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Ok, so I fell off the wagon for a while.

A long, long while.

But I hadn't really forgotten about this blog. Real life ran over me a bit during the double move from KC to Boston and then from Back Bay to South End. Follow that with some intense home improvement projects and a little bit of travel and I lost the habit.

But there were some other issues, too. I wasn't getting what I wanted out of the picture-a-day project. I mean, I learned a lot, but the returns were starting to diminish and it began to feel like a burden rather than a joy.

I found myself gaming the system. I'd see a great shot and think to myself, "I already have a picture for today...I need to save something to shoot later in the week." I was focusing on quantity instead of quality: taking pictures on days when there were few options (other than planes) and only taking one picture on days that were full of options.

And I know a craftsman never blames his tools, but my Point-and-shoot camera wasn't cutting it. It is a great camera and I was very pleased with many of my results, but I just couldn't control things that I wanted to control (aperture, shutter speed, and depth of field to name a few).

So I was thinking about revamping the project and starting again in January when I got a most surprising offer from my mother-in-law Judith. She sold me her DSLR, lenses and accessories at a generous price. She's always been supportive of my photography and I'm very grateful for that support and for the new equipment.

So we begin again on January 1st. Or more accurately the first week of January, since I'm ditching the "daily" requirement. I'm still sorting out the details, but I expect the new challenge to have requirements like these:

Focus on quality over quantity
Multiple posts per week
A monthly theme (possibly associated with amateur photography contests)

What are your suggestions?

Wing - 062008

Wing - 062008, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

Travel much?

This plane picture is special, though. It was taken while I was on my way from Detroit to KC to pack up the house and move my wife and kitties to Boston. Hurray!

Dead Bodies - 062008

Dead Bodies - 062008, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

The street outside the apartment was shut down for a movie shoot the morning this was taken. There were two funny moments. The first was when they came and towed all the cars parked on the street, and then towed in new cars so the street wouldn't look empty. The other was when they dropped off the dummies that eventually got put into the cars. This was after they had emptied the cars.

Celtics Police - 061908

Celtics Police - 061908, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

The Celtics won banner number 17, and the parade is getting set up. We saw ticker tape fluttering in the air in the courtyard at my office, and it was half a mile from the parade route. On my way into work i saw all the police in their yellow vests relaxing before things got underway. The background is too busy and I should have taken some more time walking around to find a more interesting shot.

Another Plane - 061808

Another Plane - 061808, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

Another trip to Dulles, another delay, another airport bar, another plane.

Taken while I was delayed after a violent pop-up thunderstorm, this three exposure HDR shows the leftover clouds.

T Driver - 061708

T Driver - 061708, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

I'd seen this shot in my head dozens of times before, but never had the right seat on an uncrowded train. I sat in the very front seat and placed the camera on the divider between the front seat and doorway/stairwell. Holding the camera firmly to the divider kept everything inside the car in sharp focus and blurred everything outside of the car. This is a 1s plus exposure, which is why you can't make out the train speeding by outside, and the car in front of this one is shaky.

Concerned Passengers - 061608

Concerned Passengers - 061608, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

To the left of this picture someone is hurt. There were EMTs and T officials huddled around. It was hard to tell if they were really hurt or slightly hurt and looking around for a lawyer. I saw lots of rolling eyes so I suspect the latter.

Anyway, I tried to capture some of the curiousity of the crowd, but I don't think I framed it up as well as I could have. I like some aspects of the shot, but I needed to get more people and less ceiling.

Ceiling Details - 061508

Celing Details - 061508, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

You know how when you're on vacation you give yourself a break from your diet? You make a deal with yourself that vacation is a special event and should be exempt from the rules. Well, moving is sort of like that, only not quite a fun as a vacation.

So I'm really far behind on my posting. And possibly I haven't been completely faithful on taking a picture every day. But now that we're all in Boston (yeah!) I'll be getting back on my picture taking plan (and on my diet).

This pic was taken well before the move. I've always liked the cove ceiling in the apartment and the lighting really brought out the details. This picture required almost no touch-up, which made me happy.

Planes - 061408

Planes - 061408, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

I really like the near/far composition of this picture. I just read a photography tip that basically said that your pictures will never be any better than your lighting. In that case, I think I got the most out of this picture that was possible. The sun was directly overhead and the sky was very hazy and dull. It helps the white planes pop off the background.

Tower - 061308

Tower - 061308, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

This may be one of my favorite pictures from the trip. This was also taken on my walk back from dinner. The sun was starting the set and it had been raining off and on all afternoon. And then there's this tower. I have no idea why there's so much building associated with this tower, but I really liked the light on the enclosed spiral staircase.

Headstones - 061308

Headstones - 061308, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

I walked past a cemetary on my way back to the hotel from dinner, and to the side was this small shop. I couldn't tell if they carved the headstones there, or just received them, but it was a very interesting scene.

German Office Building - 061308

German Office Building - 061308, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

This is the office building that I visited while I was in Frankfurt. I thought it was quintesential european design. The things I like about this picture. First, that you can see all the way through one of the windows. And then there's the little sunflare in the middle of the image.

It's a little cluttered. I like the reflections in the windows, but they also add to the clutter. Still, it's bright and crisp and I think that works with the subject matter.

Clouds - 061208

Clouds - 061208, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

I wish I had something interested to put in the foreground, but these clouds were really exceptional. I loved the pink notes of the sunrise on clouds.

Big, Bigger, Biggest - 061108

Big, Bigger, Biggest - 061108, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

Let this be a lesson to me, always watch my background. The full picture had an even longer row of bright yellow snow removal equipment, but the background looked even worse than it does in this close cropped picture. Ordinarily I wouldn't have posted this, but I owed some extra pictures.

Traffic - 061108

Traffic - 061108, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

So I like the subject matter and the basic composition, but the picture suffers from a few flaws. First, it was crazy humid and hazy. I was able to punch up the contrast and take out the haze. But then there was still the scratchy window and too slow shutter speed for being hand-held at 10,000 feet.

But still...quite the iconic picture of New York.

Chairs - 061008

Chairs - 061008, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

Ok, so I got a little bit off pace with my picture taking over the last five or six days. While I didn't exactly take one picture each day, I took more than enough pictures over the week. So there will be a few extra pictures on some days as penence.

This pic is a great example of why you compose on site instead of trying to crop down later. I wasn't paying attention to my background and had to crop down too tight on the chairs. You still get the repitition of form, but the composition is all wonky.

Old and New - 060908

Old and New - 060908, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

That's no Moon!

Ok, it is, but just barely. I really didn't think it would show up in the picture, but there it is. Or there was some dust on my lens...probably a moon though...yeah.

This is a five exposure HDR, and it's one of the few I've dones that didn't end up looking too weird. It really helped pull other the slightly different colors in the buildings and helped even out the exposure across the shaded building and the glass building.

I was about to give up on HDR, but this will have me hooked for a little while longer. Sort of like hitting a nice golf shot...just enough success to keep me coming back.

Air Conditioner! - 060808

Air Conditioner! - 060808, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

See the heavenly light coming from behind the air conditioner. See it!

Kids in a Fountain - 060708

Kids in a Fountain - 060708, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

It was really freakin hot yesterday. And humid. And if I haven't mentioned the heat yet, it was hot. Tomorrow's picture may be of my new air conditioner, but today's picture is some kids beating the heat in the Christian Science Church Park.

This wasn't the picture that I planned to take. I've noticed in the evenings that as it gets darker the fountain almost looks like it's lit (it's not, but compared to the surroundings it's quite bright). I thought it would be neat to "backlight" some of the kids playing near the fountain. It was too light out for that shot and they turn the fountain off before it gets dark. I'll either have to wait for an overcast day or until the days get shorter, but I'm proud of myself for recognizing that given the lighting conditions the better shot was to move around the pool and use the trees as background.

News - 060608

News - 060608, originally uploaded by bostonaday.

This is the second post of this batch where I almost started to whine about my camera. You see, I can't really "set" the aperture on my camera. I can trick, cajole, and otherwise encourage the camera to choose a specific-ish aperture, but I can't just make it shoot wide open to create the narrow depth of field that I wanted here.

So if the news boxes pop so much they almost don't look real, it's because the picture's not real. I blurred the background to create the illusion of a narrow depth of field. I probably should have blurred the building on the right a little bit less than the rest of the background to give the picture some more depth and make it seem more plausible.

But enough whining about the photoshop, I want to go back to me whining about my camera. I need to stop. Now that I'm looking at the results I thought of two or three more things I could have done to make the picture better. Back up and zoom in to alter the perspective. Knock the ISO down even farther. Force the shutter speed up. These things aren't necessarily easy adjustments on my camera (which is probably why I didn't think of them at the end of a long day at work), but they are possible. And the point is to learn new things, which I did because I had to really think about what went wrong. Things I wouldn't have learned if all I had to do was crank the aperture around until I reached the end.