70: Challenge Entry warning!! (Merlin)

So this is my square crop entry. I'm posting 20 minutes before turnover. Sue me :-P

Edit: Whoops! MattO was kind enough to point out that I am a day early with rollover. Sorry about that. This is what chemistry does to your brain folks!

I really liked this picture. I know his left side was not lit, but this was taken as a sort of snapshot picture. I'm posting the original pretty much converted straight out of the RAW photo. I now realize I could have maybe selected out the eye and tried to lighten it up. Next time. I also did a run through neat image, but I toned it way down because I kept losing the detail of the hair. e301 left a great comment on my picture, and I thank him for that. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE RAW?

That being said, can I tell you how sick I am of entropy and acid base titrations?
I did take pictures today, but they were for the speed challenge. I will post when it's over

69: Solitary

Ok, so, not as interesting composition wise for me, but no person in the picture this time. And this was taken facing the other way.

I'm thinking I'm going to be to stuffed full of equilibrium constants and entropy that I'll need a break and go out and shoot some stuff this weekend

It is spring at last. Above zero rain, so no freezing rain, which meant no ice skating on the streets! whoohoo! Amazing what will excite you when you're sick of winter and ready for some green and pretty flowers. Still a month away from that, but this at least provides a tiny glimmer of hope.

Having said that, we'll probably get one of those huge blizzards in April like we did a few years back. Would make for fun pictures!!

68: Approaching

So this picture was taken at the same time as the self portrait I did a while back. My boyfriend had gone for a walk on the river on the other side, and crossed back over and was coming back towards me. I've submitted this to a geopgraphy photo contest at my university, so I don't think anything will happen with it, but I liked the picture.

Back to acid bases, equilibrium and Le Chatelier's Principle!

67: Cleo

This is my friend's cat, Cleo. She was being a real poser, which is very rare. My friends said she's generally not very photogenic. Her left eye is a little squished, but I thought she looked cute in this

66: Carrots

Carrots. Need I say anything else?

I won't be commenting for a while. Tons of assignments and two midterms will be my priority. Will get back to commenting afterwards.

65: Ready for spring

Don't you hate it when you forget to change your ISO back when you've were shooting low light the alst time? This is 1600 iso ans I'm to lazy to try and clean it up. Sorry.

It's March, which means spring should be in teh air. It's not quite, but at least it's been sunny. I cannot wait for spring. So looking forward to it!

64: Challenge Entry

Ok, last time I did this, I said I'd post it, and I never got around to it. Hopefully this time I'll remember. Or maybe I'll make it my PAD in a week. We shall see. I'm hoping for a nice average 5.5 score on this on. I like the sqaure crop format, should be interesting.

63: Nice Lens!

So, if you ever want to try something interesting, do this. Watch some bad zombie movie. Not a good one like 28 Days or something, but some cliche, low budget one. Take your ipod or MP3 player or whatver, put on random, and use that as your soundtrack. Don't turn on the movie soundtrack. You'll be amazed at how you can still follow exactly what is happening, and the music makes it very funny.

Yes, that's what my friends and I did tonight. And I let me picture be taken. So that friend I mentioned in my profile who I've learnt a lot of photography stuff from? I'm holding his camera and lens. He and his wife are great friends of mine. We get together, drink lots of good wine, and laugh a lot. Like we did tonight!

62: Simplicity

Woohoo!! I don't have a midterm for a week and half! I calculated I hand wrote things for about seven hours today. Wrote a lab report, practice midterm, and a notes for a lecture, as well as the actual midterm.

I wrote my management midterm today: intro to financial accounting. The actual midterm itself wasn't to difficult, but it was sooo long. My prof was great. She told us to budget our time, and even if we weren't done, move on to the next problem. So I did this, and it was a life saver. A problem I could have easily spent the entire time on got its allotted time, and then I moved onto the other problems. Hopefully, this will maximize my points I receive. Crossed fingers.

So, this is one of those, miracle of raw pictures. This had a major blue tint to it, and with a little white balance, got this instead. I kind of like the colours reflected in the water. Makes it look like it was a fiery sunset or somthing.

So, now I"m back to doing nothing for the rest of the night. I'm entering a couple pictures for a photo contest on Monday. Looking forward to seeing the other entrants and what will happen!

61: Standing Out

If these had been people, I think I would have met the standing out challenge from a while back.

There was a workshop tonight that I wentto most of regarding studio use. I get acess to a studio at my school that includes three lights, 1 soft box, two umbrellas, a black or white backdrop, and a light meter. Needless to say, as soon as midterms are done, I cannot wait to hit that studio! I have a friend who will also be shooting with me, and I promise to show the results off. It's a whole different technique, so it's going to be a whole new learning curve, but one I'm looking forward to!

OK, now it's back to revenue recognition, generally accepted accounting principles, and the basic accounting equation. Assets = liabilities + shareholder's equity for those of you wondering what the equation is.

I'm not commenting as much as I'd like, but I will pick it up. I'm finding I like to go in spurts, so if you don't receive one, it doesn't mean I'm not looking!

60: Jing Yuan and Adam

This is Jing Yuanand Adam. Theya re really cool friends and fellow students who I met through the MRSA. The mature and re-entry student association had a little soiree tonight. It was lots of fun, but short since we all have miderms coming up, it was short and sweet

59: Attempting to mask a crappy picture of slippers

OK. Snapshot. Crappy picture. But I did take it today! Doing my presentation on greenhouse effect and global warming tomorrow for biology. First power point presentation. I feel so special now that I can use powerpoint!

58: Ice!

Just in under the line. I will try and shoot new stuff, but I have a presentation and a midterm this week. This is from when we had that amazing freezing rain that coated everything in ice. This is the river that I've taken many a picture from, but from a different place. We figured the river would be a pretty shot, and had a nice surprise with all the ice on the trees

57: Disclaimer: Challenge Outtake!

OK, so my disclaimer is this is an outtake. If you recognize my photo, feel free to pass it by and not vote. The only pictures I took today were for the challenge, so I apologize

The rat is from my dairy entry, and even with the white background, doesn't really show up well. Oh well.

So, I wanted to title this along the lines of, Hey Froggie, Nice Ride!
Or, Duckie! Like my ride?

So, tomorrow I got back to school. I procrastinated more than I wanted to, and didn't get as much work done as I could have, but I did get a good chunk done. Such is life!

56: From the archives

From the archives. When some friends of mine came and visited this past summer. This is Mont Royal Park. It is affectionately called the Mountain, though it's more of a hill.

55: OMG! Snail killed Kenny! You bastard!

Ahh, this seems to be working now

Well, this is a South Park reference, for those of you who may be unfamiliar. I had a hard time with the white, but enough tweaking in PS and RAW Essentials got me here

In regards to yesterdays pictures - I got the effect by sliding teh shadow contrast and highlight contrast all the way to the right in RAW Essentials, and that's basically it.

The link to the triptych plugin is:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1006&thread=16558217&page=1

Ugly link. To lazy to fix it and make it pretty.

The snail is a Hungarian porcelin snail I picked up when I was there a few years back. It is one of the things they are known for, and I love the sheen it has. They also make some with a cool red sheen to it, besides the green. They also do 'normal' porcelin as well, all very beautiful.

Rant On
So Zoto revamped their website. Which is great. But they didn't give much notice about it, and it included doing things like taking away the blogging feature and making it a feature that needs to be paid for. Thay are also changing the galleries feature, so that we don't get unlimited galleries any more. This is fine, but I can't find any info on how many galleries us non-payers get. Very confusing, and a little dissapointing. I suppose I will go get that smugmug account now. We shall see. I'm waiting to see what all the other tweaks are.
Rant Off

54: Liam

Ok, third time is the charm. I hate how I can't fix the size of the picture after you've uploaded when you are using zoto. ERGH. Hopefully, this time it will publish and be the right size

This is my friend's son, Liam. He just turned two on Friday. Happy birthday, Liam! He is a very sweet kid, and was generous enough to share all his toy cars with me!

I was fiddling in RAW Essentials with the shadow and highlight sliders, and ended up with this. I liked the effect, so I decided to keep it.

I love his expression in this picture. His expression seems much older than he really is.

And so everyone can see how sweet he is without a lot of post processing, you get to look at another picture of him, too!

53: Triptych

My first attempt at a triptych.  I used a Photoshop action that I found, and then it was basically drag and drop into the frames. 

This is at one of the entrances to Jarry Park in Montreal.  I suppose it's a welcoming figure of fun, sprintime, and happiness.  I like the little cardinal on its left hand.  The park is where the Rogers Tennis Cup is played every year.  It brings in the big names, Roddick, Agassi, the Williams, etc. etc.  It alternates every year between the men's and women's.  The other place it is held is in Toronto, I think.  It is also where the Expos used to play many years ago.  The park was so nice.  There was a hill with kids sliding down it, and an ice skating rink.  I really need to strap my ice skates on at some point this season before it's to late!  I wanted to take pictures of the kids sliding down the hill, but I chickened out.  I got a sudden paranoia of crazed parents chasing me through the park yelling at me.  So I took pictures of the scultpure instead.

I had my first paid job as a photographer today.  wOOt!!  I had a lot of fun, and I'm happy with the results.  It was a group shot, so I used the 'everybody close your eyes and open them when I count to three.'  Needless to say it seemed to work.  I have very few where someone has their eyes closed.  I used a fill in flash for the faces, which worked well.  My boyfriend has been kind enough to lend me his flash that he used to use with his 35mm Yashica.  Glad I had it because I don't think the on board flash would have been strong enough.  And no, I won't be posting shots from it.  Sorry!

I got about half way through commenting on PADs yesterday, and am hoping to get through the rest today or tomorrow.

You guys rock.  It's amazing seeing everybody's shots, the little pieces of your lives and how people see things through a camera.  Kudos to everyone!

52: Still Standing

Isn't mother nature neat?

51: Deer