Day 160 – Roses and Mended Hearts

Same rose, different treatment.

HDR:

Black and White:

On another note, Sweetie and I will be hitting the road for the Bay Area this afternoon to be in Oakland for the Congenital Heart Walk. As many of you know, I have a congenital heart defect and am doing my part to bring awareness and dollars for research and care. It’s not too late to make a donation to support me and this worthwhile cause. In case you didn’t know, congenital heart defects are the #1 birth defect in the United States, affecting more than 40,000 babies a year, yet we hardly ever hear about it. Thanks to medical advances, those of us who may have been condemned to an early demise are living well into adulthood and living pretty normal lives but CHD requires a lifetime of care, and so I walk.

Day 159 – Out Front

Post cap on our sign at the foot of our driveway. I love what the weather and the elements have done to it.

This Desert Spiny Lizard lives under our front stairs. I think he may be a relative of a much older guy that’s been around since we moved in eleven years ago.

Day 158 – Dawgs

In the backyard this evening . . . playing with the dogs and off-camera flash.

Buddy can be such a silly boy.

And somehow I lucked out and caught both of them, at the same time, standing still.

Day 157 – Around the grounds

I took a little walk around the grounds late this afternoon. Everything was a bit damp from yesterday’s rain.

Day 156 – Lily

I am posting this from work because a very strong storm is wreaking havoc with the power lines in my town. The power was off and has just come back on, but who knows if it will stay that way.

I shot this beautiful lily at our receptionist’s desk. I processed it in Paint.NET – a free photo-processing software I’m allowed to have at work. I softened it a bit and think the result is quite pretty.

Day 155 – Black and White

I’ve been wanting to do more work in black and white. I took these of myself today and the goal was creating more dramatic lighting than I usually do.

Funny, in going through the many shots it took me to come up with these three, it’s like I no longer see the photographs as pictures of me. I find myself staring at them with an analytic eye. Are the eyes in focus? Any odd shadows? Nice highlight along the jaw-line. No, that one is off. I like how the chin looks in this one. Nice definition there. Oops, jaw and neck blend together on this one. And so on and so on.

Perhaps that is why I don’t feel odd showing these to you. Me. No make-up. Wrinkles. But to me, it’s just another face I lit and shot.

Day 154 – Playtime

I just played with my camera today, mostly shooting in the backyard.

Here’s a great one I got of Nina stalking the wild lizards in the backyard. They like to hang out in the lilac bushes and Nina walks her patrol hoping one will slip out.

Whee!!!

After supper I played with second-curtain sync on my flash. Nina again.

Day 153 – Discovery

I got my five-year service award bonus check in the mail today, and while perusing the reviews for the Speedlite 580EX II, I discovered that the EOS 7D pop-up flash can act as the master to my current 430 EX Speedlite. Actually, I know that many DSLRs have this capability, but I did not have it with my EOS T1i and so it slipped my mind that I should have it with the 7D.

So I played grabbed my flash manual and the 7D manual and did me some learnin’ tonight. I set the pop up flash to the lowest intensity so that if it were the only flash firing it did not expose anything. All I wanted was enough light to fire my off-camera 430 EX. It worked! And then I had to practice.

Once again, the cats were cooperative.

Jezebel lit with flash to camera right and bouncing off the ceiling.