Arboretum

 We were able to take a field trip to the Arboretum last Thursday. Once there we were let loose to wander and take pictures as we roamed around. There were so many things to take pictures of that we really didn't it make to far into the trails. Below are some of my favorites. 

Old Stump

Soft maple sample

Shrooms!

Hey there little guy!

Culvert

This was an accidental shot...but it turned out cool

Flower with birch background

Land of Giants

Our assignment was to shoot a picture and photoshop ourselves in either really big or really small. As you can see I went with a tiny me. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of me because the lighting is not the same as the tractor. However my position turned out great. The feet and hand position lined up great with the steps. Putting shadows in to make it look like you belong is really hard so hope you like it!

Light & Shadow

The theme for this photo shoot was Light & Shadow. At first I had no idea what I was going to shoot, but after walking around in our old barn, I found light coming in certain areas and decided to shoot them. They turned out pretty good, I thought anyway. When we all started downloading our pictures I saw a lot of people shooting actual shadows and thought that I had maybe shot the wrong thing. But after editing, I stick with my decision to shoot in the barn. 

Shutter Speed:.00210 Aperture:f/3.5 ISO:80

 This is the silo room. There is a hole in the roof that lets the light in and brightens it up. I turned the picture black and white since the color in the room was....well yucky. 

Shutter Speed: .0045 Aperture: f/7.0 ISO:80

I was skeptical about this shot. But I find myself liking it more and more. Maybe its the way the light comes in and lights the bottom while the top remains dark.  I also like being able to see the field. Note the shadow of the wire on the side (so it fits in with both light and shadow).

Shutter Speed: .0167 Aperture: f/5.4 ISO:163

You are all probably wondering what this has to do with light or shadows right? Well I was thinking of things to shoot and this a light. Simple enough, but the twist is that this light no longer works and so it can only cast darkness and shadows. Something different, cheesy I know but still fun.

Well I don't have much to say about this picture. I love how its dark on the inside and then bright. Also the wire casts a shadow as well as the roof (which you can't actually see). I love the lighting in this picture as well. 

Rural Decay

There is a "pit" as we call it a mile or so from our house that has lots of old junker cars and trucks sitting in it. Usually this place is an eyesore and not somewhere you would want to play or walk around. However it worked perfectly for this photo shoot! I chose to shoot this truck because I liked the color of it and it was the only one with a tree or bush of some sort growing around/in it. 

P.S. I realize that we only needed three but I couldn't pick just three of them. I had so many more that were not of the truck.

For this shot I took the picture through the window of the truck

Alphabet

For this assignment we had to find letters of the alphabet in pictures. At first I was was like "This will pretty easy!" WRONG. It took me forever to find the fist half of my pictures. Turns out I was just looking way to hard. Once I calmed down about not finding anything, they seem to just jump right out at me. My favorite are "o" and probably "g". 

I had to flip and rotate pictures to make them look like letters so some of them may look a little weird. And I ended up having some extra space at the bottom of the collage so I just filled it with some text.

CD Jewel Case

Wow.....that was actually fun. When this project was first assigned I'm not going to lie, I was freaking out. Especially after I pull New Wave music as the style I had to look up and create a case for. But after looking up what that style actually was I calmed down.

For those of you who don't know, New wave is a kind of pop rock from the 1970's to the early 1980's. Popular artists from this genera of music are Blondie, Eurythimics, Tears for Fears, Simple Minds and many many more. Most of you have probably heard the songs "Sweet Dreams are Made of This", "One Way or Another", and "Whip It!" Those are just a couple of the top 100 New Wave songs.

With my research done I went on to find a band name and an album title. I was in Madison at the Midwest horse fair walking around with the hundreds of other horse fanatics, when my mother and trainer (who also came along) said something about painted ponies. The joke is I use to ride POA poines and then moved on to a Paint horse. Hence painted ponies. Boom I had a band name that was just as crazy as the one from the 70's. I went on to name the album Riding the Wave keeping with the horsey theme I now had going on.  The wave part coming from New Wave. 

It took me a while to try and figure out what I was going to shoot for the album pictures. And I felt really stupid when my mom suggested doing exactly as the name said. Paint the ponies. So off I headed for my trainers barn full of her crazy colored ponies. I then cut them out of the picture and pasted them here. I had tons of fun blowing the colors way out of proportion, to much fun I think. I left the background white to keep the ponies the center of the attention. The middle cover is a close up of the eye. 

The ponies look weird on when I Transfered I apologize. It really looks cool in photoshop.

Multi-view Collage

I actually had a really hard time with this project. My artistic abilities and I do not get along at all. So here is my attempt at an abstract photo. I took pictures of my boyfriend's new racing four-wheeler since he just finished putting it together last weekend and decided to use it for this project. I tried to stick to his colors as well; lime green and blue, I didn't want to change the wheeler at all. I had a hard time getting the four-wheeler cut out by itself so there are places that look a little weird. Oh well hope you like it! 

One Subject

I had a really hard time finding one subject to shoot for some reason. I just couldn't seem to fine multiple shots of one thing. It just so happened that my boyfriend was in his shop working on his tractor and I had my camera with me. And so it turned into my one subject. I wish the lighting had been better. It was really dark and so my shots are not as good as they could be. My favorite is of the chain on the wheel and the blade on the corn planter which was attached to his tractor. 

Warmth

In a previous post called "Melting Time" I posted pictures of tapping trees for sap. These pictures are of the sap being cooked and turned into syrup. I chose these for warmth because as you will see in a picture below, in order to turn the sap to syrup the temperature is in the 215 to 220 degree range. Needless to say it if vary warm. Not to mention the smell the sap gives off while turning to syrup, which makes you feel warm inside. :)

The photo above is when the sap is starting to boil and steam. The picture below is only 10 minutes later when the sap was at a full boil and starting to turn to syrup. 

This is the wood eating beast that cooks the sap. Its called an evaporator, and this one happens to be one of the biggest in our area. It has to be seeing as we have close to 3, 500 taps out and another 3,000 or so to go. 

This little device is used to keep track of the temperature, and control the valve which allows syrup to come out. When the top number matches and goes above the bottom number, this gadget lets the valve open and draws syrup off. Compared to others forms of evaporators where they must cook so many gallons at a time, the one we are using is continuously fed. So syrup is continuously drawn off. Yes those numbers are really how hot the sap gets (and that was low because it was the first fire up). 

And finally I had to take a picture of the burning wood we were using to fire the evaporator. I like watching fire and love to see the wood get that look that you see in the photo. This is my typical warmth picture.

Re-edits Number 2

Original

I really disliked the blue tinge to the original photo and with many failed attempts at trying to lessen it, I finally gave up. And so it was converted to black and white.

Edited

In the original photo the last step was crooked and it bothered me. A LOT! So I decided to just get rid of it, along with the silo in the background.

I liked this picture a lot but it was the coloring is kind of blah. So I also converted this one to black and white.

A Day In The Life of Me!

My life these last few days have actually not been normal. I am starting a new schedule with my switching jobs. Anyhow this is how a typical day is going now. I wake up around seven on the weekdays; brush my teeth and drive to school. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after second hour I go home and get ready for job 1, tapping trees and/or collecting and cooking syrup (hence the snowshoes with the deep snow in the woods). If it is Tuesday or Thursday after second hour I drive to Marshfield's UW Wood County. I have an 11 o'clock English class which is followed with lunch at my Grandma Gregg's apartment. Following lunch I proceed back to the college for Geography at 1:30 and then Philosophy 101 at three. In the afternoons (everyday) I go to job number 2; Boon Farms. Here I am responsible for feeding all 100 plus calves - except right now the numbers are in the 80's due to a lull in calving. After work I either go home and  work on my homework, or go to the gym called Living Well just out of Neillsville. I try to work out at least three times a week. That just about sums up my life. Weekends are work all day (farm morning and night and sap during the day) unless its my weekend off then I work out and relax. Sometimes I venture into the world if I ever have a night off to do something crazy. 

Roller Skating

Though this was a fun photo shoot I find that my ability to shoot people is not very good. Even less so is my ability to shoot people in motion. I had a hard time finding pictures worthy of taking, and after awhile I found myself just shooting to shoot. On my first review of the pictures I was worried I had nothing; they all looked blurry. Upon further review and with the help of some editing, I found a couple that weren't so bad. And well here they are, Enjoy.

Alone in Focus

1.2.3

                      

Leaders

Finished

Falling

RACE!

Insinc

Animal Morph

Boy was this a fun assingment! It took me a couple tries to get things lined up just right, but I finally got it. We were suppose to at least put our eyes and mouth on one animal as shown in the first picture. I personally loved how Strips's tonuge was hanging out and decided to post that picture with just my eyes on him. I also decided to try a cow, which was a little harder becuase the eyes are on the side of the head instead of right in front. I think it turned out ok though.

Smile!

NNN! <= stick out toungesound

  

 Hello There

Show and Tell

Bear in a snowstorm

This was taken durning the snow storm about a week ago. I loved how he was fully covered in snow and just had to take a picture. I also liked how his body was positioned with the tail and head going the same direction. That and I love my dogs so I decided to show them off.

Rascal rolling in the snow

Happy camper

I took the picture on the left first as he was rolling around in the snow during one of our walks. The bottom picture is right afterward. I chose these two pictures because I thought they were neat before and after pictures.

Lines in Nature

Chilled to the Stem

I took this picture on a very frosty morning on my way to school; I believe it was last friday or thursday. The trees all looked so beautiful covered in ice and just had to take a picture. I decided to get a close up, like the above picture, so all the small frost particles could be seen. I thought it turned out wonderfully. The only problem was it turned out really blue. To solve this I edited the saturation of blues in the picture, making it more white. The photo relates to lines because all of the frosted branches are themselves lines.

Standing Tall

I had been wondering around behind our old barn trying to find pictures of lines in nature when I just happened to look behind one of silos. I found a clump of really tall weeds all standing straight up. I figured they were lines so I took the picture. It wasn't until after I went over the pictures I had taken that I realized the barn made a really cool background for the picture. 

Hollowed Out

I really like this picture. It is the inside of log that had hollowed out somewhat. It turned out so that the very edge of the log blurred and the inside is the focus point of the picture. It is a great line picture because the wood is in broken lines in the middle.

Grid Time

This picture was also of the weed behind the barn. These ones, however, had grown through some old cattle panel. I liked how the vertical weed stems were in the grid created by the panel. It is however very busy and when I look at it I don't know where my attention should go to. I turned it black and white to help lessen that problem.