The photographs in this gallery originally appeared in separate monthly galleries for 2008. The photographs were part of a year-long project to take a photograph a day and post it to a monthly gallery.

The photographs featured here are a subset of the original monthly galleries for 2008. They are sorted in reverse, by date which means the oldest photographs are at the end.
Gallery pages:  <  1  2  3  4  5  6  >  >>
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Gerry Daniel > Not too much to say today. I am mentally very tired, it's been a tough week at work and the holidays always seem to bring extra stress. It seems like every year, there is this excitement about the holidays, all of the joy and excitement that has been in my head from when I was a kid, but the reality as an adult is that it is a mixture of moods and feelings. People have their own issues going on in their lives, everybody is trying hard to meet this expectation of what they want the holidays to be, but reality is that like photography, the holidays for the most part are isolated moments of joy, excitement, expectation, hope, conflict, exhaustion, disappointment, and sadness. But it is life in microcosm. But like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football, we are Charlie Brown every year, Lucy is holding the holiday football and encouraging us to kick it. We anticipate the joy but we have been fooled before and hesitate. Then she encourages us to try again and we run to kick it with all the hope in the world. Today's song is by Andrew Bird, the title is "Imitosis" from the "Armchair Apocrypha" album.
Gerry Daniel > This afternoon I had an opportunity to shoot outside. It was nice to change settings and get back into the woods. It has rained a fair bit lately and the late autumn air had a nice rich smell. There were leaves scattered all over the woods and the trails. The leaves in today's photo reminded me of leather. It was something about the colors and the textures. Today's song is by Wolf Parade, the title is "Fine Young Cannibals" from the "At Mount Zoomer" album.
Gerry Daniel > Truth be known, I intended to have something else tonight but I couldn't get it to work. So I went back to the drops, there is still plenty to be done there. This shot is one I have been wanting and have been very close to getting a number of times. It is the moment the drop hits the calm bowl of water, the drop forms a depression in the surface of the water which raises this circular wall figure. This wall starts the waves outward the drop rises from the depression in a column, stretches and breaks at its peak, leaving the drop hanging at the apex as the column retreats. The drop then falls back into the center of the circle. Tonight I went ahead and created a gallery for some of the extra images of this genre. The gallery is named "Water Sculptures" and I will be adding to it as images are available. Today has been one of those days where challenges in the workplace have gone over the edge of what reasonable people should experience. But photography and music are my sanctuary. I will share a quote with you from Hunter S. Thompson and it's the current status on my Facebook page, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Today's song is by Joshua Radin, the title is "One of Those Days" from the "Simple Times" album.
Gerry Daniel > The experiment continues.....another night....more ideas......lessons learned. Tonight I tried a dropper that would give me a larger drop of water. It seemed like a good idea. My conclusion after more photographs than I would want to mention, it would seem that there is a sweet spot on the size of the drop to keep things in focus. It made sense after I thought about it. The problem was that I kept thinking there was something wrong with my setup. Then it hit me - it was obvious, but just didn't occur to me - what was different about shooting tonight than all of my previous experiments with the drops? Yep, the size of the drop. Anyway, I managed to find one that wasn't a failure. Learning is like that and mistakes are part of pushing the edge and experimenting. I have a lot of ideas of other things to try. I suspect some of them will work, some won't but I will try them anyway. That's the only one way for me to find out. Hopefully there will be some fun discoveries along the way and a cool photo or two. Today's song is by Steve Reynolds, the title is "Set Your Sights" from "The Carnival Papers" album.
Gerry Daniel > There is a risk that some people may become bored with my experiments on photographing water. What is probably not apparent is the adjustments that are made from one session to the next. That is totally fine with me, just bear with me while I go through this process. One of the issues that I carried from yesterday was related to ISO, shutter speed, and aperture settings. Today I made some progress that has allowed me to reduce the ISO which should give me a better quality image with less noise. If you are thinking that all I needed to do was add more light to the room, that is not at all what I did but I understand why you would think that. Anyway this is my daily photo selection for today. I am considering creating a gallery for these shots. Water sculptures is how I think of them and they only exist for a moment. Today's song is by Grizzly Bear, the title is "Knife" from the "Yellow House" album. Try it, you'll like it.
Gerry Daniel > A week ago today, I experimented with trying to photograph a drop of water as it splashed in a bowl. The next day, I applied what I learned from the previous day and was able to get an image that was closer to my goal. Since that time I haven't tried that type of shot again. This week was a tough week at the office. So many pressures on so many people these days due to the economic problems throughout the United States. As the week went by, I became the not so proud owner of a stomach virus. Today has been better but this thing has taken a toll on me. I didn't shoot at all yesterday and I don't think I shot anything the day before. The days sort of ran together so I am completely sure. Since I have been somewhat housebound, I went back to the drops projects today. Taking what I had learned last week I shot this afternoon in a shallow container, then shot in a deep bowl. The results weren't bad but they were still lacking what I was trying to capture and the overall quality of the images was poor. Tonight, after thinking about some of the aspects of the setup, I made a few adjustments. Photography is simple in some ways, complex in others. The shots from tonight involved a much simpler setup but used sound basic photography principles. There are some adjustments I can still make but this is much closer to where I am trying to go with these shots. If I have used this song before, I am claiming memory loss due to being sick. Today's song is by Helio Sequence, the title is "Lately" from the "Keep Your Eyes Ahead" album.
Gerry Daniel > 2008 Daily Photo Community photo
Gerry Daniel > Granted the photo I posted yesterday was nothing exciting but it is part of the process of learning, so it seemed like a good idea to record a baseline. It's often hard to judge progress without the baseline to give a point of reference. One of the aspects of photography that has been dormant for me in recent months is to stretch my comfort zone. Experimenting is fun, challenging, and a necessary element of growth. We often forget to enjoy the journey and focus too hard on the destination. There are many advantages to being in the moment, enjoying the journey. Being open to the experience along the way and being aware of the many paths that can lead to the destination can make all the difference. Sometimes, if you allow yourself that freedom, the destination may be somewhere different than you expected or the destination can involve many opportunities that might not have been apparent when you started. In a broad sense, I think that my destination in photography is unknown. It's more a case of having places I want to visit while I travel towards that unknown. Some of the places won't be revealed until I have journeyed to other places along the way. The photo I posted yesterday was somewhat crude. Crude in an unfinished sense, not in a negative sense. Today's photo is a marker along the road, it's representative of the distance from yesterday to today on trying to learn how to take certain types of photos. It is by no means indicative of reaching the destination for this branch of the trip. There is still plenty of progress to be made, plenty of crudeness in the image. In the twelfth month of this photography project for 2008, it's easy to lose a sense of where I have been, what I've done, accomplishments and failures. It's easy to get frustrated and let this project become a grind. There have been many days when I have wondered if I should stop, days when I have questioned whether I belonged in this community with so many talented photographers, days when I was too hard on myself for not achieving the outcome I wanted. Part of those negative feelings have been personal criticism of my skill as a photographer but part of the negative feelings have been things from other areas of my life influencing how I felt about my photography. This is a diverse group and each person has their own challenges that are independent of what is in our photographs. It's important for me to remember why I am here, in this community, involved in this project. Fun and personal enjoyment need to be at the top of the list. Whether you like the photo from yesterday, today, or tomorrow is not for me to decide. It's beyond my scope of control. The funny thing about submitting photos here is that it has remained an act of sharing and how an image will be interpreted is an unknown. It is still gratifying when people truly like one of my images but it isn't an expectation nor a requirement. Today's song is by Yoav, the title is "Where Is My Mind?" from the "Charmed and Strange" album.
Gerry Daniel > 2008 Daily Photo Community photo
This afternoon I had an opportunity to shoot outside. It was nice to change settings and get back into the woods. It has rained a fair bit lately and the late autumn air had a nice rich smell. There were leaves scattered all over the woods and the trails. The leaves in today's photo reminded me of leather. It was something about the colors and the textures.

Today's song is by Wolf Parade, the title is "Fine Young Cannibals" from the "At Mount Zoomer" album.
> This afternoon I had an opportunity to shoot outside. It was nice to change settings and get back into the woods. It has rained a fair bit lately and the late autumn air had a nice rich smell. There were leaves scattered all over the woods and the trails. The leaves in today's photo reminded me of leather. It was something about the colors and the textures. Today's song is by Wolf Parade, the title is "Fine Young Cannibals" from the "At Mount Zoomer" album.
This afternoon I had an opportunity to shoot outside. It was nice to change settings and get back into the woods. It has rained a fair bit lately and the late autumn air had a nice rich smell. There were leaves scattered all over the woods and the trails. The leaves in today's photo reminded me of leather. It was something about the colors and the textures.

Today's song is by Wolf Parade, the title is "Fine Young Cannibals" from the "At Mount Zoomer" album.
Gallery pages:  <  1  2  3  4  5  6  >  >>
< 11 of 231 >

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