Day 30 - Reflections

Wow, what an apt title for the last day of the 30 Day Challenge! What a month!! I probably won't do a photo tomorrow, but I did do the 30! Doesn't sound like much of a deal, but what a challenge it turned out to be! I think I'll leave Balboa Island alone for awhile.....or if I do take a walk there, I'll leave my camera at home!

This has been a wonderful experience and I look with admiration to those who undertook the challenge and worked so hard to complete the thirty days! It was much more difficult than I ever anticipated.

A sincere thank you to all of you who have taken the time to look at my photos and to leave comments. It has meant a lot and I appreciate it very much.

Day 29 - Demolition Diptych

My neighbor across the street is remodeling her house. Today they demo'd (sounds so much better than demolished) the driveway. This is what I woke up to. Since the beginning of this challenge, my camera is always at the ready for just such things.

Day 28 - Bobs Your Uncle [sic]

Today Cridley and Mr. Cridley came to visit! One of the adventures we had was going on a two hour tour of Newport Harbor in a cute little electric boat. Newport Harbor is home to many, many boats and yachts of all varieties. This one jumped out at us, though, because of its color and its rather unusual name and home port. I think someone's tongue was planted firmly in cheek with this one.

Day 27 - Baby Seagull

Ok, ok, for those of you who got heebie-jeebies from the snake, here's something a bit more tame. A baby seagull. We don't usually see these. I don't know where they hide around here until they're almost grown up, but my neighbor and I were walking around Balboa when she pointed out two baby seagulls, standing in the sand near water's edge. People were out strolling on the sidewalk, and the tide was high, leaving little sand between the sidewalk and the water, and here stood these two little birds. Well, actually they weren't that little, but just very immature. Their feathers hadn't even come in fully yet (see head and neck areas). They didn't even try to walk/run/fly away as we stood there taking pictures of them.

Day 26 - Python!

I decided to follow those who have shown pictures of their pets. This is our ball python. She is usually sort of a slug, but tonight it was hard to get her to stay still. Maybe she didn't like sitting on black velvet. But, unfortunately she started to spread out from her ball position and I couldn't get all of her in the viewfinder. And no, her name is not Monty.

Day 25 - Early Morning Beach Cottage

I got out early this morning and walked around Balboa Island. Why is it some days you get lots of pics, and other days you just spin your wheels? Anyway, it was early, sky still gray, yet this front 'yard' of this beach cottage was colorful and homey.

Bonus: A few doors away from this cottage, something bright caught my eye on the ground. I looked down and saw a sad, broken flamingo whirligig. I thought of Suedre's flamingo and decided to take a pic of his less fortunate cousin.

Day 24 - Laundry Delirium

Too many things to do, too many errands to run, too many loads of clothes to wash in between all of it. I started looking at my washing machine as if it were a glowing, taunting version of evil reincarnate! Hopefully tomorrow will allow more time for photography, and more interesting images.

Day 23 - Sunset Silhouette

Evening came and I'd still not taken my picture today, so I zoomed off to the beach to try to catch the sunset. I did see the sun as I got out of my car, but by the time I walked across the street, the sun dipped behind the low clouds and out of sight. But its glow remained, and that's my picture for today, with some different looking plant silhouettes in the foreground!

Day 22 - Cracked Crab?

They're baa-aaccck!! The herons were back at the bay today! There were about 8 of them but most were too far to get a good picture. This guy was doing the heron thing - perched motionless for several minutes until he'd lunge. Over and over...sometimes he got something, sometimes just a piece of grass. So I sat on the ground and waited, perched with camera to eye, patiently. I didn't get the lunge this time because it was behind the grass, but he came up with a crab. The following two of the continuous shots show the crab making its progress up the beak and gone!

Day 21 - Cat's Cradle

From fast-moving subjects to anchored subjects..... all in a day's time. I loved the hearts on the vine, and with the brown stems below, reaching to the ends of the string of hearts, it reminded me of two outstretched hands playing Cat's Cradle.

Day 20 - Dragonfly!

I set out today to go to our bird refuge to see about taking some heron or egret photos. Unfortunately the birds had other plans and weren't there. So I walked around for awhile. Near the road is a little freshwater pond that runs into our estuary. There was a dragonfly that kept hovering, then darting about. I had my telephoto lens on and decided to try to get a picture of it. I imagine the lady sitting across the road by the water's edge must have thought I was nuts with the wild aiming of my camera for about 10 minutes as I kept trying to capture the dragonfly as it darted about! I'm happy to say I got 4 or 5 good shots of it, this being one. I'm so grateful for digital!!

Day 19 - 'Shrooms

Trying to sleep in this morning after my full day at Disneyland, followed by a mad dash attempt to upload a photo before the deadline last night, I was awakened by my husband, who'd gone out to get the newspaper, saying, "Quick! Go get your camera and check out the mushroom ring on the front lawn!" So I dutifully got up, threw on some clothes and went to check. On the front lawn was this little circle of 1" mushrooms, very delicate on long thin stems. I took about 20 shots from various angles and altitudes, but I liked the 'gear effect' of this one the best, so it gets posted for today! About two hours later, they were all curled up.

I have no idea what kind of mushrooms they were, and this was the first time we'd seen anything like them. What luck!

Day 18 - Disneyland Parade

I was at Disneyland from 10 a.m to 11:15 p.m. today. I rushed home, arriving at 11:42 p.m., turned on my computer, opened up pages for Worth and Photobucket, loaded my memory card and just crazily looked for some picture that had some semblance of correct exposure and that was fairly clear to upload for today's image before the midnight deadline (local time). I put a 2 pixel border around this one, didn't even have time to crop. Loaded it to Photobucket, then to Worth, at 11:57:30 p.m. Phew.

I apologize for the hack job, but as you can see from the picture at the "Happiest Place on Earth", there was lots going on at Disneyland, including our favorite cartoon characters on parade.

Oh, and I had a ball on the Buzz Lightyear ride -- shooting laser beams at targets!! We even did it twice!

Day 17 - Antique Box

I was visiting a friend today.... camera with me as usual lately. She has an extensive collection of Asian accessories so I decided to take a picture of this antique box. I loved how the gold design seemed so rich and tried to capture it. I was able to arrive at a setting that allowed the table top to blend into the background.

Day 16 - Wall of Water

I took my camera with me when I went to pick up my take-out Chinese food. It wasn't quite ready so I sat outside the restaurant and took some pictures in the courtyard. I tried a variety of shutter speeds to catch the water as either flowing or stop-action. This was sort of in the middle since there was a break in the flow and I actually got some flow and some stop action.

It was almost dark, and I had to use my flash, thus the shadows on the fountain. Post processing consisted of some sharpening, and increases in saturation.

Day 15 - Playground Illusion

Figuring I'd get some interesting shots at the local playground, I went there this afternoon with nothing particular in mind. I was looking more for angles and shapes, being motivated by so many of the other 30 Day Challenge participants. The covered slide was backlit, creating an eerie glow and the symmetry of the opening just grabbed my attention. I just love the way this turned out! It's almost an optical illusion!

Day 14 - Nakayoshi - Good Friends

I went to the public library today and noticed for the first time a granite sculpture at the far end of the building. I had my small camera with me and took several photos, but didn't really pay attention to what the plaque said until I got home and looked at the photos. Imagine my surprise to find out that the name of the sculpture is Nakayoshi - Good Friends! And it's not even a dog! The sculpture was a present to our city from a sister city in Japan.

Day 13 - Moon Shot

I took this shot (along with about a dozen others) at 8:10 p.m., just as I was getting home. I'd hoped to get some pretty sunset pictures, but by the time I got the camera outside, the color had gone from what few clouds we had. I took these pics without a tripod, as I didn't want to lose any more time getting it and setting it up. I experimented and took the pics of the moon with and without tree framing, but I liked this one best. The tree is a liquidamber (sweet gum) and its pointy leaves make sort of a ghostly impression in their blurred state.

The only post-processing done was to remove noise from the photo and add the border. That little lumpy thing at the bottom of the moon was right there in all of the pictures. I'm surprised I didn't see the dark shadow of the 'back' of the moon, but maybe it was already too dark to see it.

Day 12 - Web Design

Most of the day went by with me planning our family's vacation online.... I was beginning to think I'd have to submit a picture of my desk with all my notes, printouts and confirmation numbers, and in fact I did take a few pictures of that as a last resort (very last....). Then I went out to pick some tomatoes and saw this great spider web. It was a large web, probably close to 12" in diameter, backlit as the sun was going down to show the wonderful structure, but it kept moving in the breeze, making it very difficult to get a sharply focused shot. The colors are original, but I boosted saturation, vibrance and contrast, removed noise, and added a slight black gradient to try to remove some of the glare/flare on the left side of the picture from the sun hitting my lens. I loved the engineering feat of the spider, and decided to go with the picture for today's offering, even though it was not as sharp as I'd like it to be.

Day 11 - Citizenship!

Today, close to 18,000 people were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 3 separate ceremonies at the Convention Center in Los Angeles. I was a guest of one of them. I tried to get some interesting shots amid the mass of humanity, while remaining at my seat, so I wouldn't lose it. It was standing room only for many of the guests!

Day 10 - Dazzling Dahlias

It's lucky for me that Balboa Island is a touristy area...I've been there three days in a row with my camera around my neck, walking around taking pictures, and I think I'm blending in with the visitors.

This garden was a real find! I walked on part of the island that I don't usually visit and came upon this "wall" of dahlias separating the house from the sidewalk. They were so bright, and obviously someone with a very green thumb lives there as there were no dead flowers to be found on the plants!

Since I had so many great dahlia pictures (including some with bees), I decided to make a triptych today.

I worked in a large size when I put this together. It is very clear on my computer, but reducing it to the Worth size of 75K, and even a little larger at this size on the blog, has somehow slightly messed it up and it's lost some of its softness and appears oversharpened, which the original is not. I've tried several times to re-size it for Web, but it still only comes out about 50% on the .jpg quality indicator. Sorry, I can't figure out what I did wrong.

Day 9 - Storefront Cow

This cow is stationed in front of a small retail store on Balboa Island, in Newport Harbor (California). The cow is on wheels so it can be brought in at night. On the side of the cow is a general map of the island (except for the short main street on which the store is located, the island is residential), but the side view wasn't as interesting as the front. Since the island is still festooned with Fourth of July decorations, someone decided the cow should wear a patriotic hat.

Day 8 - Nail Polish

I went to get my nails done today, and thinking I might pay homage to Ava, brought along my camera to take a sudsy toes pic. But I loved the colors of the polish on the polish rack, so I'm using that pic for today's image. I'll leave to Ava to post toesies. ;)

Day 7 - Abstract Lily

Well, this was a fairly ordinary yellow lily I saw on today's walk. I decided to play with it in post processing, and two layers later (hue/sat and blending modes) I came up with this image, which just appealed to me, probably because it reminds me of a painting an aunt of mine did years ago.

Day 6 - Rowing Man Balance Toy

I have two balance toys that I keep on end tables. I love collecting folk art, and these are among my favorites. One of the two pivot points is illuminated. The pendulum counterweight is below, out of view in this image.

Day 5 - Dinner Salad

Well, dinner time came and I still didn't have a picture for today. Fortunately we had some ripe tomatoes and a ripe cucumber to pick, so I picked them and put them into a small basket and found the only spot of sun in my shady yard to take the picture! Yes, the colors are real! And yes, they were delicious!

Day 4 - Fourth of July Flowerworks!

Happy Fourth of July to all! We won't get to see real fireworks until tonight, and I'm going to do my darndest to get some decent pictures of them - last year's effort was, charitably speaking, mediocre.

I’m getting ideas from others' blogs and daily images ..... so JohnnyTitan, this entry is springboarding from your images of motion. Thanks!

This is a picture of red/pink/white impatiens and purple lobelia in my backyard. Various flowers resulted in different effects, but when I saw the preview of this after taking the picture, the zoom lines just screamed out "Fireworks!" to me and I am going with it!

The zoom effect was all done in camera (no post-processing PS zoom blur). Camera was handheld, because the idea just evolved and I was too lazy to go inside and get the tripod after I experimented. I used my 17-85 lens, focused at the 17 mm end. I used shutter priority, set for 6/10 of a second (after some 'learning' attempts), ISO 100. During the exposure, I turned the zoom ring all the way to 85mm, or as close to it as I could get. It was tough trying to hold the camera still and turn the lens during the exposure time, and it probably would have been better with a tripod, but it's still fun.

Anyway, on the computer, I duplicated the layers, adjusted color, played with blending modes and then finished up with some light vignetting around the edges. This was really fun. :)

Day 3 - Burger and Fries

I was so sorry to disappoint so many of you who were looking for more food yesterday. So, today I drove over to our local In 'n' Out Burger (yes, for all you non-Californians, that IS the name of the chain) and got a Double-Double (double patty, double cheese) with everything plus pickle, and an order of fries. We just love In-n-Out burgers around here. Can you smell it?

Oh, they are more generous with their fries, but while taking so many alternative shots, many of them sort of just, well, disappeared.

Edit: I was asked about closer and/or alternative shots..... here is one of them.....

Day 2 - Illuminated Agapanthus

I got out nice and early this morning, in time to catch the sun breaking through the clouds and the dew still on the flowers. All of the dewdrops inside the blossom reflected the light, seemingly illuminating the flower from the inside. But I did darken the rest of it to enhance contrast.

Day 1 - My Lunch

Well, I haven't come up with a theme, and I didn't know what to take a picture of. So, tired of trying to think of a subject, I called a friend to go out to lunch. The salad I ordered looked so colorful that I went back to my car to get my camera to take a picture of it. I'm not sure that food will be my theme....but......