Project 365: Week 2

This post is part of my Project 365 where I am taking one photo every day for a year. Click here to see all of my photos in the series– and if you want to join, feel free to do so anytime! 🙂

5/365:

1-6-12 The owl lamp in this photo was actually taken by my cell phone and printed on a Polaroid Zink printer that I talked about in another post. I love this little printer for many reasons, but 1.) The photos are stickers! I love giving them away! and 2.) They are really fun to manipulate. Polaroid also just came out with a new camera that uses the Zink paper. (!!!)

6/365: ISO: 400 f/1.8 Shutter Speed: 1/250

1-7-12 This photo is of my lace-up boots that I bought for $9! They are one of my favorite finds from theantique/thrift stores– and that’s saying something. 😉 I also submitted them to Modcloth’s “Fave Find” blog feature a while back and they made it on!

7/365: ISO: 800 f/1.8 Shutter Speed: 1/60

1-8-12 Two of these dolls I’ve had for ages– they used to sit on my dresser when I was a girl growing up. One time when I was a kid, I accidentally broke the little white baby’s porcelain head. I freaked out and tried to hide it from my mom for years. I remember painstakingly superglueing her head back together and panicking because there was one little porcelain shard missing. (She never got mad.) Last spring, I saw the blue baby in my favorite thrift store in Greencastle, IN… it was $2! So now I have two little babies to sit on the lap of my great-grandma’s gold-headed doll. (Some dolls are creepy McCreepytown, but I love the old, old porcelain dolls like the ones I’ve got. :))

8/365: ISO: 800 f/1.8 Shutter Speed: 1/60

1-9-12 I figured out how to watch Downton Abbey on Netflix with my iPod while I edit photos. 😀

9/365: ISO: 800 f/1.8 Shutter Speed: 1/50

1-10-12 Even though I really like this photo of the moon, the day before this photo was taken when I was driving to work, the moon was ON the horizon. I was kicking myself because that was the one day I didn’t bring my camera to work. So I got the slightly-less-cool-looking moon the next day. 🙂

10/365: ISO: 200 f/1.8 Shutter Speed: 1/40

1-11-12 In this photo I was playing with out-of-focus photos because I think it looks a bit like a painting. I was also messing around with bokeh effects, but I was more successful in the next photo.

11/365: ISO: 400 f/1.8 Shutter Speed: 1/40

1-12-12 For this photo I finally got some obvious bokeh effects on the light. This photo is of a table full of candles. I want to try something with headlights or streetlights next. To do bokeh effects, you need an SLR camera, (A camera with a lens where you can adjust the focus.)

Here’s how to do the bokeh effect for yourself:

You need to cut out any shape in a piece of dark paper that fits to your lens. Do NOT tape the paper directly to your lens– I taped mine on the outside, but I’ve also seen people tape it to their UV filter.

Tips:
-You need to open the aperture of your camera as wide as it will go, (to the lowest number you have. A lot of kit lenses, (lenses that come with the camera) will only go down to 3.5 aperture. I am not sure if this will work, but you can try! 🙂 My lens goes down to f/1.8. I highly recommend my lens. 🙂

-To get the lights to turn into whatever shape you want, you need to make sure the lights are in the background and the camera is focused on the foreground. I just reached out my hand and focused on my hand, turned the autofocus off, and snapped what normally would be called a really blurry photo.

-I’ve also seen really cool bokeh photos with Christmas lights.

Try it out! 😉

For more photography tips, see this post on digital photography tips for beginners. You can also check out the rest of my photos from the year for my Project 365!

If you want, you can always join the project!

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