Day 60 - Leap Year

Happening once very four years for astronomical reasons, the leap year is the one which sends attached but unmarried men into a panic. It is the day on which it is said women can go against tradition and propose marriage to their man themselves! But did you know that our Gregorian calendar in which we have an extra day in February actually stems from the Julian calendar which was developed by Julius Caesar himself in 46BC? The man was an all-round genius and legend!

Day 59 (Colour) - Crayons

Out came the macro lens this evening, along with some crayons I picked up for something colourful to shoot. Shot taken, a little white balance correction and cropping in Lightroom and we have a rainbow of crayons for todays picture. I kept the aperture somewhere in the middle to get a more even depth of field than I usually go for. A little change never hurt anyone!

Day 58 (Colour) - Rainbow Sticks

Rummaging around to find something to fit in with the current theme I came across these coloured icepop sticks I'd picked up in the shops recently. Not a very interesting picture but in all honesty I'm now finding it more difficult to get inspiration for the colour theme. I am also quietly glad I've done it now rather than later on in the year. That said, I may still do a week of colour later on in the year but definitely not another month!

Day 57 (Colour) - Railings

This weeks project in the course I'm doing is entitled "Decisive Moment". With that in mind I managed to persuade my hubby to come along to the park this afternoon so I could try to get one or two pictures for my project. With my hubby playing with the dog I managed a few pictures and as we were leaving I decided to get a shot of the railings around the play ground. What I didn't know until my hubby told me afterwards was that there was a group of teenagers a little way up from where I stopped for the picture, and one lad in particular took delight in staring at my behind as I crouched down a little to get the picture. He was properly caught by my husband and in embarrassment tried to look beyond me to make out he was staring at something else! I have to admit we chuckled on our way back home. There's a saying back home for that - Caught Rapid!

Day 56 (Colour) - Wax Lyrical

I have come to the conclusion that as well as my pictures being a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly, there will also be times when I don't update my blog everyday. Take this weekend for example. Late home Friday after my class, Saturday we were out and about for most of the day and then got lazy on the sofa, so I am updating three days worth of pictures all together. I do feel a little guilty about it but sometimes life may get in the way. I just have to accept that as long as I DO take a picture everyday (and I have been!), then as long as I don't leave it too long before updating the blog, then I shouldn't feel too guilty about it.

Saturdays picture comes courtesy of a candle bottle in the pub we stopped off at to have lunch. It was ages since my hubby and I had had a pub lunch and it was just what the doctor ordered before we headed to the Gower. The colour reference is obviously the Red wax on the Green bottle!

Day 55 (Colour) - Mouse mat

Using a work mouse mat to practise some depth of field. I really like the colours on the mat and did wonder on Friday when I took it why I had never properly noticed before.

Day 54 (Colour) - Stripes

Texture, colour and depth of field. An every day household item turned into a picture. More of these to come during this project I suspect!

Day 53 (Colour) - An Apple a Day....

...... keeps the doctor away. But did you know that the saying originated here in Wales. The February 1866 edition of Notes and Queries magazine included this:

"A Pembrokeshire proverb. Eat an apple on going to bed, And you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread."

The saying has obviously done the rounds and the above variant is what we know today but it's funny the new things you learn when you go looking for something to tie up with your pictures!

Day 52 (Colour) - Lapis Lazuli

To some, this is a brilliant blue stone. To me, it a rare Tier 1 mining stone from my online game of choice Everquest 2. Many an hour or ten have I spent on this game simply harvesting the raw materials other gamers needed for crafting. I found it therapeutic and I always got a little thrill every time the writing on screen went yellow and said "You've found a rare item"! Oh how I miss this game that took so many hours of my life. I'd go back to it in a heartbeat if only I knew it wouldn't take over my life again!

Day 51 (Colour) - A game anyone?

The subject of some pictures are instantly recognisable. That's what makes the world of branding such a lucrative marketing strategy. It's amazing how we can see just a part of some things and instantly know what it is.

Day 50 (Colour) - Smarties

A little inspiration from a box of smarties. Wasn't sure how this might turn out but I'm quite happy with it.

Day 49 (Colour) - Blue Skies

After a grey start to the day accompanied with wind and rain, we were delighted to see some blue arrive back into the sky after midday. So instead of being lazy we put our cameras into the car and off we went. After visiting some Roman ruins we headed for the coast to see if we could catch sunset. Blue skies remained and golden hour was in full force but we were disappointed unfortunately by a bank of cloud blocking out the final stages of sunset. Still, it was only our second time to this spot for sunset. However, I reckon it'll be third time lucky! For something a little different I decided to post this picture of the blue skies just before the bank of cloud took over and we headed for home.

Day 48 (Colour) - Ivy

We're still in winter months and it amazes me how we can still have luscious green leaves of ivy while everything else around is stark and bare. Nature really is a wonderful thing!

Day 47 (Colour) - Feathers

It's getting a bit harder to find inspiration to continue on the colour theme. Today we have a constructed image with some coloured feathers.

Day 46 (Colour) - Blue Worm

It's amazing what sort of arts and crafts things are in the shops this week as it's half-term. I found a bag of fluffy, coloured pompoms of various sizes and decided to create a blue worm for todays picture using the various sized blue pompoms. Add a little depth of field and off-centre the picture, et voila, est ici image d'aujourd'hui!

Day 45 (Colour) - Roses are Red....

I was just about to leave work today when our receptionist rang up to say I'd had a delivery. Thinking it was a photography book I was waiting on, I promptly went down expecting an Amazon package. To my complete surprise, there was a huge bunch of red roses, lovingly sent from my hubby. I wasn't expecting them at all. I drove the 30 minutes home with the biggest grin on my face. It's even more special as he's in London until Friday and I had absolutely no idea they were coming. They arrived literally on time too. Oh, I am spoilt! Happy Valentines Day everyone.

Day 44 (Colour) - Kolor Kut

This is one of the most fascinating things I've come across in work to date. It is a water-finding paste used mostly on cargo ships to determine if there is water in the dead bottom of a cargo tank, a big problem for many cargoes and their recipients. I first saw this demonstrated by one of our consultants and it's become invaluable to me in the laboratory. It is a golden coloured paste that is supplied in a tube. It can pass through hydrocarbons or fuel-based cargoes and, upon contact with water, it turns pink as shown in todays picture. It is unaffected by passing back through that cargo to show the colour change. I've used in on many occasions when a client has not told us if a clear liquid is water-based or not, often crucial when trying to determine what tests you can safely do on the liquid from both a personal and instrument aspect!

Day 43 (Colour) - Slinky

Inspired by a similar picture, today is a rainbow slinky.

Day 42 (Colours) - Brain Training

Anyone who has ever owned a Nintendo DS should recognise this. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training used this as one of the tests to see how old your brain is. On the screen and at high speed it's not easy to not say the colour of the writing rather than the colour depicted by the word itself. You know I'm right!

Day 41 (Colour) - Pins

While moving from one lab to another in work, I noticed these pins neatly pinned in a noticed board beside the door. A little rearrangement so the whites weren't next to each other made for a better composed picture.

Day 40 (Colour) - Golden Kaleidoscope

A recent purchase from one of my favourite beauty stores yielded a box with the pattern which constitutes todays picture. It reminded me of looking through a kaleidoscope toy as a child and I thought it might make for an interesting picture. The more I look around for subjects within my theme of the month, the more I'm seeing things in new light. I guess that's part and parcel of this project! Long may it continue.

Day 39 (Colour) - 366 in Green

Sometimes a picture can say it all. And sometimes it just comes down to lack of time. Time ran away with me tonight to be overly creative as I had to get some homework done for my second course. It is 9.15pm and I haven't even eaten dinner!

Day 38 (Colour) - White Rose

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

A quote made famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In this great tragedy, Romeo and Juliet are "star-crossed lovers" and cannot help their mutual attraction and fall in love, despite their feuding families. The rose metaphor comes in the play's famous balcony scene in a speech made by Juliet where she declares her love for Romeo despite him being a Montague. However, legend has it that the reference to the rose was an inside joke aimed at the Rose Theatre, the rival to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, whose toilet facilities were quite offensive on the nose and the reference to the rose was a sly dig at this fact!

Day 37 (Colour) - Rainbow Tulips

Rainbow Tulips was the title on this bunch of flowers, bought today from the local supermarket. Having looked at various bunches of flowers, I settled on these as they were the first type of flower my husband bought me twelve years ago for our first Valentines Day together. I've always had a fondness for tulips and especially like two-tone ones or unusually coloured ones. A little play on macro and depth of field and here you have todays picture.

Day 36 (Colour) - Orange

A little play with depth of field today using two oranges in the kitchen, complete with a hair from the aforementioned Black Beast. No matter how hard you try, she always leaves you a little reminder that she's with you at all times!

Day 35 (Colour) - And in the Red corner......

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....... representing todays picture, is a quarter of Red.

Day 34 (Colour) - Polka Dots

Without consciously thinking about it, todays picture incorporates the colours from the previous two blogs. After a full day at work and then my three hour class this evening, I realised when I got home I hadn't taken todays picture. And being tired and lazy, the picture is a fuzzy, slightly out-of-focus-due-to-camera-shake result. The aim was to get an abstract picture to include the colours theme but tiredness and the late hour of the day meant a bad picture was taken.

Day 33 (Colour) - Marigolds

Yellow marigolds anyone? I took a number of shots of these perched next to a sink but the depth of field didn't quite work. This was the better one overall. Totally unconstructed on my part, I quite liked the fact that the fingers are quite straight and plumped out rather than just flat or folded. They certainly caught my eye as I passed them!

Day 32 (Colour) - Blue Construction

January has come and gone, and it was a month of "getting started". It's now time to start putting some structure to the picture taking. And since the evenings aren't quite bright enough to give enough light after work for picture taking, I thought February could be the Colour month.

Today's picture was a constructed picture using the blue hard hat as the colour focus for today. Strong colours can make a dull picture just that little bit more interesting. And I can already predict we will have more constructed pictures this month incorporating the colour theme.