Happy New Year!

It's late in the day, but I'm sneaking in just under the wire! I want to wish you all a very happy 2012. May you have a wonderful year, and enjoy much time for your photography!

This picture was taken on a ferry, with the flag flapping in the breeze. I was very pleased with how well this came out, since the flag is nearly straight. The lighting was quite off, but it was getting close to sunset so all of the lighting was a little strange.

Dog picture

To keep things balanced off with the cat picture from the other day, here's a picture of a puppy!

He was being tempted by a little piece of ham, which is what had him licking his chops! I love that I caught him with his tongue out, so cute!

Ferry wake

I had a lot of fun taking pictures on the ferry. Here's a really fun shot of the wake behind the ferry.

I love the look of a wake behind a boat, and the huge wake behind a ferry is just lovely!

Cat picture

I tried several different time to get a good picture of this cat. I'm thrilled to have avoided the scary demon eyes that you often see with animals!

I have done no post-processing on this image. I'm really pleased with how clear she is, how lovely her eyes are. All tricky things indoors, with a black cat!

Lake reflection

Yay for vacations! They give you a chance to try a whole different type of photography, by being in a different environment. Here, instead of dealing with snow, I have to figure out how to deal with fog and near-constant drizzle.

For this picture, I was trying to get two sets of trees - the real, and the reflection! I really like the way it turned out, with the skiff of fog over the water to act as a sort of barrier for the two. The sky is a little too bright, too washed out. I wasn't expecting that to be an issue on such a rainy, cloudy day!

It's a tree!

Another of the 30 Day Challenge topics was trees or foliage. The problem I've been having with a lot of my photography lately is lighting - the sun rises after I've left for work, and sets while I'm still at work. And natural light is of course my favourite. So it's been a little tricky getting some of these shots without either resorting to taking umpteen pictures in my office or through a window. This one, however, I got on a bus!

Part of what I enjoy of this challenge is that it's making me more aware of my surroundings. I have to really look around and think of things that will fit different aspects of the challenge. In this case, here is an ad I had seen dozens of times before, but I'd never really realized it was a tree! (As a bonus, the mirror in effect gives me two trees!)

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Ornament photo

One of the examples of interesting photos you could take during the holidays, were pictures of ornaments. Well, my attempts at photographing my glass drop ornaments, or shiny reflective balls were complete failures. I might have fared better if I had moved furniture around and gotten a tripod up to the tree, but someone was using that furniture to wrap presents on! So instead, I got a cute shot of this guy.

Some people love Santas. For others, it's angels. For me, snowmen!

Happy a safe and happy Christmas Eve everyone!

Reuse

There's a tree in city hall decorated entirely in reused items. Here are a few of the ideas that appeared on the tree.

This one appears to be made from Christmas cards! You could either use ones you received in previous years, or ones that people have leftover and don't want to use. With a little creativity, you could probably do something very similar with old magazines, possibly using some stiffer paper as a backing.

This fun ornament is a painted lightbulb. What a great way to reuse those burned out bulbs!

This guy was some sort of aluminium can in his first life, and now he's an angel! (I cut off the wings a bit in the picture, I wasn't at a great angle.) Make sure to rinse the can out well before doing this.

That IS Fun!

This picture was taken to fulfil the "something fun" challenge.

This is a very nice ice sculpture, and I actually think it's easier to see the face in the picture than it is in real life. It's been unseasonably warm here, so the sculptures probably aren't faring quite as well as expected. So far, it just means the edges are a little softer than was perhaps intended, but the details are still clear.

Normally I would think the light pole behind the sculpture was a flaw in composition (although there's only so much you can do with an object you can't move), but in this case, the facets of the ice seem to pick up the colour of the pole, making the edges clearer. I like it!