Category Photography

What a wild last year it has been.  From planning a destination wedding, to getting married, to the honeymoon, and the reception, then Vegas.  It was an extremely busy year, and possibly the best one I’ve ever had.  I can’t believe the photo project is over already, but here we are.

My original goal of this photo project was to basically force myself to get out, shoot pictures, and learn more about my camera.  I feel like I was pretty successful in that regard.  I definitely learned a lot, but I also have so much more to learn.  I had a great time taking all the pictures, and while I love most of them, there are certainly those I wish I could re-do.  However, just because my project is “done” doesn’t mean I’m going to stop shooting.  I still plan on taking a lot of pictures, and hopefully posting some to this blog.  Looking forward to 2012, I also hope to write some more computer-related articles again.  I hardly wrote any last year because I was pretty busy with the weekly photo project and everything else that was going on, so hopefully I can get some of those thrown back in the mix as well.

Keep an eye out towards the end of the month, some friends and I are goin on a Bald Eagle trip, so I’ll hopefully have some cool shots from that I will post.

What will 2012 hold?

Here are all of my Photo Project 52 photos, in one gallery.  Hope you enjoy them!

Here we are, the final week of my year long photo project.  I decided to get out to a place that sort of kicked off this whole project, a year ago, almost to the day.  When I was still considering whether I was going to do the photo project or not, I went out to find an old drive-in theater.  I wasn’t sure where it was, and in my adventures that day I never found it.  Earlier this year I happened to drive by it and stored in the ole noggin where it was located.

On the West edge of Carlinville Illinois there sits an old dilapidated drive-in theater.  This is the Diane Drive-In (some sites referred to it as the Diana Drive-In, but most of them call it the Diane Drive-In so that is what I’m going with).

It opened in 1952, and could hold 300 cars at the time.  It was known for its bright neon lights and large ornate screen.  The theater enjoyed a fairly long success.  In 1978 the original screen caught fire, and was replaced with a smaller less elaborate screen.  The Diane Drive-In shut its gates in 1981, as did many drive-in’s around this time.

Much of it sits intact to this day.  Most of the screen is still standing, as well as the ticket booth and the concession building.  I could have actually entered the concession building, but I was by myself and didn’t quite feel comfortable doing that.

This shot is taken from inside the ticket booth, looking out toward the screen the where cars would have once parked.  You can even see some of the old neon tubes hanging down from the roof of the ticket booth.  It must have been a pretty neat looking place back in its prime.

Bonus:  While I wouldn’t normally post the rest of the photos I took during an outing, I’m going to make an exception for this place.  There seem to be a lot of people interested in old Drive-In’s out there, and I’d hate to deprive them of seeing the rest of the photos of this place.  You can see the rest of them over here at my Picasa web album.

“Decay”

Hope everyone has had a great weekend.  A fairly simple shot, but something that captures the holiday weekend.  I was set at ISO 100 (remembered!), F3.5 and a 1/10th shutter.  I handheld the camera, but was basically resting on the table, so it was easy to get a clear shot.  One more week left!?

“Stella”

Only a couple photos left to go for  my year-long project!  I’m both a bit sad and a bit excited to be wrapping it all up.  With Christmas right around the corner, I figured it was about time for a holiday-inspired shot, so I set the camera up by our tree.  This is an HDR merged shot from three different photos again as I have done in the past.  I really like the way it brightens up the background, but the ornament is still nice and bright as well with out being blown out.  This was a frosted glass ornament with a blue light behind it.  Hope you have a great Holiday this year!

“Happy Holidays”

I decided to run out to Lake Sangchris this evening to go for some sunset pictures.  Plus, it seemed fitting that a place where I started off my photo project should also get included in the end of my photo project.  It was pretty cold out, so I didn’t stay out shooting too long, but I still got a decent set of pictures I liked.  This shot was at F/4 with a 1/25th exposure, and hey, I even remembered to set the ISO down to 100.  I only did a little post-processing on this which was basically a mild color saturation, just to make the setting sun’s colors pop a bit more.

“Sunset”

This one was an interesting set up.  It involved a dark empty closet, some paint cans, and my equipment.  It was fun playing around with different lighting angles, zooms, and camera settings.  This shot was taken at F3.5, 1/1000 shutter.  I used my remote trigger so I didn’t have to touch the camera.  The remote trigger also made it easier to blow out the candle as I pressed the button.  I ended up with over 170 shots, but ended up using this one because the smoke is lit the best and looked the coolest here.

“Extinguish”

This is a piece of art my Dad has hanging up in his house.  We were sitting around after Thanksgiving and the way he had it lit up caught my eye.  This piece originally laid flat on the wall, but he ended up offsetting it from the wall with some strategically placed styrofoam blocks, then lit it up with a track light.  It creates a neat shadow effect on it.  I used a f/8 aperture with a 1/25th shutter speed to underexpose the photo a bit.  I liked how it accented the spotlight on the piece and made the shadows look that much more dramatic.

“Shadows”

I couldn’t go my whole photo project with out  a picture of our dog, and with the weeks counting down quick, I decided to make today the day.  This is Bandit, our Morkie (part Maltese, part Yorkie).  He’s a very mild-mannered dog that my wife and I love with all our hearts.  Thanks for being so photogenic bud!

“Bandit”