Day 365 - And Here the Journey Ends to Begin Again!

I want to take this opportunity to thank you, all my blog readers, for being there, giving me your feedback and cheering me on even though my energy and motivation were in the pits from time to time.  I know that I haven't given my best over the last month or more - I've been battling health issues, and other things, but I really appreciated each visit and each comment you made on my posts.  For all that - THANK YOU!  I hope I have been able to give some of you some insight into my photography along the way and I hope to be able to share many more in the future as I change gears. 

I would also like to thank a few of my friends (and you know who you are) for keeping me on track - some of them coaxed and cajoled me into doing portraits, some of them downloaded my photos and saved them to their computer desktop at work to give me the exposure, some of them visited my blog and commented on my Facebook page, and yet some others religiously visited my Flickr posts and left me encouragement and kind words.  I think I had a whole battalion of friends and well-wishers following my footsteps, making sure I didn't fail.  My hats off to you! 

This is my last post for this project and what a project it has been!  I still can't believe it's over - well, how can I, considering I've been doing this for so long now?   I am certain that I will feel the loss sometime soon, but I definitely feel that the wrap-up was long overdue.  Seriously, it was.  It took me over a year from missing days due to illnesses and other personal issues.  But I think all's well that ends well.

It has been a great journey for me, and as I mentioned in my last post, I will put together some thoughts and write it all up - soon!  As soon as I've had some time to recover and enjoy my  freedom from the all-pervading stress of having to get a shot for the day.

I had been brainstorming with my friend Rajiv (who has modelled for me in the past) and with my son (he comes up with really great ideas and therefore, I sometimes turn to him for inspiration) about what the last post should be to commemorate the event.  My son's idea was to use fireworks (sparklers, in this case) to mark the celebrations.  Rajiv suggested using tealights to write 365 with (I was thinking candles, but thought it might be too clumsy) or to take a picture of something that was indicative of how monumental this task of taking a shot a day was.

I loved all three ideas, but unfortunately, I didn't find a monumental subject I could shoot today, nor did I find tealights at my local superstore.  Fortunately, I found sparklers!  Therefore, sparklers it had to be!  I had planned to do both the sparklers and the tealights but I guess availability of one took over the non-availability of the other!

I want to end this by saying I really loved and hated this project!  Let me leave you all with that thought, so I can come back and explain it better.  I'm a little bit overcome with mixed emotions right now.

Day 364 - On the Eve of ...

Tomorrow's going to be the last shot for my 365 project and if you ask me how I feel about it, I will say "Phew! Relieved!"

However, today isn't going to be the day I want to talk about this - I'll definitely do a retrospective soon.  But besides that, I'll also decide on a new challenge for myself.  I have a few ideas, and I want to throw them out to you and do a quick poll; and I hope you can help.

This is another quick post - probably the last one for this project.  I'm definitely going to take my time over it tomorrow.

Day 363 - Alien Lobster

I was having a little fun with egg shells, my iPod and the macro lens.  Unfortunately, my iPod ran out of battery after about 4 shots and I had to give up playing with it.  But what came out of it pretty much looked like an alien lobster claw to me.

The shot is SOOC.  My computer is giving a helluva lot of trouble, and I couldn't really use Lightroom.  In fact, in Lightroom, all my photos somehow got flipped horizontally, as a result of which Flickr started to update my photostream with the new flipped pictures.  Now there is a royal mess everywhere!  Need to clean it up ASAP! :(  I hate having computer trouble!

Day 362 - Little Darlings

We had a beautiful day with part clouds and part sun.  I seized the opportunity to go check if we have ducklings yet, and sure enough there was a small brood of them scooting around in the water.  They were adorable!  

I took over 500 shots today of flowers, birds and this duck family, but I'm feeling really lazy to process them all.  Therefore, I processed two of my fave shots from the day.

I loved the splash of colours in this, and I got only one chance to photograph these benches - just as I was going to change my position and shoot another one, and elderly couple came over and occupied the benches.  Disappointed! :(

And here are three of the six little fluff-balls!

Day 361 - Studying a Dahlia

Quick post

Day 360 - Ottawa Tulip Festival

I went to see the tulip festival with a few friends, and was greatly disappointed - didn't get to see as many tulips as I've normally seen in the past.  Admittedly, we didn't end up going to the park where I normally go - Dow's Lake, but the festival locations in downtown should definitely have had a lot more.

I think I probably took about a dozen shots of the tulips in all.  The flowers were mostly all dried up and in pretty bad shape.  I had to look hard to find a few nice ones to photograph.  I have only processed one for now, but I'll definitely post a few more on Flickr later.

Day 359 - Photoshop Experiment

Playing around in Photoshop Elements 8 and trying out some textures.