Nick 365
With the start of the new year, I have decided to make an attempt at my own Project 365. This gallery will exhibit a photograph per day for the next year. The photos will be randomly inspired with varying techniques. My hopes are this will be a fun experience that will broaden my creativity and allow me to learn more to help enhance my photography skills. Hope you enjoy!
366/365 - January 5, 2013 - Project 365
Instead of taking a random shot for the official final day of the project, I decided to create a collage of all the shots taken throughout. Thanks to Picasa for making this so easy.
365/365 - January 4, 2012 - Day 365!!!
I made it! Today marked the 365th day since I began this journey last year on January 6. Technically the year mark will be tomorrow due to the leap year, but since this is all about 365, I had to commemorate it in a special way.
#3: Shot I took this afternoon of the American Clothing building facade in the Old City.
#6: My daily shot from Day 42.
#5: Photo of some diagonal bracing within a wall on the Hilton Garden Inn project I visited on December 19th.
364/365 - January 3, 2013 - L&N Station
This evening on my way home from the office, I took one of my photographic detours downtown. I went with nothing specific in mind, but as I was getting off the interstate on Western Avenue, I spotted the L&N Station and realized I haven't captured any shots of it this year. I parked on the interstate side of Western Avenue, so after risking my life to cross it and its intersection with Henley Street during rush hour, I began shooting. After some close ups, I decided to get a wide view of the facade only to realize my 24-105mm lens wasn't wide enough to capture the full building from the place I chose on the sidewalk. I could have move further to the right, but the landscaping in the foreground obscured the view of the door on the right side of the building. I had my wider 17-40mm lens in the car, but didn't want to add 2 more traverses of Western Avenue to my evening, so I settled for a 3-setup panoramic view, hence the distorted view. To help capture the lighting as the sun was setting, I compiled a 3-shot HDR composite of each setup.
363/365 - January 2, 2013 - Apples
This afternoon on the way home from work, I had to make a quick stop at the grocery store to get a few things for Lisa, who has been at home tending to 2 sick kids. With the gloomy weather over the past week, outdoor shots have been hard to come by, so I decided to capture a little color in the produce aisle.
362/365 - January 1, 2013 - New Year's Day
This afternoon I finally made some time for some college football bowl games. With the SEC in action concurrently on 3 channels, I was in a blissful state. This shot also shows off one of my projects this week. I finally got around to mounting the flat screen TV in the living room on the wall to get it out of reach of my crazy kids. Of course, the biggest task was routing the plethora of cables between the cabinet and TV through the wall.
361/365 - December 31, 2012 - Transition
On the last day of 2012, I found myself doing some honey-do list items that have been lingering around for way too long. Without much time for something more exciting to mark the end of 2012, I decided my task of installing the transition pieces between the laminate floor I installed over 2 years ago and the ceramic tile in the bathroom made an interesting shot to coincide with tonight's transition to the new year.
360/365 - December 30, 2012 - First Snow
This morning, Anna woke me up by informing me it had snowed and that she wanted to go out and play. After checking it out, we had indeed gotten some snow, but it was much less than would be desired to go out and play. Regardless, we had enough to warrant taking a photo of the backyard and claiming it as the first snow of the winter.
359/365 - December 29, 2012 - Shopping With Daddy
Tonight I had to make a run to the home improvement stores to get some items to assist with mounting the flat screen TV in the living room on the wall to get out of reach of the kids. To give Lisa a break, I allowed both kids to tag along. This is a shot of the kids showing how thrilled they were to be on the trip.
358/365 - December 28, 2012 - Christmas Round IV
Today was our last Christmas get together of the season. We made the trip out to Talbott to visit with Lisa's brother's family from Chattanooga at Lisa's parents. To keep with the precedent I set on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I decided to use several shots to commemorate the day.
357/365 - December 27, 2012 - Big Ed's
This afternoon, Lisa and I took in a movie in Oak Ridge and grabbed some of Big Ed's famous pizza on Jackson Square. It's hard to beat Big Ed's.
356/365 - December 26, 2012 - Silly Nate
The day after Christmas resulted in a lazy day lounging around the house in our pajamas. At one point, just prior to this photo, Nate decided his pj's were too much. He stripped down to his pull-up and decided to start a giggle/screaming/rough-housing session with Lisa on the couch. This photo is evidence.
355/365 - December 25, 2012 - Christmas Day
A compilation of shots from Christmas Day, celebrating the occasion with my family.
354/365 - December 24, 2012 - Christmas Eve
A compilation of shots from Christmas Eve, celebrating the occasion with Lisa's family.
353/365 - December 23, 2012 - Christmas Eve Eve
Today was Christmas Eve Eve, which meant Lisa and I were in mad scramble mode to put the finishing touches on our Christmas. To aid Lisa in the plethora of gifts needed to be wrapped, I wrangled up the kids and took them to my parents' house. This shot is of me and Nate playing with the Christmas train set my parents bought my kids last year. Nate just learned how to start and stop the train with the control.
352/365 - December 22, 2012 - Future Boy Band?
This evening we hosted our church home group Christmas party. We couldn't help but laugh when the 4 boys ended up at Anna's princess table to eat dinner with their shirts off. The moms decided shirtless was the way to go to combat the mess spaghetti was sure to make of their shirts. This will be an incriminating shot for Nate's future girlfriends...
351/365 - December 21, 2012 - Christmas Gifts
Today I left work a couple of hours early to take advantage of Lisa and the kids being away from the house so I could wrap Lisa's Christmas gifts.
350/365 - December 20, 2012 - Red-Dee
Another busy day didn't leave much opportunity for a shot, so I used the Christmas fallback of capturing Red's daily antics.
349/365 - December 19, 2012 - Eight Story Construction
Today I ventured to Pikeville, KY to perform a structural walk-through for a new Hilton Garden Inn that I am the structural engineering consultant. To date, this is the tallest structure I have designed in the way of floor levels (8-story). From a structural standpoint, it's pretty much done, as the steel frame and hollow core concrete plank floors are installed. From here on out, it is a matter of covering up my work with all the fluff.
348/365 - December 18, 2012 - Rough Day
A rough day and evening of work (around 13 hours) led to me breaking out the hard stuff.
347/365 - December 17, 2012 - Fully Engaged
Tonight while doing some laundry, I found an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to occupy the kids. With Mickey being one of Nate's favorites, I found him glued to the television, watching very intently and could not pass up the opportunity to capture this shot.
346/365 - December 16, 2012 - It's A Major Award
Tonight's shot has another Christmas theme. It's a shot of one of our new ornaments that pays homage to my favorite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story.
345/365 - December 15, 2012 - Christmas Twinkle
This afternoon, I tried my best to impersonate Clark Griswold and his Christmas lighting display. Unfortunately due to finances, my display pales in comparison. However, I was quite pleased how it turned out considering how little money I wanted to spend on it. This is a shot of some of the lights on the front porch posts.
344/365 - December 14, 2012 - Date Night on the Strip
This evening Lisa and I had the opportunity to have a date night as our kids were spending the night with my parents. We ended up having dinner at the Cumberland Grill on the Strip. This is a shot of my pre-dinner Velas Helles.
343/365 - December 13, 2012 - Hoskins, Good Food
Tonight I had to attend a school board meeting in Clinton. Afterwards, I took advantage of being in Clinton and grabbed some shots of the neon signage at Hoskins Drug Store. This shot is a 2 second exposure that I zoomed from 105mm to 24mm during the exposure to produce the light streaks.
342/365 - December 12, 2012 - Twelve to the Sixth
For the past several years, there has been a day in which the month, day, and year numbers match as well as a second in time that matches as well. Being that it is 2012, this is the last year in this century that this will be possible. Since I am pretty sure I won't be around in 2112 to catch the next one, I decided to make this second my photo of the day. I captured the time and date on my iPad. A bonus was capturing my reflection in the glass to add some interest to the digital readout.
341/365 - December 11, 2012 - Rearview Sunset
The sunset colors on the way home from work tonight were spectacular. Unfortunately I was very tired from a business trip I made to Atlanta today, so I took the lazy way out and took a quick photo of the fading sunset from the seat of the car while waiting on a red light. I knew by the time I got home, I would have lost my opportunity.
340/365 - December 10, 2012 - Christmas Bulb
Today's shot is actually from yesterday. With the recycled Downtown Brewery shot used yesterday, I decided to bump this photo to today since all I had was another Elf Red shot, which wasn't very interesting. This was taken in one of the many stores we visited at the Kenwood Mall while in Cincinnati.
339/365 - December 9, 2012 - First Date
Seven years ago today, Lisa agreed to go out with me the first time. To commemorate the occasion, I decided to pull a photo from March that didn't make the cut then for today's shot. It is a shot of Downtown Grill & Brewery's entry neon sign, which is where we went on our first date. Since we were in Cincinnati today, I didn't get the opportunity to take a similar shot today, so I had to cheat to get what I wanted.
338/365 - December 8, 2012 - Great American Ball Park
Today while Lisa was doing one of her two jewelry shows, I went into downtown Cincinnati for some sight seeing to kill some time. I only had about an hour to kill, so I drove around for a bit prior to parking at the riverfront to walk around. This is a shot at the main entrance plaza of Great American Ball Park, home of the Cincinnati Reds.
337/365 - December 7, 2012 - Taking Off
This shot was actually taken on Saturday evening, but I decided to use it for Friday's shot since I didn't have anything else for Friday. Today was a little crazy, as Lisa and I made a trip to Cincinnati for the weekend. This shot is of a plane taking off from the Cincinnati airport (CVG). The shot was a little wider than I would have liked, but considering I left my telephoto lens at home, this was as good as I could do with my 24-105mm.
336/365 - December 6, 2012 - Another Day With Red
Tonight I caught Elf Red relaxing on the pot rack in the kitchen.
335/365 - December 5, 2012 - Night Drive Take II
Tonight I had to run to the store for some milk and decided to take another stab at the blurred light shot while driving that I took on Day 326. That shot turned out okay, but I wasn't completely happy with the rain drops and the truncated light streaks. For tonight's shot, I used a much longer exposure (25 seconds) to make sure the streaks extended across the whole shot. I jazzed the shot up by mirroring the right side of the image, as it contained a lot more light trails than the left to give it an abstract feel.
334/365 - December 4, 2012 - Red and Tink
With Christmas upon us, our kids have their own elf, which Anna named Red last year, that visits our house to watch them for Santa. Today was the second day of Red's stay. The kids awoke this morning to find him messing with Tinkerbell on top of the Christmas tree.
333/365 - December 3, 2012 - Mater
This evening I paid homage to one of Nate's obsessions these days, the characters from the Cars movies. This shot is a macro close up of a diecast Mater that Nate's grandma bought him at the mall last week. We were outside playing in the backyard enjoying the beautiful weather. Nate had brought Mater outside and left him on the deck while playing on the playset. To give a sense of scale, Mater is sitting on a 6" wide deck board.
332/365 - December 2, 2012 - It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
This afternoon, we had our family Christmas photos taken on Market Square. Our session was a free session Lisa won in a drawing at a consignment sale back in the fall. After the way the kids behaved, I remembered why I don't aggressively offer my services to take photos of other peoples kids. Nevertheless, after our session, we walked around Market Square and Gay Street. During that time, I captured some Christmas shots of downtown. This tree is at Krutch Park.
331/365 - December 1, 2012 - Little Gym Party
Tonight we took the kids to a birthday party at The Little Gym in west Knoxville. The party was for one of our friend's two-year old son. I hadn't anticipated bringing my camera in, but our friend's camera battery died shortly after the party started, so knowing my camera was in the car, I offered my services. These two shots are of Anna performing a flip over a bar.
330/365 - November 30, 2012 - Friday Night Wine
After a long week of work after the holiday weekend, Lisa and I enjoyed some wine after the kids were snug in their beds. It might look sophisticated in the glasses, but trust me, it's not. It's straight out of the box...
329/365 - November 29, 2012 - Ozone Falls
This morning I had to make a trip to Rockwood to look at a new project. My meeting wrapped up around 11:00. Instead of heading back to the office, I decided to take my lunch break a little early and take a detour on US 70 up onto the plateau. After passing through Westel, I remembered Ozone Falls was up ahead and decided to make a quick stop to capture some photos since I had never done so before. Unfortunately, my tripod wasn't in my car, so I had to use a rock to help stabilize the camera for the 0.5 to 1.0 second exposures I was using to blur the waterfall. The photo doesn't give a good sense of scale, but the plunge is just over 100 feet.
328/365 - November 28, 2012 - Safety Caps
This afternoon, I made a routine site visit to the Anderson County Jail Expansion project, which I am the structural engineer of record. This is a shot of the exterior wall reinforcing projecting just above the floor slab with the OSHA safety caps placed on top. These caps are used to help prevent someone from being impaled by the exposed rebar if they were to accidentally fall on one.
327/365 - November 27, 2012 - Faucet
Tonight I had the fun task of cleaning up the kitchen. After wrapping up, I got some weird inspiration from the sink faucet. My first thought was to merely create a blurred water effect, however, it didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. My second attempt involved the off camera flash, firing it into the sink, allowing some bounce and back lighting the water.
326/365 - November 26, 2012 - Night Drive
On an errand to pickup some milk from Weigel's, I grabbed the camera to capture some long exposures of the road and surroundings from behind the wheel. This is an 8 second exposure with the camera resting on the dash. It just started sprinking, hence the water droplets seen on the windshield.
325/365 - November 25, 2012 - Glow Sticks
Tonight's inspiration was derived from some glow sticks the kids brought home from our church home group Friends-giving dinner. Prior to putting the kids to bed, I placed the glow sticks on the floor, aimed with a 1.5 second exposure, and zoomed from 24 mm to 105 mm with the shutter open to capture the effect seen. I was going for something abstract, and was happy with the results.
324/365 - November 24, 2012 - Final Tailgate
To be consistent with other Saturdays this fall, my shot today revolves around Tennessee football. Today was the end of UT's disappointing season. However, the season has generated fun memories regardless of the results. We started the season in Atlanta with friends and ended up the season taking our kids to the last two games. But the best part is having my wife Lisa alongside to watch the games with. This shot is of us tailgating prior to the game.
323/365 - November 23, 2012 - Black Friday
Tonight I did something that I probably have not done since being a kid, which was to go shopping on Black Friday. After lounging around the house for most of the day, Lisa and I rounded up the kids and headed for West Town Mall around 5:00 to do some shopping. This shot of the kids was taken after several hours of shopping. They were enjoying some popcorn for a snack while hanging out with their daddy in one of the sitting areas.
322/365 - November 22, 2012 - Happy Thanksgiving
Today was Thanksgiving. We hosted Lisa's side of the family at our house this year. It was a busy week in preparation, but well worth it, as the feast was amazing. This is a compilation of shots taken throughout the day overlain on a photo of my plate prior to being devoured.
321/365 - November 21, 2012 - Peeling Taters
Tonight on the eve of Thanksgiving, I lent Lisa a hand in the kitchen serving as her prep chef. One of my tasks was to peel the russet and sweet potatoes for the respective dishes. With no other inspiration in sight for the evening, I really stretched to make a shot of the potato peelings my shot for the day.
320/365 - November 20, 2012 - Bearden Sunrise
This morning on the way to work, I couldn't help but be wowed by the deep pink and blue colors being produced by the sunrise. Prior to pulling up the driveway to the office, I stopped in a parking lot across from our office to capture a shot or two. After about 6 clicks of the shutter, my battery died. In the process of realizing this, the colors vanished.
319/365 - November 19, 2012 - Chairs
Tonight when I arrived at home, I found a couple of boxes of toys and a table and chair set from Anna's room on the front porch. She was cantankerous enough today to warrant "throwing" away items in her bedroom. This is a shot of her princess chair set before being "thrown" away.