Grass

I'm sorry, the title does seem to imply that I am a stoner.  I thought this one would turn out to be more interesting but I think the lighting was a little too flat to bring out the lines that I was looking at when I planned the shot.

Orb

This is a light someone has on the sidewalk outside their house on the road I usually take to walk downtown.  I had never really paid attention to it before but I like how the picture came out.

Movie

Busy day, not much time to take pictures, so I ended up with this one of my roommate's computer watching a movie in the dark.  I do like how the computer is the only thing visible.

Sign

I ended up with this picture by accident, but it was the only one for the night that turned out at all.  It's the sign for the biggest haunted hotel in Flagstaff.  The camera was in program mode so it set a slow shutter speed, hence the blur, but it still apparently wasn't enough to show anything but the lights on the sign.

Traffic

This is about a 2 minute exposure south of the tracks on Beaver Street in Flagstaff.  I started it while Amtrak was just starting to leave the station so you can see some evidence of the train going by.  After that the gates on the street went up- evidenced by the curved red lines- and traffic and pedestrians started to move through, which is probably most of the light in the picture.  Even though it's pretty weird, I like the way this one turned out.

Bloom

North Campus is really starting to smell funny with all of these flowers blooming.  I like the way this one turned out, f/3.5 looking at one branch with the rest of the tree in the background.

Yellow

Really I took this because I was comparing the flashes I could use for my camera, I have an old external flash my dad used to use, but I was comparing it to the internal flash on my camera to decide which one would be better to use when possible.  I like the color on this picture really well so I think when I am willing to carry the extra weight the external flash will be best.

Reminder

I stuck this to the ceiling over my bed out of fear that I might forget to take a picture some day.  I guess it was a good idea.  I had a hard time getting the white balance right on this picture for some reason, it still looks green to me.

Cracks

This is looking through the door of the playhouse outside Riordan Mansion.  Rather than trying to get the exposure to get real definition of the inside and outside of the cabin, I decided to let the light shining through the cracks be just white to make them really visible.

Ummmm

So this one is a little embarrassing.  As far as my goal of taking a picture every day, I was still successful.  As far as documenting my life, I failed.  I had my picture of some nice clouds at sunset all picked out and then accidentally deleted it from my SD card with no backup copy. Oops.

Concrete

I don't know why I felt inclined to take this, I just liked the texture on this barricade, which is sitting next to the lab building on North Campus serving no apparent purpose.  I tried for a narrow aperture but didn't get quite as low a depth of field as I was looking for.

Mohawk

My roommate's hair was getting too long for ROTC regulations.  Naturally, he decided to give himself this mini-mohawk when it came time to cut his hair, and, naturally, I followed him creepily into the bathroom with my camera to take this picture.

Watched

I probably noticed this because of the class on totalitarianism and surveillance I have been taking this semester.  There's nothing too remarkable about the composition, but it does reflect what I was thinking about.

Reflection

This was an attempt at self-portrait, though the manual focus doesn't seem to have been quite right.  I probably looked a little creepy here too taking a picture looking across the courtyard in my residence hall.

Untitled

This is the telescope outside the observatory on North Campus at NAU.  I wish I had brought a tripod this time to leave the shutter open long enough for some short star trails, using a flash didn't make a great exposure.

Point

Really I had been out to take some pictures of the mule corral in the bottom right quarter of the picture, but I decided to go for this larger view since I liked the way that there is still snow on the peak of that hill even though it really isn't that far off.

Distance

This is the view from my roommate's back porch of his family's house in Kingman.  I admit I didn't think there was anything really worth seeing in Kingman, but this was a pretty nice view.

Fire

Hopefully it was the last snowy night of the season, but this fire was much appreciated staying at my roommate's house in Kingman.

Concrete

Some pictures make me say meh. I thought the lines and curves here would be a little more interesting than they turned out to be.

Wired

So I had been thinking about whether or not to do a picture like this but I decided it would be an appropriate kind of self-portrait considering how much time I spend using and working on computers.  I have determined that this is a real picture because it took me several tries to get it looking like I wanted.

Clear

Even though sunsets on big landscapes like the San Francisco Peaks or the Grand Canyon might be better if they are dramatically lit with clouds and rays, but in the city it is kind of nice to see a clear sunset like this where the shadows don't change color, they just get darker and longer.

Hoop

In the Tinsley Allen Wilson Aspen quad which really needs a better name.

Century

Okay, I have to talk about this one for a while, I think it's one of my best so far this year.  This is definitely one of my favorite Grand Canyon pictures I have ever taken; I really like the colors, broke the rule of thirds with what I think was a good effect with the agave stalk, and I managed to include at least three areas of interest.  This picture is also great just for the reason that I know at the start of a week that I probably won't do an upload for a while and I feel okay about leaving this one up for a while.

Top

Maybe it is an effect of not having been able to take them for a while, but I was pretty happy with both of my Canyon pictures this weekend.  I like this one just for the fact that it includes the raven as a focal point; I've heard and agreed that including non-permanent features in a picture makes them much more interesting.

Home

I visited home this weekend, as usual I took my picture at the last minute (I arrived home after dark so I didn't feel too bad about not having a Grand Canyon picture for the day).  It caught me by surprise how difficult it was to take and process a good exposure of the fire.  I don't think it turned out too well but it might be fun to experiment with later on once I have verified that the heat won't damage camera components.

Toy

I am actually taking the picture with my thumb here.  This is a new toy for my camera: a remote shutter release! As you can see it is corded but this will reduce shake of the camera on long exposures without using a self timer like I had gotten used to having to do.  It also has a hold switch so I think I might try for some star trails now that I won't have to stand there pushing down the button on my camera for an hour myself.

Blanket

This one is washed out intentionally to make it appear aged.  Again this is using post processing to cover up a picture that wasn't exposed as well as I would have liked but I think this could be an interesting effect to apply to other pictures later on.

Gears

Strange contrast used here to try to make a still interesting.  I think it worked to some degree but (as some of my later posts for this week will show) I think I am relying a little bit too much on "creative" post processing to compensate for pictures that didn't really come out well.

Point

This is the end of the aptly named Union Point.  However, looking at this picture is really starting to convince me that I need a lens with a lower f-stop.  I had it at 55mm for this, making my max aperture f/5.6.  Having a minimum shutter speed of 1/20 to avoid blur I can't get very well exposed shots at night, which does seem to be when I end up taking the most of my pictures, at least during the school year.

Shadow

I think I will call this one a self-portrait, though as far as making a decent record of my year I think I need to work in more true self-portraiture.