A bad day golfing is better than a good day...

playing in my sandbox. My daughter had her nephew over and they went in the back to hit some balls. They wandered onto the course and played hole 16. She has a pretty good swing for a 4 year old. A bit windy and cold today but she loves the outdoors.

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F6.3~~1/400~~ISO 800 <- not on purpose 210mm

Online bargins

Where have the online service bargains gone? Remember the days when you would get 2-4 offers a week for that Internet service that was canned. I would always think to myself when I saw that email extension from a user that got suckered into using this online service. My first thought was "what are you NEW". I have not recieved anything in the mail from this company in years. Are they still in business?

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f4~~1/13~~ISO400~~34mm

A little sunshine and swing

This weeks category--Life is good. The sun came out, flowers are blooming and kids are swinging. We were able to spend an hour outside in the sun. My daughter loves her swing and asked if she could go out and swing. We spent as much time as our bodies could take, as it was much colder than it looked.

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F5.6~~1/80~~ISO400~~63mm

The World

Got the whole world in my hands. My daughters favorite ball when she was litttle. WOW, I guess she is still little, but when she was an infant. I have another shot of this ball with her holding it. I will have to dust off the hard drive cob webs and find it and link here. Anyhow, I used my off camera flash set at 1/16 power shooting over the top half of globe camera left.

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f5.6~~1/20~~ISO400~~135mm

Ballet

Ballet slipper look alikes. Had to take this before we went to meet some relatives. The bows are darling.

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f4.5~~1/13~~ISO400~~70mm

Two can be as bad as one

But the loneliest number is the number one...was that Three Dog night song? Got home late for the 4th time this week. Looking forward to some time off next week. My daughter was dying to show me her Easter Dress. Grandma will think she is so pretty. Katie is so proud of her dress. Have an orange.

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f4.5~~1/6~~ISO400~~24mm

reflection

Playing with a very light purple gel tonight. I took a different angles and liked this one the best. The gel did not stand out but the reflection at this angle did. A purple piece of paper under the glass, white foam core for the background.

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F4.5~~1/160~~ISO400~~28mm

Happy Birthday Eric (50th)

It was Jan's idea and a good one to boot. She emailed Tim and he passed the word. Here is my rendition of 50. I took a different approach to your magic number. Color Pencils are a lot like Photoshop, in that you can pick a color and go with it. I was thinking all week as to how to capture the big day. Here it is.

I am right behind you buddy, but I have all year to hang on to 49.

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3 different exposures on this one. f3.5~~1/160~~ISO400~~24mm

Big straws

Those are big looking straws. I was in my old school today and they are building a brand new one in the back forty. It is scheduled to open in the fall and will be combining 2 schools into one. The old school here will be torn down at the end of the school year. THis old school's grand opening was scheduled the day JFK was shot back in 1963. They changed the date to a few days later. This new school will be one of the most modern Technology schools in the state. You name it, they will have it.

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f3~~1/500~~ISO400~~24mm

The magic of presents

What is better than watching your friend open birthday presents. The hope that when your birthday comes around you get a lot of toys you see your buddy opening. These children huddled around the birthday girl with baited breath watching as she opened one present after the other. They all gasp as each new toy was unwrapped. Fun to see the excitement of the children.

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f4~~1/13~~ISO400~~55mm

Shadow Symmetry

This weeks category was Symmetry. I had a few different shots but landed on this one. I took this on Friday night after our pizza night. The shadow of the chair brings an even feel to the symmetry of the shadow box.

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f5~~6 sec~~ISO200~~43mm

Spring has sprung

We have been waiting for this moment for the entire winter. I can't recall a more snowy, wet, cold winter than this past season. The cherry blooms are out, 20 days late, but they are here. Maybe they can hold on until Easter? A simple subject that tells the story. Bring it on, Golf, baseball, yard work... Green screen it's not, but the photo appears to be shot with one. I am liking the DOF of this shot as it appears the branch is floating. I debated as to leave or take out the branch running from Bottom right to middle...I left it in.
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f5~~1/160~ISO200~~135mm

Best friends, PRICELESS

These two have been close since they were 3 months old. It is so cool to see after 4 and a half years they are best friends. They don't see as much of each other as they would like, but enough to be best friends. They play so well together and they are both great kids and have parents that really care for children in general ( we are all educators) Way to go girls!!

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f3.5~~1/13~ISO200~33mm/24-135 sigma

Give me a charge

I had to replace my daughters batteries in her fisher price camera. She is following in her daddy's foot steps. SHe like to take pictures, just doesn't like them taken of her.
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f5.6~~1/160~~ISO200~~63mm
Hit Counters

Seattle P-I closes doors

Seattle becomes a one newspaper town since the inception of the Seattle PI back in 1863. It originally released the early issues under the heading of the Seattle Gazette. In collage my roommate's and I subscribed to the P-I. I remember fondly that the sports section had the ugly light green headline feature article.

The cost of keeping a newspaper afloat in this day and age of online news was next too impossible. So on today's porch we received the Seattle Times. Again many jobs lost in this downward spiral economy. I guess you can look on the bright side, a tree was saved today.

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f3.5~~1/5~~ISO200~~38mm/24-135 sigma

Things appear larger than they are

A book of big things. She loves making faces so I gave her a chance to make a big face :) I had fun with this one today and had a different image in mind. However, my daughter was the only willing participant in a day that we all were pretty busy. So I took a handful of shots and shopped the 2nd image into the first image to create this effect. I will visit this again before the year is out and get the shot I was originally intended on shooting. The challenge is for my readers/viewers to try this and post on their blog or email me their take the effect.

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f2.8~~1/4~~ISO200~~24mm/24-135 sigma

Back in the day

Turn the clock back 60 years. The cobblestone roads, brick buildings, homemade signs and the smell of exhaust from the cars. The population of the world was in tact, enough room to have a piece of land without a house 5 feet from the edge of your house. Enough jobs for those that wanted to work. Life was good. OVER POPULATION, that is the real issue today. Who are we kidding, Reward those that repopulate, not overpopulate. I am off my soapbox.

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f 3.5~~1/100~~ISO200~~43mm/24-135 sigma

The other side of the tracks

This weeks catagory was motion, picked by me. Go see what Eric and Tim posted. Faster than a speeding bullet... I started off the work early and sat here from about 5:30am to darn near 6:45. Of course the next day while I am driving this stretch of road the train comes promptly at 5:45, go figure. I took this shot earlier in the week, March 12th, and knew this was going to be my motion shot. I took this in the fall and I like the results better than this one. I had more daylight back in the fall. Two things going on here, and I thought of cropping out the right side of the image but it brought a rather stillness to the shot. the light post/sign divide the shot nicely from motion to stillness. So I left as shot. If you have never been to the Tacoma glass museum it pretty cool, and is the cone shaped building on the left. My shot for today is below this post.

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f3.5~~3 sec~~ISO200~28mm

Got'em on the first try

Do you remember when you were four? This is what a four year old girl does with her free time. But if you ask her, she has no free time. It's all work, work, work and no play, yah right. She had her dolls all lined up yesterday and now that she saw MaryJo yesterday it's the poodle partly. We got snow again today and it's too wet and cold to go outside so Katie pulled out the animals. I figured I would take my one and only shot today. Its nice when animals cooperate and you get a shot on the first try :) My motion shot to follow.
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f4~~1/15~~ISO200~~63mm/24-135 sigma

Uncle Bob

There are a lot of Uncle Bob's in the crowd. I had several more than one person step in my way today at the one year birthday party today. People think it is ok to step in front of another photographer and take a picture, or even a onlooker step in the way. Thus you get a lot of throw aways.

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f4~~1/100~ISO200~63mm sigma 24-135 attached 540 flash.

I could eat them like apples

I love avocado's!!!! Put them in almost anything and I will eat it. These 2 are ripe and ready to eat. Let's see, what do I make with these? Do I put them in a salad? make guacamole? Put them in my cereal? Ok maybe not my cereal but darn near everything else.
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f5.6~~1/2~~ISO200~~115mm/28-300 tamron

Going green

Thought I would turn on the light bulb and use my energy efficient battery operated light source. This is the new way to save the earth and its my small part in going green. First my water bottle and now this. The technology has been out there for several years but the electric companies have suppressed the technology to retain stockholders in local energy companies.

OK, OK, not really but it sounded like a good lead story for our leaders of the world.

I played in photoshop with the background. The light bulb was not enhance or illuminated in any way once inside photoshop but I used my Blending mode to bring out the illumination from the bulb to the background mud cracks. (linear burn) Here is my set up, once again pretty crude. off camera flash at full power, homemade snoot, Plexiglas, and my pocket wizards.

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f11~~1/100~~ISO200~~158mm w/tamron 28-300

Simplicity

Weird thing happened yesterday. I had a few ideas in mind for my posted shot and one was of the moon. Normally that would not be so odd but I thought better of it as the temp was in the mid 20's and much too cold to set the shot up and get something of value or interest. Thus my glass shot, which was inspired by Tim the day before. Anyway, getting back to this being weird...I then visited Alan's 365 day blog, Eric's 365 day blog, and Tim's 365 day blog. What did all 3 post yesterday. You guessed it, some form of moon shot. Alans was basic and simple, I am sure it what he invisioned in his set up. I did pretty much the same type of shot with mine tonight. Eric was more of a mysterious, erie, scary, scooby Doo shot, and my daughter loved it. Tim's reminded me of an old PC game called lighthouse, or even the TV show LOST. You almost feel that you want to be transported through the opening in the clouds to another world. So I decided to join the crowd and take my full moon shot tonight. Here is my attempt with a touch of photoshop to make it a bit erie and halloween like....I might revist this one again in October?

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F stop unknown~~1 second~~ISO200~28-300 at 300mm with a 1.4 doubler attached.

The Illusion

Water, glass, color, angle. This can create a cool illusion when matching the angle of the camera lens to the setup. After seeing Tim's shot yesterday I thought of trying my hand with one glass and two colors in the background. Amazing what the eye see's, or doesn't see? Single off camera flash at 1/32 power.

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f11~~1/2~~ISO200~~63mm~~tamron 28-300 lens

Lines

Snow in March? Spring sports in Washington started last week, the kids playing baseball, softball, golf, track, and soccer in the snow? Today I am glad I am not a coach. Snow hit us hard today at several times. It snowed hard in the morning and by noon it was gone. Then it snowed again about 4pm and by 6 it had melted again. Tonight is suppose to bring cold weather, in the teens to mid 20's and snow until about midnight. It might be an interesting commute into town tomorrow.

I really like the lines in this shot. Coming from all directions but to me it really brings your eye to where the 2 benches in the back meet. The tree, railing and bench on the bottom do a nice job of framing the shot.

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f5~~1/6~~ISO200~~28mm converted to B & W

Alone again.

Hmm, I am eating my oatmeal, wondering where my parents are and I see my dad out of the corner of my eye taking a shot of me. I was all alone and watching Mr Doo on TV. That would be Mr Scooby Doo as I refer to him, which right now is my favorite show ever!!! I finished my oatmeat, do my dishes, well I brought them to the kitchen, and then returned to my show. What do you expect, I am only 4. Thank goodness for Tivo as I was able to pause while making the trek into the kitchen. Sometimes being an only child is a bummer.
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f3.5~~1/4~~ISO200~~tamron 28-300 at 28mm

Glass tutorial

My wife and I joke about these glasses. They were real cheap. Only 1.00 a glass in Mexico and we purchased 12 of them for a total, as you can do the math as well (12.00)but if you count the airfare it was 2012 dollars for the glasses. We always get a good chuckle out of that.

It was a very calm, slow day around the Cadena household as my wife caught what my daughter and I had last week, although it seems to have hit her a bit harder than it did us. (hard to believe). So we laid low today. I searched a bit online for different lighting techniques and found a pretty interesting website. This guy had a tutorial on shooting glass and my buddy Eric had one that he did here that was rather interesting. I figured I would watch this guys tut and see what I could learn. Very interesting and he taught me a bit more about lighting, which is always of interest. Here is my attempt and I played in Photoshop with the post, which is one of my favorite things to do. I will never shoot glass again without thinking of these techniques. A side note: I made the corkboard and scotchtape from scratch and will be making a tutorial on "how to" on my website in the next few days. Look under documents for the video.

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f22~~1/125~~ISO200~~53mm strobe right at 1/2 power and speedlight left at 1/64 power.

Here is my very crude setup and sometimes this gives the best results. I think I have a record number of links in this post.

Twinkle Twinkle little star

I am staying with the outdoor night theme. I wanted to create a 15 min timed shot but my camera and remote do not sync in blub mode. I had to hold my remote down for 73.82 seconds to capture what you see here. I wish I could do a 15 min exposure but as of right now I can't seem to figure that one out.

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f3.5~~73 sec in Bulb mode~~ISO200~~10mm

Strangers in the night

We thought we heard voices last night outside the window. My wife made me set up a camera to pick up any strange activity after dusk. It appears we caught something strange outside lurking near the front door. Very ghostly in appearance and it appears almost see through. Where was that police officer when I needed him.

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f9~~10 sec~~ISO200~~10mm

From the Ocean

Brought these back from one of our trips. Rora Tonga? Dominican? St John? Hawaii? Foget where but I know we had fun.

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f5.6~~1/2~~ISO200~~85mm

I got hungry again

I changed the background this time. Took exactly 4 shots. This was shot two. Apples are good for you and I try and eat one a day. I had a lot of fun after shooting this setup as it is now what my daughter says, "it's in my tummy."

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f5.6~~1/30~~ISO100~~115mm

A different perspective

Caught this little guy taking a tub in the slide. Spring is here :)
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f6.3~~1/60~~ISO800~~300mm

Shot with Gels

Today's category is an exercise I found very unique and most enjoyable as well. I shot it with a red gel and got 3 different effects. Here is the original gel (ROSCO #2001 Storaro red) but if you follow the link to this image and this shot I doctored thees 2 shots up in Photoshop. The question for you to try and answer is: What did I do to make the change?
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f16~~1/30~~ISO200~~135mm