Picture a Day - Project 365

I have recently started my new job as a high school photography teacher. I spent a lot of time over the summer preparing for school and a lot of my evenings since starting planning all night. This past week went pretty well because I've been able to plan a couple weeks in advance and my plans have gone well. BUT since I am doing well on my planning I've had a few free nights this week that I didn't need to work on school stuff. Well my wife is working nights so she is asleep for most of the evening when I'm home and I'll be honest, I'm getting bored. So, instead of sitting on my butt playing video games and not doing anything productive with my time I have decided to start taking a photo a day, or "Project 365" as many people call it.
I'll probably start tonight but will probably only upload my photos once a week. That way you can see all weeks photos at once. I'm not sure where to start so I think I'll just look around my apartment tonight and see what I can find.
Wish me luck. This will be a fun, but long project.

Solar Delta

So a few weeks ago I went down to Delta to get my car inspected and see the family. I hung out with my dad most of the day and we drove around looking for stuff to take photographs of. He took me to some killer spots and I got a few great photos.

The first stop took us out by Hinckley where some one is building these weird solar panel things. They panels work like huge magnifying glasses, we walked under a few and man it would burn you to a crisp if you stood there long enough.

Papa also took me into and old building where they sell grain and seeds. They have these really old shakers that separate grain and the nasty stuff that you don't want in it. Lots of dust in there but it was sweet.

Memorial Day BBQ

So Memorial Day was last week and we had a little BBQ with friend, partly to celebrate my friend Melissas birthday. We always have TONS of food when we get together for these events, and I made sure to eat plenty of it.
Now that we are all getting older every one is starting to have kids and there were plenty of those at the party too. We all had fun eating and chatting about what we've been up to lately.

MOAB

Last weekend we got together with all of Candees family down in Moab. We pitched out tents in a campground on the north end of Moab close to the entrance of Arches National Park. We had a great weekend of hiking, taking photos (me), and eating lots and lots of hot dogs.
It was a really great weekend for camping and hiking. The temperature was perfect, there were no bugs, and it wasn't windy at all.
Candee and I got there in the evening on Friday and set up our tent right away. We got a good spot, thankfully not next to the loud drunks that kept us all up at night. Candees Sisters family were the lucky ones that got to camp next to them. Honestly how rude can some people be. They let their kids stay up well past midnight running all around through other peoples camp sites while they drank all night.
Any ways, Arches was a blast. I took a ton of photos but am only going to post my favorites here. I spent a lot of time looking for wild flowers, another reason this was the perfect weekend. The cactus were all blooming and it looked amazing.

Graduation

Last friday was a pretty cool day I must admit. After several years of school I finaly graduated from the University of Utah with my BFA. I wanted to go to the big commencment in the morning but had a job interview, not sure about the position though.
My family came up in the afternoon and we had an enjoyable lunch at the Cheesecake Factory here in SLC. Thanks Papa and Steve! After lunch we came back to Candee and I's place for about an hour to digest and take a few photos.
I had heard that a lot of students dress up their cap and gowns for the College of Fine Art Convocation and thought I'd do the same. I got a stole of gratitude to give to Candee for all the great stuff she has done for me while I have been in school and decorated it up. I had a pretty cool idea and was pleased at how it turned out. It took me about four and a half hours to draw and one sharpie marker :) I was hoping that a ton of people would decorate their stuff but there were only a dozen or so that actually did. One girl made her own robe for graduation, even the buttons to button it up with.
So here are a few shots from the day. Thanks every one for coming.

Papa and I


Steve, me, and Mom


Me and some of my college buddies


The Dean and I. He really liked my Stole.


Candee and I after graduation

Seniors

Over the past week or two I have been able to take photos of the University of Utah Ballet Seniors. These are some of the most amazing dancers I've seen, the U has a really well known ballet school. There are 14 Seniors total and I've been taking them out in pairs on photo shoots. I tried to pick different locations for each group so when I display their photos at their senior show I don't have 14 photos of dancers all in the same spot, how boring would that be!
This photos is of me and all the girls on the day we took their group photos. Of course I had to get one with me in it. I'll be posting the individual photos here and talking a bit about how I picked the locations and edited the photos.

RAW files

I did a lot of reading to try and describe what RAW images are and found Wikipedias answer to be one of the best, and simplest.


A RAW image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image or motion picture film scanner. RAW files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be used with a bitmap graphics editor or printed. Normally, the image is processed by a RAW converter in a wide-gamut internal colorspace where precise adjustments can be made before conversion to a "positive" file format such as TIFF or JPEG for storage, printing, or further manipulation, which often encodes the image in a device-dependent colorspace. These images are often described as "RAW image files" based on the erroneous belief that they represent a single file format. In fact there are dozens if not hundreds of RAW image formats in use by different models of digital equipment (like cameras or film scanners)

RAW image files are sometimes called digital negatives, as they fulfill the same role as negatives in film photography: that is, the negative is not directly usable as an image, but has all of the information needed to create an image. Likewise, the process of converting a RAW image file into a viewable format is sometimes called developing a raw image, by analogy with the film development process used to convert photographic film into viewable prints. The selection of the final choice of image rendering is part of the process of white balancing and color grading.

Like a photographic negative, a RAW digital image may have a wider dynamic range or color gamut than the eventual final image format, and is usually the one "closest" to the real picture in the sense that it preserves most of its details. RAW image formats' purpose is to faithfully record both 100% of exactly what the sensor "saw" or "sensed" (the data), and the conditions surrounding the recording of the image (the metadata).