365 starts now...

So Stephanie offered up a game of sorts to help out and encourage the art of photography, Project 365. A picture (at least) a day and I'm guessing it's supposed to encourage 'professional growth'. I don't know really, she didn't offer up any rules. I'm a rule breaker any way so it wouldn't matter even if there were any.

Regardless I decided to take her up on the offer since I have a love of photography that goes totally ignored way too often. I had to take my camera to work in order to take pics of the kid at her lunch time awards ceremony. What did I learn? That if I had my camera with me I'd take more pictures. Novel? No. So what is my answer to that realization? I went and bought a bag that would double as a purse/camera bag. See? No excuses left. Well at least once the bag comes in. Until then ya'll get pictures of what I can do after I get home.

I have a few things I've been meaning of photograph so you'll probably be getting those first. I have another experiment too (gawd the scientist in her just won't stop huh?) since I have a new lens coming mid month. I will be taking a few garden shots (close ups mostly) with my camera and it's limited capabilities with the regular standard lens (Canon S3 IS). When the new lens comes in (damn I still need to order the adapter...) and I get the adapter, I don't have a dslr ya know, just a glorified point and shoot, I'm going to compare what I can do with it. Fortunately I don't thing my garden is going anywhere and really am excited to try my hand at bokeh.

I was an avid photographer way back in the day, early 90's to be exact. The time of film, not digital, photography. We used a dark room and processed everything ourselves. I think this may be why I have yet to be enthused about Photoshop, there's nothing really quite like developing a photo in a dark room. My friend Summer (the one who did the Flat Stanley project in Mumbai for us) and I pitched in and bought an enlarger and built a darkroom in her shed out back, it was so cool. Owning a camera that doesn't allow me to focus the lens myself still chaps my hide but I just can not see myself sinking the large $$ for the dslrs that allow one to focus by hand. I have several friends that do own them though and I am very jealous. Just being honest here folks. I took photography in college where it was more about art and content. Very interesting and unconventional though since it was at UC Santa Cruz, a very artsy loose place. Not terribly conventional, man i could not stand that school. I guess not so deep down I'm too conservative for that hippie crap. I like to shave my legs, hairy legs on a woman are just not all that.

Sorry, off track again. This set of photos was something I had been meaning to take for a bit. See the Big elephant ear growing? It disappeared from my shade garden like 8 months ago. I figured it had died and did pay it much more heed than that. Last month it popped up. It popped up that big which just blew my mind. I also had a few in my pot ghetto (pics of that later) that I needed to plant and still hadn't gotten around to. I noticed 2 days ago that a few had survived so they were promoted up yesterday. If something in my garden survives the pot ghetto they get promoted up to in ground space. Nothing in life is free and you have to work to survive my household. So what you see here is my tiny little shade garden, a cute little weeping Japanese maple (it's in another photo, I'll show ya'll later), some fern, and the 3 elephant ears. Big, medium and wee tiny tiny. That wee one is smaller than a quarter and I found it in the pot, under the dirt. Figured I stick it in the ground a see if it could hack it. With all the depth of field I think when my new lens comes in it'll be fun to try the bokeh with this shade garden.