Jaci Dawn

I have been doing a personal Photo 365. Most of my pics are pretty mundane this year because I haven’t been able to get out and go places and there’s really no place to walk at work (the office used to be located in a lovely business park setting with ponds and pathways, but now it’s just industrial and no sidewalks, bordered by freeway and light rail tracks). It’s not conducive to the kind of photography I would like to do, but I thought that maybe if I took this as a challenge to look at things a little differently, maybe I would get some good photos out of it, and a lot of practice with the settings on my Canon DSLR. It’s not unlike learning to shoot film (although I think film is much more fun and I understand it better – digital is just instant).

Today is Day#74 and I think I actually have a few pics that I like.

Day #3 – Waiting Room at Willamette Falls Hospital. This one wouldn’t even be on my radar except for the fact that as of this past weekend, I have spent an inordinate amount of time visiting a patient at Willamette Falls Hospital. So it makes the cut as a nice photo. It does rather capture the essence of sitting and waiting for that doctor to walk in through the door…

Day#5. “Hey! Don’t splash me!” I love how the Northern Flicker seems to be turning his head to deflect the splashing water that the European Starling is sending up.

Day 6 – Female Anna’s Hummingbird sitting in the Lodgepole Pine, This is the first year I have managed to encourage hummers to overwinter, and she’s been a frequent guest. Oh, heck – she buzzed me tonight when I was trying to come in the front door.

Day #8 – MAX line. My lunch hours are spent sitting in my car, staring out at Oregon Hwy 26 to the Coast and the MAX (light rail) line. I photo-shopped this for texture and effect.

Day #20 – Angry Bird. Click on the photo for a full-size view. The male Anna’s Hummingbird is actually blinking and what you see is his eyelid, but he looks so much like a Very.Angry.Hummer! Possibly my fave photo so far.

Day #34. Gone. There was a House Finch in the feeder seconds before this (I do have that photo). I like this because of the accidental capture of sunflower seed hulls going everywhere as the finch made his exit, Stage Right.

Day 40 – Georgia O’Keefe style. Sort of. It’s the mini cow skull that reminds me of Georgia O’Keefe, OK? Just a Goodwill find.

Day #49 – old thermometers. Yes, those are thermometers. Don actually owns four of them, but only three fit into the photo. I tried not to capture the cobwebs (I don’t dust anything in his corner). I’m not entirely certain how they work, but I have seen them work – they graph the temperature onto the scroll of paper inside. I believe they have to be set, and none of these are currently set to operate. But don’t trust me – I wasn’t really paying attention when Don explained it to me, and I only had one crash course. I just think they’re very cool.

Day #57 – Self Portrait. I’m not really sure what I wanted to accomplish with this, but what I captured was: an old oil painting of our dog, Sadie, a current oil painting of Pike Creek sitting on my easel, my comfy chair, my camera, and my mug = statement of who I am. I like the lighting.

Day #66 – another self portrait. For some reason, I could not get the lighting to work in my favor this night. The mirror picked up all of its own flaws. Frustrated, I turned to a photoshop program and tried the “charcoal” effect. Ta da! I liked it.

Day #69. Dragon’s eye. Just a knot hole in our fence, but when I rotated the photo for effect…