are kind of boring but I still like the pictures.

This first one turned out the best (it probably also has the best defined lines).  The focus is on the top of the vent so it blurs moving down and outwards.

Day 23

I decided to try to get creative today.  There is a bike path and a foot path right next to our apartment complex.  I walked to the foot path and selected different materials to spell out my name (so I guess just the idea is creative, not what I spelled).  I used broken twigs for the 'a', leaves off of a shrub for 'l', little berries for the 'e' and bladed leaves for the 'x'.  Initially I had just more or less thrown the letters on the dirt.  Then I realized the sun shown down a line crossing only half of 'l' and 'e'.  I decided to rearrange the letters to line up with the sunlight on the ground.  I also played around with different angles of the shot.

Day 22

I found a colorful slinky today and quickly went about deciding how to utilize it to take a fun picture.  I tried sending it down the stairs outside my apartment but neither Elise nor I could get it to go.  I decided to have Elise 'bounce' it in the air and snap pictures of it.  The lighting wasn't great so I had to make a lot of adjustments to get a good shot.  Elise wanted to have one showing the movement of the slinky so I took some of those to include one here.

Day 21

We still have a dwindling amount of skittles left over from one of our Christmas stockings.  As I was eating a few today I thought it might be fun to get a shot of 'the rainbow'.  I took a few stationary shots and then I tried to do one where I panned the camera across the skittles to create a line of each color.  I don't think that worked very well.  I'm not sure that I know how to that properly or the best way.  I included one of the panning shots but it came out pretty blurry.

Day 20

Tomorrow will mark 1 and half years of married bliss for me and my beautiful wife.  During our engagement/for our wedding Elise's sister, Jessica, bought us a bobblehead Mickey and Minnie Mouse.  Ordinarily they stand on our dresser but today I took them to a nearby gazebo to capture their love.  In the first picture I managed to time it right with the wind so that Minnie's veil is blowing.  In the second picture only Mickey and Minnie are in focus because nothing else matters.