Project 365: Getting competitive

I’ve reached a funny place in my 365 photo project. I really think a lot of the pictures I’ve taken in the last ten days or so have been some of the best I’ve ever taken. The pictures I’m discarding as not-quite-good enough are better by far than the ones I would have said were my best work just a couple of months into the project.

Of course, rather than just enjoy my (relatively) new ability to make the kind of pictures I’ve wanted to be able to create all along, now I’ve raised my own bar higher. If I can make a fantastic picture on Tuesday, then I won’t settle for anything less on Wednesday. Really, I am my own worst enemy.

It was a good week to be taking good pictures, too, because for the first time I’ve entered my pictures in a couple of contests on Flickr. I’ve made it through four rounds of voting (each round requires a new picture taken within the past five days) to make it to the finals in one — last time I checked, with voting ending this afternoon, we were tied! — and I’ve made it to the second of five rounds in another. I don’t actually get anything except the fleeting satisfaction of being declared the winner — until the next competition begins in a couple of days — but it’s at least good for my ego!

I’m pretty sure this is one of my favourite pix of all time. Definitely in the top ten! I was trying to play with depth of field and shape by taking pictures of this row of pears but somebody kept trying to filch the pears. So I rolled with it! It won one round of the competition.

(Beloved suggested I name this picture “The Creation of Adam” because it looks like Lucas and the pear are reaching for each other in a manner not dissimilar to Michelangelo’s famous painting.)

And where there’s fingers, there has to be toes, elsewise the whole universe would be out of kilter.

Whoops, more fingers — better take another toe picture this weekend!

It just wouldn’t be October without a pumpkin-patch picture. (The boys are getting better at posing, but I messed up the lighting on this one. One area I definitely still need to work on! Also, looking at this week’s pictures, I’m thinking I need to adjust the brightness on my laptop… a lot of these are darker than I intended.)

I didn’t do a lot of through-the-viewfinder photography this week, although my typewriter picture from last week got me through the first round of the competition I mentioned. The only TtV I did this week was of this old steam tractor I found near Prince of Wales. I love the textures and colours of the rusted out wheels.

Just for the sake of variety, I took one the “normal” way, too!

There’s still just enough colour left in the leaves (and leaves left on the trees!) to take advantage of a few last autumn images. This one got me through another round of the competition!

This was supposed to be an autumn shot, but the pine needles and the green-and-red combination have me thinking early thoughts about Christmas time!

Remember back in May, I was so pleased and surprised to stumble across a tall ship moored near the Hartwell Locks one still spring morning? On the day I found out about my job disappearing this week, I went on a long wander around the back of Parliament Hill on an unexpectedly warm and sunny lunch hour and found the very same tall ship, the Fair Jeanne, this time in drydock in the Canal locks beside the Chateau Laurier.

… and now for something completely different! Some may say this is over the top, perhaps a little bit hackneyed and contrived, but I like looking at it and it makes me smile, so that’s good enough for me! (It’s also the image I submitted to the final round of competition, a bit of a risk but what the heck.)

Deep in the Orion Nebula, baby stars grow in translucent eggs until they are ready to hatch and float away…