Here’s one more version of the pink tulips I’ve been posting for the last couple days. This is the side view of the same two flowers pictured two days ago.

The post 05-23-13 Stately appeared first on A Photo A Day.

I went out in the cold rain the other day and took about 50 photos, mostly of crabapple tree blooms ready to burst. But in my back yard I was struck by the wet aspen leaves stuck together and backlit by the sky. This is one of the last photos I took but it’s the one I ended up liking most.

I offer both a color version and a black and white version. Take your pick between the “reality” of green tree leaves or the texture, lines and light that make up the “bones” of the photo.

Canon 5DIII 1/60s f/7.1 ISO200 168mm

The post 05-22-13 May Showers appeared first on A Photo A Day.

I took several photos of my wife’s pink tulips. One was posted yesterday, as you may have noticed. And today I post another version. This one adopts an unusual point of view and but I remove the color. There is something a bit perverse about taking color away from a scene but black and white photographs require/allow us to see things that may be lost in the color versions. Anyway, this one has a bit of a eerie feel to it, if you ask me. But for now, I kind of like it.

The post 05-21-13 Variations On A Theme appeared first on A Photo A Day.

I am hung up on flowers, obviously. And I am also once again compelled to comment on the power of the photographer’s point of view. The conventional view of flower is from the side and from a short distance. The tulip becomes something quite different when you view it from the top at close range.

This is one of my wife’s beautiful flowers, incidentally. I’ll admit that I did wander into the neighbor’s yard again today. But the pink tulips called me back home. . . .

The post 05-20-13 Bird’s Eye View appeared first on A Photo A Day.

Well, here they are: my neighbor’s purples tulips Water droplets from morning dew or from a spray bottle? I’ll never tell.

Canon 5DIII 1/80s f/7.1 ISO400 100mm

The post 05-19-13 My Neighbor’s Tulips II appeared first on A Photo A Day.

My wife has nice flowers but does our neighbor and the other day I couldn’t help but be drawn to her collection of yellow tulips, which had just bloomed. The light was poor but I enhanced the scene with on-camera flash. I rarely use flash but I have taught my students that it’s ok to use flash as long as it doesn’t overpower the scene. In the case of this photo, I think it works.

I call this post “Our Neighbor’s Tulips I” because she also has some amazing deep purple tulips and I am waiting patiently for them to bloom. And though I’ve featured them before, those who follow this blog know that I like 2nd chances on most photos I take.

The post 05-17-13 Our Neighbor’s Tulips I appeared first on A Photo A Day.

I call this post “Finally!” because after what seems like and endless winter and cold spring, it finally feels like summer. And my wife’s daffodils are celebrating the occasion by blooming.

This photo, incidentally, started out as a completely different concept. In the failing light of a beautiful day, I noticed the heads of these daffodils bobbing in the gusty wind. And I thought this would be a perfect time to try dragging the shutter, a process that uses camera flash and a fairly slow shutter speed. I took 5 or six using this technique but didn’t really like any of them.

So instead, I put the camera as close to the ground as I could and tried to focus on on a single daffodil. After I took the photo, I noticed the camera was seeing a very interesting deep, blue bokeh in the out-of-focus boughs of the a pine tree behind the garden. And so I ended up with this photo. I will probably try the dragging the flash thing another time.

The post 05-14-13 Finally! appeared first on A Photo A Day.

With one exception, these 13 people receiving their diplomas from Lake Area Technical Institute president Deb Shephard, are graduates of the BSA Photo/Media program at LATI. It is the second group of graduates from the program I started two years ago and the last group at Lake Area that I will call “mine.”

I can live with that. I think the program has made excellent progress in the last two years and it is being left in good hands.

The post 05-13-13 The Graduates appeared first on A Photo A Day.

Leave it to one of my photography students to apply a little artistic flair to what is otherwise a pretty monotonous sea of black. Actually, several of the Lake Area Technical Institute Photo/Media students added bling to their hats, though Elsa’s ended up being the most well posed cap of all I photographed.

Canon 5DIII 1/250s f/2.8 ISO2500 200mm

Do you want to see the entire 2 hour and 15 minutes ceremony in 60 seconds? Hold on to you hat and watch:

The post 05-11-13 Standing Out appeared first on A Photo A Day.

Yes, I’m stuck on streams. And, once again, I didn’t go looking for this photo, which was buried in my 2008 collection. What fascinates me about this shot is that it is of the same place in the stream as the photo you see below. The camera position is different, but if you compare the two, you’ll see the same old rocks. And they haven’t changed.

This photo was “adjusted” with Nik Color Efex 4 and OnOne Perfect Effects 4. (I’m in a filtering phase and I need to get over it because years from now these filters won’t seem so cool to me.)

By the way, I still have 5 spots left for the July “Black Hills Photo Adventure.” You should join me and I’ll teach you everything I know (or can teach in two days) about photography similar to the kind you see here. And we will visit all of my secret spots along Iron Creek.

Canon 5D I 5s f/22.0 ISO100 40mm

The post 05-10-13 Flow appeared first on A Photo A Day.

On the last day of my 34 years of teaching at WHS, I snapped a photo of my 1st block world history class. It was posted to this blog on May 25, 2011. And today I post the last 2nd year class I will teach at LATI. That’s why I’m calling this post “This Is It, Too.”

Of course today’s photo isn’t an exact replica of the first shot. We aren’t in a classroom and in hind sight my students should have been holding their cameras. My students from two years ago are holding their laptops up because the “Learning With Laptops” program at WHS caused one of the biggest (and best) changes in the way I taught.

Anyway, it’s been a great experience teaching all the things I’ve taught, ranging from American Literature to AP European History to Advanced Digital Photography. I don’t have anything too profound to say here, though I will copy and paste what I said to my facebook friends yesterday. These words accompanied the photo I posted to this blog yesterday:

Wednesday is traditionally known as “hump day” – the day we see as the downhill slide to yet another weekend. But for me, today is my last hump day.

Yes, I am retiring after spending 36 1/2 years of my life as a classroom teacher.

My photo of cows grazing serenely in a glorious sunrise is an appropriate metaphor of how I see my retirement: I think I may relax a little more but every day ahead of me offers another set of amazing opportunities. Surrounded by all of the good people I know and love, how can this not be true?

To all of my former students, who are also my friends here on fb, I offer my gratitude. You will never know how profoundly you have helped shape the person I have become.

I use the word “become” because I truly believe that life is not so much about the person we are as it is about the person we are constantly becoming. . .

I realize that a humans are like the stream that the Greek atomist philosopher Heraclitus talked about: we are in a constant state of change. And, as Martha Stewart, says, “That’s a good thing. . . . ”

(Picture from left to right, back row first: Teresa B, Elsa M Lindsey J, Dana R, Shelby B; Tiffany P, Katie S, Kelsie E, Alli A, Valerie F; No pictured: Jennifer D, Dakotah D, Megan P., Ashely H)

The post 05-09-13 This Is It, Too appeared first on A Photo A Day.

It is a fact known to my family, friends and associates. But I haven’t in any formal or public way made the announcement: after 36 1/2 years of being a classroom teacher, I am retiring. I am down to my last three days with “my” students in “my” classroom.

When I was younger, I used to think that retirement meant being “put out to pasture.” Thus, I offer today’s photo. But having watched friends and colleagues who have retired, it seems that life sometimes gets busier after retirement.

So the question I get is: “What am I going to do now?” The answer: “More photography, of course.”

The post 05-07-13 Out To Pasture appeared first on A Photo A Day.

Of course, this view of the distant Los Angeles skyline, taken from the Hollywood Bowl overlook just off of Mulholland Drive, isn’t alien to the denizens of LA. But to a flatlander in a relatively rural state (with little or no air pollution) this landscape is certainly foreign.

That’s not to say that it isn’t enticing and interesting to me. In fact, once I played with an HDR setting in my OnOne software, there was amazing detail and texture in this scene. I see things here that I never see in my home state of South Dakota.

By the way, in researching this post, I discovered that California is our most populous state and it is the third largest. South Dakota is 46th in population (out of 50) and we are the 17th largest in square miles. California has twice South Dakota’s area but it has 35 times more people.

The post 05-06-13 Alien Landscape appeared first on A Photo A Day.

This is the fifth in a series of HDR Black Hills photos taken in April, 2013. This was actually the first place I stopped the first time I went out hunting. This is not the first time I’ve taken a photo with weathered grass dominating the foreground, a distant horizon and an intriguing sky. (Lonesome Lake) But when you’ve found something you like, why not wear it out? (I will say that in the year since I did the Lonesome Lake HDR photo, I’ve gotten better – or at least I’ve found a formula I like better. In fact, I can think of a lot of things I can do better now than when I was younger. Except sit-ups.)

(PS: If you look closely, you’ll see Mt. Rushmore in this photo.)

Canon 5DIII 1/20s f/18.0 ISO100 16mm

There are still 6 spots left in the July “Black Hills Photo Adventure.” How about joining me?

The post 05-02-13 Early appeared first on A Photo A Day.

If you were lured to this post because you thought you were going to see a beautiful church, I apologize. But there is something dome-like in these trees that arch over the snow-covered ground and that’s what inspired today’s title

To be honest, I posted this photo mainly so I could post a link to a short video I made a little bit after I took the picture. So you should watch it.

Where am I? The photo was taken in the “front yard” of our family cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The snow was still falling when I took this and altogether we got between 10 and 12 inches. And it was beautiful. . . The video was filmed with a GoPro Hero 3 stuck to the front of a 4 wheeler. Why is the video black and white? The white balance kept shifting on me. (I’m still learning how to use a GoPro.)

If you go to the YouTube site, you’ll be able to watch this is glorious 1080p HD. Look for the gear icon on the bottom right. . .

The post 05-01-13 Cathedral appeared first on A Photo A Day.