This aggressive male monkey rushed at me and my friend; we faced him and barked loudly and made ourselves took big. He finally stopped about 15 feet from us.

14/365

The weatherman lied. All the weather forecasts said there was going to be strong chances of rain throughout the day. I had given some thought about doing a shot related to the rain.... It only rained for about 20 minutes mid morning and only LOOKED like it would rain for a portion of the day.

This ended up being a rush job as I do try to get to bed at a reasonable hour, therefore I'm not staying up until midnight trying to get "the" shot for this 365 project. Sometimes, if it's good enough, then it'll have to do. I am at peace with the fact that not every shot it going to be better than the last, but I just can't let myself become complacent and not push myself to get better. Time is a factor, but I have seen some other 365 projects where that didn't hinder the person. I think it's more of a confidence issue for me - I want to try to do something that seems original with my photos. I have ideas, but I don't quite know how to get them out of my head and into the camera. And I don't want to feel like I am copying someone else's shot all the time. I just feel like I'm hitting the proverbial wall.

Anyway, with that out of the way, this is a revisit of a similar shot I did a while back (which was kind of a copy of something I had seen elsewhere a couple of time, hence my little "rant" above). Only this time, I had to use off camera flash in the place of natural sunlight, and I used a lime instead of a lemon. And a different background, which happens to be the same background as my oil and water shot a few days ago. Bounced the flash (with a black card wrapped around it to act sort of like a snoot) off the background from camera left and had a white card in front of the lime to the camera right. Had to clean some things up in Photoshop, but still not 100% happy in some areas (mostly some cloning of some dirt/smudge marks I noticed after the fact). Used a new technique using the Unshrp mask that I learned about today.

And hopefully I will get into a creative groove and have something more interesting and thought provoking tomorrow.

Explored Jan. 11, 2012. First Explore to pop up in 2012 and first one in a while. Highest position #39.

Full 365 set can be seen here.

All rights reserved. Please do not use my photo for any other use without my express permission.

Water Droplets.

I revisited doing water droplets in anticipation for the Macro Monday theme of "Water Play." I changed up some of the angles from a previous attempt I did back in January of 2012. Almost 500 shots later, I did manage to have some "keepers" but it was a pain trying to decided which ones to use as many of the "keepers" looked way too alike.

HMM!

Peaked at #23 in Explore

A long exposure shot of weekend traffic at the corner of Silver Springs Blvd. and Magnolia Avenue, looking toward the sunset.

(Personal or public use of this photograph outside of the Flickr community without my explicit permission is prohibited. Any use within the Flickr community should comply with Flickr's guidelines. Thank you.)

Another shot from my smoke photography attempt.

I'll try to make this the last one for a little while. :-)

taken while my husband was driving along I-75 north

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM.

Lit by Daylight Balanced CFL Desk Lamp from above.

Light Room: Reduced saturation and luminance a bit on blue and aqua sliders, while increasing luminance slightly for the red and orange sliders.

Highest position in Explore: #322.

A rare gem on show at the Festivals of Speed car show at the World Equestrian Center, Ocala FL.

Another shot from my first attempt with smoke photography. Saw a tutorial on how to try and make it multicolored, so thought I would give it a bit of a try.

Canon 430 EXII to camera/smoke right at about 1/16th power with makeshift snoot. Adjusted a bit in Lightroom then added a couple gradient filters in CS5.

36/52 - 52 Weeks of 2014. Smoke Photography.

I haven't played with smoke/incense photography in a while. I had some other ideas for this theme, but I think I will save those for another time when I can plan the specifics a little better. I actually got quite a few images that I liked from the session I did this time around, though I still had to cut a bunch out. I may save a few for editing at a later date.

(I would suggest tilting your head a couple of different ways when viewing.)

For the Group: "Get Pushed". Round 9.

Challenger: gary's images...

Challenge: I had a two options to choose from. I could either choose to do the classic natural "gold hour" or "blue hour" shot. OR I could do a shot that had a vintage feel to it.

How about a choice of two options. I have seen some early twilight shots but no hardcore blue or gold hour shots. Option 1 would be to go for one of those two classic natural light shots for this push - golden hour or blue hour.

The seed for Option 2 came from your love of vintage stuff as portrayed in your photostream (I am thinking the old car and some 50's style signs here) and my own fascination with vintage images. I noted you use lightroom (which I have never used) and have used picnik too. Option 2 would be to develop an image using the technology you have that is inspired by vintage images in some way. I saw 1940s and 1950sesque inspired shots in your photostream. Maybe there is something there for your to explore.

Response: Weather has not been very cooperative for the "gold/blue hour" option. The evenings the past week have been either very cloudy or raining. Mornings are tough as I am usually driving to work during that time. So I decided to try the vintage option. To me, vintage can have a bit of a variety depending on the decade between the 40s and 70s. I had several ideas, but time was not quite on my side for some of those ideas. I went out during my lunch hour today with the hopes of finding an older building that I could apply a 40's or 50's treatment to. Again, weather wasn't cooperating to get good shots. Finally, I happened to walk near City Hall. As soon as I saw it this afternoon, I knew a 70's style treatment could work well on it because of the architecture. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a late 60s or early 70s treatment, but I think it has a enough of a retro feel to it to qualify as vintage.

According to Big Huge Lab's Scout, this reached as high as #291 on Sept. 30, 2011

For "Our Daily Challenge - Group 3."

I suppose this could fit several current challenges:

SLICED - a bit obvious with the slice fruit

MYSTERY - exactly how is it floating in the air? And certainly this is the strangest banana I've ever gotten.

NEGATIVE SPACE

and possibly SATURATED - the background wasn't pure white when I shot this, and I had to boost the other colors a bit. And we've been saturated with rain lately, so not much time for outdoors picture taking lately either - hence a makeshift studio setup.

Hmm... only 3 away from meeting the Extreme Challenge of 7 in a row (I think that would have crammed too much into the shot though).

Part of me had been wanting to do a shot like this for a while -- but I just never got around to it. Frankly, for a while, I had forgotten about wanting to try a shot like this until recently. In some ways this was a bit harder than I expected, though I was able to get a usable shot rather quickly before my battery died.

For my Flickr contacts and fellow group members - I apologize that I haven't been very active as of late and haven't been commenting or contributing very much. I have just been rather busy with life and work at times, while at other times I have been struggling with being motivated to do much of anything. I just feel tapped out with the few photo opportunities that my little town offers, and don't have the time or liberty some days to go elsewhere to explore something new. I also have limited space and time for studio setups if those ideas come to mind. I may try to persue some other ideas in the future, but I first have to learn to organize and balance many of the other things going on lately. I do have an opportunity in a few weeks to do something different, so hopefully that will reignite my motiviation. Until then, please forgive my sporadic nature here on Flickr.

Inspired a bit by this shot.

From the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. Event located on the grounds of Trinity Catholic High School in Ocala, FL. Taken the evening of May 13, 2011. The theme for the year was "A Road Map to a Cure."

Found this leaf literally hanging by a thin spider webbing and spinning in the breeze while on a photo walk along a nature trail on a part of the Cross Florida Greenway I hadn't been to yet.

HSS and Happy New Year.

Added a preset in Lightroom called "Holga - Kodak T-Max" which I don't remember exactly where I downloaded it (I think it was available via Adobe, but I don't know who to give credit to), tweaked a few things in there, then in CS5 added a Levels layer (Multiply 81/65) and a Hue/Sat. layer (colorize, orange/yellowish color, soft light 80/24). I decided not to crop it as I like all that negative space here.

7/52 - 52 Weeks of 2014 - "Love"

I had a few different ideas for this theme, but some of them I don't have the time for; others the props; and still one other idea that would not have been very cost effective, at least at this current time.

I decided to be a little different. I chose to play "She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not." For those not familiar with the concept, you normally will see younger children (mostly grade school aged girls) doing this more so than any other age group (if they even still do this at all these days). They will take a flower with a lot of petals, then one by one pull them out while alternating saying "He (She) loves me. He (She) loves me not." If there are an odd number of petals, the last petal supposedly symbolizes that the person in question "loves me," but an even number of petals suggests that person "loves me not."

Saw this barn a while back and had wanted to take a shot of it for a while. Oddly, it is two blocks north from a major road in our area and two blocks south of a pretty large subdivision. Unless you normally go down this side road to the subdivision, you would never know that this existed in the middle of what is becoming a very urbanized area. Finally got myself up early enough on a weekend to go over there before sunrise. I had hoped to get the shot just after sunrise, but I liked the way it looked just before the official sunrise time here.

My goal was to do a 3 bracket exposure and combine them, but I was having trouble doing that this morning, so I decided to edit this one shot instead. Cropped a little from the original too.

NOTE 2/13/2011: I have since straightened this shot a little bit. No other edit has been made though.

A Sliders Sunday version of an idea for a Macro Monday's theme.

Desat, then inverted main layer, added a color fill layer on screen blend, masked out the spoon. Played a bit with the levels too.

Learned that a similar setup to a water droplet attempt is not as successful when replacing water with sugar.

Taking the old Hershey's Kisses slogan to heart, I unwrapped and took a shot of one of the little chocolates while I had nothing else to do. It was a rainy/overcast day, and I was stuck in the house most of the day.

I've been slacking as of late with any shots. My mom just recently got out of a rehabilitation facility where she was on bed rest because of a bad injury to her back. She's home now, but my schedule is out of whack from having to take care of her when I'm not at work. Fortunately she is a lot more mobile than she was when this injury first happened.

Used my 18-135 mm lens on this at the full zoom. Not entirely happy with the sharpness of this shot, but I think it works. Lighting is coming from the open blinds to my right. Just some overcast cloudiness. Cropped in a bit.

Highest position in Explore: #457

Water Droplets.

I revisited doing water droplets in anticipation for the Macro Monday theme of "Water Play." I changed up some of the angles from a previous attempt I did back in January of 2012. Almost 500 shots later, I did manage to have some "keepers" but it was a pain trying to decided which ones to use as many of the "keepers" looked way too alike.

This one reminded me a bit of this shot I posted from my previous session with water drops in January.

HMM!

Tarp and metal

12/365

A little bit more water related shots. Today was one of those lazy days. The kind of days that I hope to avoid in the future so I don't risk missing a day unneccessarily for this 365 project. I originally planned to do a photowalk on my lunch hour, but change my plans. The moon was amazingly huge near the horizon this morning, but I didn't have much time to stop, much less on a busy road where I had the best view. I had other ideas too, but for one reason or another decided not to go with those (I don't think I would have been happy with those ideas anyway).

So today you get an oil and water shot - not as simple as I thought, but that may have been because I might have had WAAAAY too much oil that it all globbed together. I found this shot to be a bit interesting with some water bubbles clustering together on top of an oil droplet, creating some interesting refraction patterns. One of those "good enough despite rushing it" type of shots in my book, but definitely could have been a bit better if I had taken some more time to plan it.

Duplicated the layer and change the blending mode to overlay to bring out the colors a bit more. Added a levels layer, a brightness/contrast layer, and an exposure layer and adjusted the blends and opacity until I got something I liked. Also cropped a bit to this composition. The background is a 12 inch by 12 inch patterned print that I found at a local craft store and placed underneath the container with the water (a Brita water pitcher).

NOTE: When uploaded to Flickr, it appears that Flickr has desaturated some of the colors slightly. I have played around with some settings, but some changes seem to affect other information in the file I uploaded. Right now, I am just going to go with what Flickr presents. I am too tired to mess around with it some more.

Full 365 set can be seen here.

All rights reserved. Please do not use my photo for any other use without my express permission.

7/365

Seen on a photowalk of the downtown Ocala square during my lunchbreak. Nothing terribly special, but trying to go for a bit of a worn vintage look with the sepia tones. Used my 100 mm at 2.8 here. Used Lightroom's Color Creative - Aged Photo preset as a starting point before adding a bunch of adjustment layers in CS5.

ODC-3: 10 steps - when I took this, it was about 10 decent sized steps from the corner of a busy intersection

Adding to Sliders Sunday as well. HSS.

Recently added to Explore for Jan. 4, 2011 at # 261

Full 365 set can be seen here.

All rights reserved. Please do not use my photo for any other use without my express permission.

This shot it in response to a challenge issued in the group Get Pushed! by khwphoto.

Challenge: I noticed that quite a large portion of your photostream is made up of bright, vibrant colors. I'd like for you to do a moody shot. I am going to leave this wide open...moody could be atmosphere, emotion, or whatever you please. I'm thinking monochromatic, no movement, maybe even some high contrast. I apologize if it's a bit vague, lol. Take it and run with it! :):):)

This is similar to an idea that I've had going around in my head for a while now. It's based on a Rise Against song called "The Good Left Undone." I happened to look around near where I live and found this empty, overgrown lot that was recently cleared out in order to put in a commercial plaza. So far very little has been done since. Anyway, it turned into a nice little location. Using my macro lens set to f/2.8, I used a light stand to act as my stand in for focusing purposes, then placed it on remote timer. The sun was beginning to set and gave the kind of light I was looking for. Converted to black and white, and added some adjustment layers. Added a little bit of Gaussian blur to soften it a bit too. Hope it is moody enough.

All rights reserved. Please do not use my photo for any other use without my express permission.

Camera: Zenza Bronica EC-TL

Lens: 75mm Nikkor f2.8

Film: Lomography 100

Developer: Xtol

Scanner: Epson V600

Photoshop: Curves, Healing Brush (spotting)

Cropping: None

It was a little breezy today with Hurricane Irene off the coast. Fortunately, I live far enough inland where the gustier winds didn't really bother us that much. A benefit of that is that the humidity was way down at lunchtime when I took this, so it felt less hot than usual.

I saw this while walking about a block away from my office building, in the vacant lot of a semi-recently demolished building.

Cropped in and colors adjusted in Lightroom.

Looks sweet in Lightbox.

Macro Monday's theme of "sweet."

Saw similar shots to this around in other groups, so I thought I would give it a try for Macro Monday. I used a similar setup in my kitchen as I did one time for water drop shots, but found out that I may need to do something different setup wise if I ever decide to try this again.

Hard to get the whole train in a single shot near here, so I thought I'd try a video at the Ocala yard. Northbound Orlando to JAX on January 17 2016 at 0936.

A collage of some recent water droplet shots.

1. "Orange Crush"

2. "Iridescent"

3. "Hovering II"

4. Green Untitled

5. "Purple"

A horse grazes close to sunset on a horse farm near Ocala, FL.

Cropped to a panoramic view and a few adjustment layers in Photoshop.

A real horse for once.

For the group Get Pushed. Round 27.

My challenge partner in this round was R. Pahre.

The challenge was as follows: Anyway for the push: paint with light.

The classic way is a night shot with a friend waving flashlights around in a long exposure but I'm sure you can generate a bunch of ideas.

I must admit, I put this off for a little too long trying to think of different ideas. I had a few other ideas, but some windy and rather cold (for this time of year in Florida, anyway) weather dictated an indoor "studio" shot. Once I had an idea, I had to wait a couple of days because of the way my schedule was working out at night. This is one of the better results that I had.

I actually combined two different methods of light painting in this shot. First, I used the flashlight app on my phone, with an orange gel, and "painted" some light on the bottle to illuminate that. Then I took a small flashlight (although I think it was still a bit too big to produce the effect I really wanted) and taped two blue gels to the front of that. Some adjustments in RAW (started with a Tungsten WB and gradually worked it a bit warmer, bumped up contrast a little, toned down some highlights, all that good stuff), a few adjustment layers in CS6, and a slight crop. I must admit that doing this kind of light painting as a studio setup is a bit harder than I thought it would be (just getting the light trails to look decent), but it was nice to do something a little different.

(Also going to add this to ODC group 3, topic: Cold. It was a cold beer when I started, and cold-ish weather kept me inside, and I wanted the blue to help accentuate that "cold" feeling).

By the way, hoping everyone in the way of Hurricane Sandy and it's subsequent "superstorm" remnants are doing well and hopefully everything can get cleared up and back to normal in a timely manner

For the Group: "Get Pushed". Round 4.

Challenger: reintjedevos

Challenge: Looked trough your stream and is very diverse! I love that. I've seen LE, Macro's, Landscape, People, Over the top colors.. ;-).. Something I have n't seen is a geometric building shot.Do you have some modern buildings close by? ... Use your creativity to full fill the challenge. It could be inside or outside...

Response: Well, this is my third entry for the group "Get Pushed." My challenger this week was reintjedevos, who has a very nice photostream, especially if you like nature photography.

This was an interesting challenge; there aren't too many interesting buildings in my town. There is the old Marion Theater that I've done several times, but there are only so many angles from which to take shots of it without a wider lens. Not to mention I would have a hard time fitting the geometric requirement of the challenge. And many other buildings are rather "cookie cutter" looking. Also, I don't have the opportunity to drive to the nearest "big" city (Orlando) anytime soon.

However, there is this building, the Marion County Judicial Center (aka the Courthouse) which opened within the past 2 years or so as a huge addition to our previous courthouse which I thought might fit the challenge. I felt that if I could get the right perspective, then I could emphasize its strong angular properties. In fact, I was inspired by a photograph that they have when you pass the security checkpoint on this side - an ultra wide angle of this very corner with some of the construction workers in the foreground. However, I don't have that wide of a lens, so i had to improvise a bit.

Again, it would seem that timing seemed to work in my favor. Even though I work about 2 blocks away from here, I rarely am in the area this late in the evening. I tried the other day to get some shots in mid-afternoon when I would usually be taking my shots when weather cooperates, but wasn't thrilled with any of those shots. I just happened to have other things to do nearby about this time of evening and wanted to see what it might look like with a sunset effect. Plus the rain hadn't made it into the area, although it was getting dark and I could see flashes of lightning in the distance. So this is one of the results from my second attempt going over there. I tried many other angles and exposure times/aperture values, but this I think was my favorite/best out of all of the shots I took.

Some more work with CS6 Beta - mostly some adjustments in RAW 7, then the oil painting filter applied twice, levels and color balance layers.

Our Daily Challenge - Group 3: Shadows.

All rights reserved. Please do not use this picture anywhere else without my express permission.

11/365

Decided to go through and get some inspiration from some of my favorite shots from Flickr today. I guess in keeping with my recent water theme, I decided to see if I could recreate, to some extent, a shot I saw a while back by Flickr member Onigun (if you haven't seen his photostream, then you'll be in for a treat with the variety that he has). For the longest time I was trying to figure out how to do it, and then today for some reason it clicked (pun sort of intended -- sorry couldn't help it). It's not quite a perfect replica, but it is inspired by what he did. All I will say it I tried a variety of things with the setup and a couple hundred tries later, I had quite a few that I liked, but I had to whittle the field down a bit.

Focusing was rather difficult at times, but I seem to have managed. I quite like this one. I had to rotate and flip it though to look the way I wanted. Added a some adjustment layers as well in CS5.

Full 365 set can be seen here.

All rights reserved. Please do not use my photo for any other use without my express permission.

Watching the 61st Annual Bull Sale at the Southeastern Livestock Pavilion in Ocala Florida. Some outstanding stock entering the ring.

For the "Our Daily Challenge -Group 3" Theme of "Noir."

Added a downloaded preset called "Holga Base" then added the downloaded LRPAD Spring preset. Adjusted the tint to give a bit more of a washed out blue effect, then adjusted some of the other curves to give it a bit of a darker, noir like feel. Added a slight color fill in CS5 too to get it a bit more to my liking.

Loved the way the sun cast this shadow between some buildings. I felt that it just lent itself to a mysterious feel, especially with that brick leading into the alleyway.

Explored for Jan. 6, 2012. Highest position 315

All rights reserved. Please do not use my photo for any other use without my express permission.

"Passing Through" is a statue by local Ocala artist Celeste Stadler done for the 10th anniversary of "Horse Fever," a public arts display to raise money for the Marion Cultural Alliance. This anniversary saw 27 new horse statues created and painted by local artists, each sponsored by local businesses, to be displayed for several months before being auctioned off at a later date.

Info about Horse Fever can be found here.

This specific shot is an attempt at trying to intentionally use lens flare in an artistic manner.

For the group: Get Pushed.

Challenger: mayte_pons

Challenge: As I was browsing through your stream and thinking about your own challenge to me, I thought it would be a great idea if you did just the opposite. My push to you is to take a photo with natural light BUT, since that's no challenge to most of us, I would like you to give me some nice flare.

mortalmusesmoremusing.blogspot.com/2011/04/muse-university-flare.html

Response: Well, I think this is a start at trying to use flare for artistic purposes. The sun is at the top of the frame creating some flaring in the trees, and there is some more noticeable flare right by the head of the statue. I decided to use this is entry #1 for the group Get Pushed for Round 13. Maria looked through my stream and felt that I didn't have any shots that used flare for good. I have to admit that I am stuck in the mindset sometimes that flare is usually bad, so I try to shoot my subjects in a way to try and avoid the flare. I must admit that trying to purposely compose a shot where flare was a part of the shot was a bit harder than I imagined, but the time of day didn't exactly help much either. The blog showed different variations in the amount of flare, so I hope this shot will be acceptable as meeting the challenge to some extent. I plan to try it again on a different subject at a different time of day. I have to admit, it is a different way of looking at things, which I really need right about now.

I decided to use one of the Horse Fever statues as I thought it could be a compelling shot if done correctly. I also decided to give my 50 mm lens some love for this as I don't use it very often, but thought if I had it close to wide open for some shots, then I might get some interesting results. I decided to put a Lightroom preset on this as the original just didn't "feel" right without the preset (and to keep the processing simple too), and some of my other shots had flare that I thought overpowered the scene. This was also a horse I hadn't seen yet, and it's in a location that I wouldn't be able to get to most other days.

Processed in Lightroom: Auto Tone, then Aged Photo preset. Added slight "Brightness/Contrast" layer in CS5.

Highest position so far in Explore: #255

E-One HQ

Ocala, FL