Project 365: bugs and flowers and some other stuff

Now that all the excitement of passing the half-way point has settled, the reality becomes obvious: oh my sweet lord, I have more than 180 pictures left to take? (And, since I take about a dozen pictures for every one I post, we’re actually looking at another thousand or two pictures until the end of the year!)

Last Friday was one of those days. I was disappointed in some of the pictures I’d taken for BOLO the night before, and frustrated with the camera. I didn’t put it to my face all day, and by dinner time I had no idea what to photograph. I rooted through Lucas’s toy box until I found something mildly colourful and thought I might be able to catch the beads of this rattle moving. Meh. I took about 20 pictures, trying to get one I half-way liked, and this was as good as it got. Thank goodness for digital! I’d’ve been sick about spending for a roll of film and processing and ending up with this, back in the day!

186:365 Rainshaker

The next day, still lacking inspiration I defaulted back to my comfort zone: the coneflowers in my garden. The first one is the official photo of the day, but I liked the other two enough to post as well. (And deleted about 30 more!)

187:365 Coneflower sunshine

Coneflower family portrait

187b:365 Coneflower minimalism

(I’m partial to how that last one turned out. I turned the frame off, because I think it looks cooler just floating in the background. I was down underneath the flowers, shooting toward a lightly overcast sky, and metered for the flower in the background. The highlights in the sky were blown out, but it turned into a nice flat white — that was done in camera, I have no idea how to achieve the effect in photoshop! The first two, I played with in photoshop a lot more. The top one was desaturated a bit, and on the middle one I torqued the noise for that grainy effect. Photoshop is FUN!)

I had my camera with me when we went for our weekly two-family Sunday breakfast and snapped this picture of a shad fly (also known as a may fly, I’m told) on my friend UberGeek’s finger. (UberGeek’s been around since the beginning of blog, but been largely silent lately, until this week!) Flickr’s magic donkey must like shad flies, because this one made it into Explore.

188:365 Shadfly, don't bother me...

(Funny that that one made it into explore, because I almost made this second picture from Sunday the pic of the day. I’m either biased against bugs (ick!) or a little bit too into my coneflowers these days!)

188b:365 Oh no, not another coneflower!

Monday, we went to the Central Experimental Farm for the first time this year with a couple of friends, and I enjoyed watching Lucas’s reactions to the animals. He was partial to the chickens (he even said “chicken” quite clearly) and the cows, and by the end of the day every four-legged creature was a “moo”.

189:365 At the farm

After seven years of Farm visits, it’s hard to find an original shot to take! I liked this one, though – I’m partial to the expression on the centred cow’s face! I zoomed in during the exposure to get the dizzying effect. I may just enter this one into the Farm’s annual photo contest, if I don’t get something better later this season.

188b:365 Cow zoom

And this one is item number 271 of things I thought would be much easier to photograph. I’ve seen some stunning pictures of spiderwebs with morning dew on them, and have been hunting all summer for a good one. I finally found this one right in our driveway, and though it wasn’t a misty morning, I made my own moisture with a water bottle. Didn’t help though. Who knew spiderwebs would be so darn hard to photograph?!? (And don’t be expecting to see a whole lot of bugs in my photostream now, either. Two in one week? Unheard of! And ick!)

190:365 Webby

I’d stopped by my parents’ house to take a picture of their used sofa and recliner to post for sale on Used Ottawa and Kijiji, and my mom showed me this cute garden ornament she’d just put out. I loved the colours and textures and snapped a picture, but certainly didn’t intend it to be the picture of the day. Then the day got away from me, and at the end of the day I simply had nothing else in the camera. Good thing it caught my eye, or you’d’ve been treated to a nice soft-light portrait of my parents’ used sofa here! (And it sold in literally about 15 minutes, entirely because of my mad photographic sofa-portrait skillz, of course!)

191:365 Garden owls

We were at the waterpark, and the pattern in the bricks caught my eye. This would likely have been a better shot if the footprints were more distinct and led directly to the feet, but oh well.

192:365 Footprints

What can I say, I just love those little feetsies.

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

3 thoughts on “Project 365: bugs and flowers and some other stuff”

  1. Nice shots. Those feet! Love little feet. I have to tell you that the cow photo made me feel dizzy. I can’t even look at it again 🙂 sorry

  2. Whoa that dizzy one really messed with my eyes… maybe it’s cuz I’m dealing with a monstrous headache right now but wow. I can’t see straight anymore.

    I do see what you like that third picture of the flowers but I love the one you went with instead. And I can see why the finger/bug picture made explore – it’s really stellar, I love the extreme dof and details.

    Meanwhile my captcha for today is “cheapest Nguyen”. Why is that so funny to me?

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