Photo 365 Project - Ditto Face

Wanna get your camera licked? Stick it in the face of a black lab. They'll eat (or at least tongue swipe) anything. Note: Dog slime is not a cleaning fluid, quite the opposite.

Photo 365 Project - Half Tree

Walking the dog in my neighboorhood I'm always struck by this sight. It's like the roadway has projected itself up and sliced off half of the tree. Everywhere else in the neighborhood the trees flow over the roadway, so odd tree-consider yourself photographed!

Photo 365 Project - Wednesday Comics

I didn't become aware of the concept of "Wednesday Comics" until last year, so I suspect it is worth a couple words worth of description.

On Wednesday's, new comics are put up for sale at comic book retailers across the country. As a matter of fact, last year a limited series called 'Wednesday Comics' was produced, the title acknowledging this weekly phenomena. At about the same time, my wife and I started taking Wednesday nights as a time to go out on 'date night'. The two became linked for a while and we made a regular run to the local comic book store.

We're not huge comic book collectors, but the people and atmosphere appeal to our casual taste. Wednesday trips to the comics store have since become a less regular stop for us, but this week we went and I thought I'd take a snapshot of the day.

Photo 365 Project - Ditto's Window Shopping

I planned better than the previous day for this picture. The idea was to take Ditto to the pet store with me to do some shopping for cat litter and food. While there I'd get a picture of the dog picking out cat food or litter. I had a nagging thought "how exactly am I going to frame a photo with a dog in the picture, while holding said dog's leash AND a camera, AND somehow capture the fact that this dog is in a store?"

Details be damned, just taking the dog shopping for cat supplies had enough going for it to make this plan worth executing.

The attempts at pictures with the dog sniffing at the cat litter, "making her selection" didn't turn out very well. The cat food was on too high of a shelf for the dog to really get involved (yes, there was other cat food on a low shelf, but there has to be some integrity in these photos and this one was already slipping into 'staged' territory).

Finally, the birds caught my eye. To be honest, and in the interest of full disclosure, Ditto didn't really care about the birds. She's not much of a shopper either, she was actually eying the exit as this photo was snapped.

Photo 365 Project - Sunset Clouds

The light of another day almost slipped away without getting captured on camera. This required a quick run out to the deck and a snapshot with a Nikon 3000s, something capable of dealing with the low light better than the iPhone that has taken most of the Photo 365 project pictures you see on this blog. That also introduced an unexpected delay in posting.

With the iPhone I can e-mail the photos to wherever I need them then post the pictures here. With the Nikon I have to find the sync cable, connect the camera to a computer, and upload the pictures. The sync cable was an issue in this case; I had tucked it away in a non-standard place, resulting in the aforementioned 'delay' as I hunted for it.

Problem solved, cable found, picture posted.

Photo 365 Project - Grand Old Day

Each year on the first Sunday in June, A long section of Grand Avenue in St. Paul is blocked off, vendors set up food, drink, and random merchandise carts, and a few thousand people wander up and down the road. After a cold winter, this is serious entertainment.

Photo 365 Project - Calypso Drink

The sunlight was fading and I realized I hadn't taken a picture for the day yet. So this is what a lack of prior planning will get you. This drink caught my eye in the cooler at the gas station when I stopped for some cash (yes, I went to a gas station and didn't buy gas; I got a crazy looking drink and some money instead).

Photo 365 Project - BuzzTime Trivia

A trip to Buffalo Wild Wings yielded today's picture of the day. Again, not exactly expert photography, just a snapshot to show something that I saw or did that day.

Photo 365 Project - Ditto in the Yard

Ah, summer. And lawn mowing. Ditto seems to approve of the cut grass, it seems to make it easier for her to pick up tennis balls. She's an 85 pound 3 year old black lab, mixed with an unknown donor.

Ditto came to us from an animal rescue organization. She and her siblings, along with her mom, had been dumped in a ditch; we were told they were found when the puppies were about four days old. How do they know how old she was you ask? I did too. It seems puppies senses develop at a pretty consistent rate, and based on their development the vet hazard a guess at a number less than a week old. Puppies are born without a sense of smell, sight, or hearing (they do have a sense of touch and taste, smell and vision coming in at about 2 weeks for many breeds). Since she was 'rescued' before those other senses developed, we like to think she avoided detecting the oddness associated with such a rough entry into the world.

Regardless, we thought we could do better than a ditch, and gave her a home. Now she lives the sissified suburban life, with a (nicely mowed) lawn to play in and family to amuse her.

Photo 365 Project - Diffley Road

After the previous day's near failure to grab a picture and then resorting to a picture of grout work, I figured I'd take an "emergency backup picture" early in the day. The rest of the day came and went and the backup picture has been pressed into service. This was taken on my commute to work. Rather than the usual highway views found on a city commute, this section is rolling hills and a nice view with everything green. I've biked up and down these hills, not nearly as serene as cruising through in a car while sipping a mocha.

Photo 365 Project - Grout Repair

I almost went the whole day without taking a picture. I had spent the day at work and the evening at home scraping grout for a 'quick' repair job at the house. Not very photogenic stuff, but that's life. Some days the pictures are pretty plain when doing the routine things that keep a household going.

Photo 365 Project - Memorial Day

It's memorial day in the United States. This picture was taken at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, located in the Twin Cities. The cemetery is over 436 acres of land and has over 172,000 internments.

Photo 365 Project - Rainbow over Minneapolis

My first visit to the new Twin's ballpark in Minneapolis, and the first inning started with a light rain. The rain cleared quickly, never slowing the game down, and this rainbow appeared over the city. Welcome back to outdoor baseball in Minneapolis!

Photo 365 Project - Bonfire

Another nice night, a Saturday on Memorial Day weekend. This time we wrapped up the evening by burning things. A nice fire as the sunset and the day was complete.

Photo 365 Project - Down the Stretch

A nice evening for a visit to the races at Caterbury Downs. It is Canterbury's 25th year, I remember going when the place first opened. With the 25 year celebration, entrance is free- making for a pleasant evening watching the horses walk in the paddock then tearing down the track.

Photo 365 Project - Cat in Rail

She's not stuck, really. Apparently she just wanted to see what was "down there", below the railing.

Photo 365 Project - Door Handles

My wife and I had a date night and went to a familiar spot. Fans will recognize the door handles of this restaurant/bar chain, found across the United States.

Photo 365 Project - Cliff Road (Ordinary) Traffic

Working at my company's office, I commute along a very straight and occasionally backed up road. I snapped this picture waiting at a stoplight in one of the more jam-prone sections of road. It's significance? Nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, 20 years from now the ordinary may seem extra-ordinary. I know whenever I come back from a vacation trip and think back to what I saw, it doesn't ever seem to be the stuff I actually took pictures of. It is the ordinary stuff that pops into mind.

Photo 365 Project - Car Mirror

You may have heard of a concept that involves taking a photo once a day for a year. Here's an attempt. Some things come to mind that might help the success of this little project:

• Keep it simple. The photos are snapshots of a moment in time during the day. No hunting out the perfect picture.
• Keep the description simple. I don't want to catch myself saying "I'll post the photo later, when I have inspiration for writing the description"
• Easy accountability. I'm kind of complicating that by posting the pictures to Blogger, that's just another step (I could, and have to this point, just e-mail the pictures to myself).

The kickoff picture is a self portrait, of my index finger. In the mirror. Of my car. Showing the temp. It was actually taken with the intent of posting to facebook to get people in cold places to say 'wow'. Now it has another, more manageable purpose. Being the 365 Photo of the Day.

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