Postcards from the Mothership

Only one week left in this iteration of the 365 project! Of course, the big question now is what comes next. I’m still not sure of the answer to that one myself – stand by and I’ll let you know when I know!

I had a great time with fakery and rule-breaking this week! The end of the project seems to find all my standards dropping like flies. Like this one – it’s true we’ve had an unseasonably mild month, but does this look like a picture that was taken in December in Ottawa?

I found it in my archives when I was looking for something else. I’d taken it back in October and for whatever reason didn’t like it enough to even post it, but when I saw it this week I loved it and wanted to share the bright, warm colours. And that ended up being such a busy day that I didn’t actually take any pictures even remotely as lovely as this one, so I just decided this would be the photo of the day.

And then there’s this bit of fakery. I wanted to revisit Watson’s Mill in Manotick one last time before the end of the project, and I knew it would be lovely all decked out for Christmas. When I was setting up my tripod last night, to my great delight it began to snow. But, to capture the lights and detail on the Mill the way I wanted to after dark, I needed a 30-second exposure, which rendered the snow completely invisible — so I added it back in with an overlay in Photoshop. I’m quite pleased with my growing facility with Photoshop and PSElements! What do you think? Would you have guessed it’s not authentic snow?

Then again, sometimes no fakery is required — you just have to point your camera in the right direction to capture the cuteness.

(The expression on Willie’s face slays me. You’d never guess that he had willingly gone to sit beside Lucas, would you?)

Speaking of Willie… sigh. He seems to be going through some sort of teenage rebellion, or maybe someone is feeding him mischief pills. He’s a complete and utter PITA lately. I was playing with the Christmas lights, trying to get one of those sentimental shots of the tree lights all blurred out in the background with a favourite ornament in the foreground (it’s rather astonishing that I’ve never attempted that particular cliché before, as it’s so clearly in my bailiwick) but this kept happening:

I’m not sure that I like this shot. Sometimes looking at Lensbaby shots makes my eyes itch.

This shot, though? Instant fave. I specifically went out at dawn (which is some time just before lunch time at this time of year!) to go shooting on that very foggy Wednesday morning this week. I turned down a road just south of Manotick I’d never been down before, and just ask I was making the corner I noticed the canted speed limit sign and the telephone poles on either side of the road that disappeared into the fog, and got out of the car to take a few shots. I was just clicking the shutter when I saw the headlights resolving in the fog in the distance and at first I was ticked, thinking I’d have to clone them out of the final shot because they’d messed up my lovely composition. Then when I got home and saw the picture on my monitor I realized that the headlights actually make the shot. This is one of my fave B&W shots of the year, and ended up popping into Flickr’s Explore, too (which is now more than a nuisance than anything – can’t believe how I used to covet having a picture in Explore!)

Such a contrast to the warm, colourful shots above, eh? 🙂

And, I got a nice early Christmas present from Getty Images last night. They send out their sales invoices once a month, and mine popped up yesterday. I sold five images in four countries! My signature “puddle jumper” shot sold twice, including one to a local artist who bought the rights to turn it into a watercolour painting. How fun is that? Here’s the images that sold last month:

One more week to go!

Edited to add: how fun is this? I just found the source for the buyer that used the Willie and Lucas picture. And you know what it was used for? To illustrate the question “what’s the cutest pet picture/slideshow ever.” Bwhahahaha! It’s on an NBC Universal pet site (!) called Petside.

There may not be much snow on the ground, but it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the 365 project!

We had such a busy day on Saturday that a single photo just wasn’t enough to cover it. First we went to Hillcrest Tree Farm to choose and cut down a Christmas tree. Then Simon and Beloved rode the Beaver Scout float in the Manotick Santa Claus parade while the other boys and I watched. Then we headed home to decorate our full, fat, lovely tree, and finally, not represented in this collage, we celebrated Beloved’s 40th birthday. Phew, that’s a lot of activity for one Saturday!!

(Funny, in one of their odder choices, Getty Images invited the collage for license, and while I’m tickled, I can’t imagine what purpose anyone except me could possibly have for it!)

This one was also invited by Getty the same day I posted it. Okay, I admit, I can see this one as a Christmas card. 😉 (And it’s a damn good thing he’s so cute, too, because I took this the day after Willie jumped up on the kitchen counter and knocked my camera off the counter and on to the tile floor. Lucky for him, the only damage seems to be that the protective cover over the LCD screen snapped. Yikes!)

And more Christmas cheer! Did you know that the real Santa hangs out at the Home Hardware store in Manotick? Who would have guessed it! Seriously, he’ll be there again next Sunday December 18 and it’s worth the trip out there to see the kindest, sweetest, most twinkly-eyed Santa ever — and the free hot chocolate bar with sprinkles was a big hit, too!

(Lucas is looking a little wan in the picture because he’s only just barely overcoming his shyness with strangers. Santa was awesome at putting him at ease!)

This is how I captioned the following shot when I posted it on Flickr: “It’s 5:45 pm, it’s dark, I have a hundred things I’m supposed to be doing, not limited to laundry, making dinner, making lunches, reviewing homework, and sweeping up dog hair, and I don’t have a picture of the day. I look at the lasagne baking in the oven. Nope, that won’t do it. I look at the two kids watching TV. Nope, that won’t do it. I wander around to find the pets, hoping they’re doing something adorable. Nope, nada. I scan my memory, wondering if I have anything sitting in Lightroom that I can pass off as today’s picture. Nope, nothing.

Then, from the other room, the dulcet tones of my oldest plucking out Jingle Bells on the guitar. That will do it!”

This one might look a little familiar — I took nearly this very shot back at the beginning of the 365 project last December. Sue me, it’s been a chore finding photogenic somethings I haven’t snapped to death, especially with only a couple of hours of flat cloudy grey daylight each day!

It was tough choosing just one picture from our sneak-peek tour of the new Ikea, but the colourful towels finally won out in the end. And funny, the morning after I posted this, the Ikea merchandiser who set up this display sent me a note on Twitter saying she liked my picture. The internet really does make a small world even smaller!

Yesterday I went out on my lunch break with my Lensbaby affixed to my camera, specifically looking to shoot a Christmassy kind of shot down in the Market but the light was grey and flat, and nothing looked particularly festive. I’d taken a couple of half-hearted shots, but nothing was too interesting, and I was just about to give up when these fat, white snowflakes started to drift down. It was *exactly* what I had in mind!

And here’s a fun bit of news related not to this 365 project but the one I shot in 2009. I sold my first photo to a magazine this week!! Ottawa Magazine was looking for pictures of the old change huts for skaters on the Rideau Canal (I’m guessing to contrast them to the new fancy ones that the NCC installed this year) and they bought this picture to run on the back interior page of their winter issue!! How fun is that?

My first paid print credit. Woot! And one of my pictures may (or may not) be used in a Mazda commercial in the new year. I’ll keep you posted!

Zoom zoom zoom!!

There’s no cohesive theme to the 365 project this week. In fact, I’ve been bending the rules near to breaking — only 20 days left!

Speaking of days left, remember last time I did this, and ended up with 366 pictures in my 365 project cuz I couldn’t count to 365? So I know I started this project on December 23 this year, and I know I haven’t missed any days, and yet somehow I am due to end on December 24 — that’s 367 days. Gah! Clearly, the hardest part of a 365 project is counting to 365.

So speaking of broken rules, this is a picture that I actually took back in October on our very photogenic trip out to Pakenham. It got lost in the shuffle, and when I stumbled on it recently, I really liked it. I also really like the Flypaper Textures I downloaded recently, and am madly in love with the intersection of the two:

Don’t you love the painterly effect? (You probably either love it or hate it. I love it!) The building is St Peter Celestine Church, consecrated in 1893. Click through the link if you like reading historical accounts of early Ottawa — something else I love madly! I’m going to have to go back out to Pakenham for more exploring soon.

The texture didn’t work out quite so well on this one. I like the subject, and loved the way the terraces lead down the hill from the Parliament Buildings to the Canal, but the day was so flat and grey that everything looks quite washed out. I tried to add a little something to the sky with a texture, and it’s better — but still not as great as the church picture.

A little closer to home, this is the photographic equivalent of low-hanging fruit. I could take this picture every single day at our house — a boy, a pencil and a blank piece of paper.

I liked the repetition of all the chestnuts and the bit of burlap for contrast and context, but I should have slowed down and stopped down the aperture a little more to get more of the nuts in focus — but the guy in Farm Boy was giving me the stink eye for photographing his nuts, and I felt I should move along.

These ornaments are on my Mom and Dad’s Christmas tree. They make me happy. 🙂 (Other things that make me happy include Instagram and lazy iPhone photos-of-the-day!)

I picked up this baby at the end of the fall flea market season, but haven’t found the right shot to show it off quite yet. Not quite sure this is the one either, but it was the best I managed so far. This is a Brownie Super 27, an early point-and-shoot from the 1960s. I got it in its box for $5 — hard to resist a steal like that! It has two apertures, “SUNNY” (f/13.5) and “CL’DY BR’T” (f/8), and two focus zones (3 1/2 to 6 ft and beyond 6 ft), and the flash hides behind a little pop-out door. Fun, eh?

And last but definitely not least, probably my favourite picture this week. He was “helping” me hang this giant Costco wreath when it attacked him.

Oh the cuteness!