Abbie's Real Life Blog

I am so far behind. I know, you probably thought that I quit my 365 Project, but I didn’t! I’ve been dutifully snapping away every single day, but I haven’t put aside time to actually work on any of these images and upload them.

I’m still not caught up, but I’m ready to do a mid-catch-up post.

157/365: This is one of my patented late-night shots of stuff around the house.  I’m trying not to do so many of these now that it’s beautiful outside and it’s light until late.  This is a magnetic toy that sits on my desk.

158/365: Buds on tree branches on St. Patrick’s Day.

159/365: Crocus blooming in my front yard.

160/365: A giant pit of dirt near where I work.  They tore down three houses.  It’s been so long since I took this picture that there is now a foundation and walls going up in this spot.

161/365: What was possibly the last snow of winter 2009/10.  We got a couple of inches and I took a drive south to McBaine to look for a picture.  This is a center pivot irrigation system on the bottomland near the Missouri River.

162/365: I’d been meaning to take a picture of my bedroom lamps because I’ve well documented the rest of my lamps, but my bedroom is rarely clean enough for photos.  But this one resulted from spring cleaning.  Martha in the corner was posing very nicely.  The wide angle lens makes the room look a little distorted when really the bed is in the center of the wall.  That’s just how it goes.

163/365: Vintage salt & pepper shakers, a birthday present for a friend.  I took a picture because they’re so cute.

164/365: Mini daffodils bloom in my backyard right after the crocus but before the rest of the daffodils start blooming.  This ant was very gracious and allowed me a few shots with my macro lens.

165/365: Electrical outlet- a late night shot.  I wish I’d framed up the light so that the shadows were a little more perfect.

166/365: I think this is the male of a pair of geese that often have a nest down by the lake in my subdivision.  I took this from the car with my long lens.  He was pretty wary of me and I got this stink-eye most of the time that I was hanging around there.  The female was pretty busy eating everything in sight.

167/365: Fuzzy buds cracking open on my star magnolia bush.  I really love this bush.  The buds are so cool all winter and then the flowers pop open overnight.  Then they’re gone in less than a week, and it’s just a boring shrub for the rest of the year.

168/365: A road trip to Des Moines, Iowa!  My cousins took me to this book sale at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.  It was enormous.  This photo doesn’t cover even 1/8 of the size of it.

169/365: On the way home from Des Moines, I took a route through Lineville, Iowa, and got this picture on the Iowa/Missouri border.  It was a beautiful day.

170/365: More new little blossoms in the yard.  You can see that the flowers are about the size of the grains in the concrete sidewalk.  Very cute.

171/365:  And the star magnolia bloomed!  I love this shot.  I like backlighting and I like the way the sun washes out the color in certain shots.  I love the fuzzy buds at the base of the flower.  Star magnolias, yay!

172/365: In my backyard.  The goal of this was to try to get some pictures of the stars, but I’m not sure it worked.  It certainly highlights the flowerbed mess (which I have since cleaned up).  I think it might be better on black.

173/365: A day late for my self-portrait day (it’s supposed to be the last day of the month, but that hasn’t worked out so well).  I took several dozen pictures and then only a few of them were actually in focus when I looked at them later (when it was too dark and I was too pajama-clad to be retaking anything).  I was pretty irritated with myself, and then went a little apeshit cleaning up my complexion in retaliation.  (Wait, retaliation against who?  What?)  So, yeah.  I have a very weird relationship to self-portrait-taking and -processing and -uploading.

174/365: This is actually a gas station near my house.  It was late and a rainy night, and I ended up driving around, loving the way the lights reflected off the wet pavement in the rain.  I started taking long-exposure shots with my 80-200mm f/2.8 lens set on manual focus so that I could get some dreamy rainy pictures.  This one has an abstract Rorschach look.  (I went to wikipedia to see if I could find a name for the overhang with the lights at filling stations.  It might be forecourt?  But look at the wikipedia entry for gas stations!  Interesting!)

More 365 Project photos to come as I work to catch up.  The last photo was taken on April 2, so I am just about two weeks behind.  But I’ll make it happen!  Last weekend was the halfway point on my 365 Project and I am confident that I will stick it out.

In the meantime, it is nearly wedding season!  I hope to shoot a few this spring, and I look forward to posting links.  I am also only a few weeks from leaving for a big photo-centric vacation, and it is my goal to get a lot of those photos done this summer and next fall.