Another day with no photo for the day by the time I got home.

I ransacked my spice drawers and found a bag of star anise. They’re all dry and brittle, and most of them were broken from having been stuffed in and out of drawers too often.

This one isn’t symmetric, but it’s the only one that was still whole.

I cooked Asparagus a few hours ago. I thought I would take a photo before I sprinkled olive oil, ground pepper and Kosher salt on them and popped them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes (I love Asparagus cooked this way–you should try it too).

My hunger caused me to be careless on the focus (I wanted to cook them already so we can eat), but just a few days ago I read something that my father sent me about making compelling photos. I thought that I would give something a try.

When I look at the photo, I feel that I WANT to see the tip of the Asparagus in the middle of the photo. But I can’t because the tips are before the plane of focus. And that makes me… anxious. I’m not sure what other single word would describe it. It makes me feel this tension when I look at it. I know what an asparagus tip looks like, but I still want to see it. It’s like the photo is taunting me.

And it was all by accident. Maybe one day I’ll learn to do this intentionally.

It’s the end of the day and I still don’t have a photo for Project 365. Looks like it’s time to break out the light box!

This is one of the card holders we used for our wedding reception.

It’s our wedding day!

These are our old rings, which we’ve had for quite a while. The engraving is the date my wife and I started calling ourselves a couple after we started dating.

These have now been relegated to a box in our drawer, since they’ve now been replaced with wedding bands.

Close-up of barbed wire on our fence.

This wasn’t as hard as the other hand-held close-ups I’ve done in the past several days. The sun was very bright, so I had the luxury of increasing the f-stop to have the barbs that pointed towards and away from me in focus.

A big, half-inch fly landed on the window sill while I was smoking in the garage.

Another tough shoot, similar to the gecko shot, except the conditions were more extreme. Max zoom on telephoto + close-up filter, wide-open aperture, and no tripod as before, but ambient light was dimmer and the subject smaller.

I would have wanted to get the red, compound eyes in focus, but I’ll settle for its hairy legs.

This little gecko was hanging out on our garage wall. It was about 3 inches long.

I quickly ran back inside to grab my camera, telephoto and close-up lens, and quickly realized that it was going to be a tough shot. The gecko was about a foot above my head, I was at max zoom and didn’t have a tripod and the sky was gloomy. I bumped up the ISO, lowered the exposure compensation, set the aperture wide open, tried to hold my camera as steadily as I can, and hoped that the gecko wouldn’t go away while I try to get a shot with the face in focus. I knew that last part would be tough because of the very shallow depth of focus.

Lots of shortcomings in the photo, but I think given the challenges, it’s pretty decent.

I forgot all about the roses I bought earlier. I put them in the fridge to prolong their freshness. I grabbed something to eat and noticed that they’ve opened further. I thought I’d take more pictures of them to maximize the money I spent.

I’ve been seeing these kinds of subjects for a while. I started shooting my calculator, but then noticed my keyboard’s keypad and how there’s a right arrow on the 6. Couldn’t quite get the arrow into the field of focus, though.

Found it interesting that adjusting the curves made the 5 and 6 stay white and the rest off-white.

I made a DIY lightbox following by following these instructions from the Strobist blog.

I thought I’d try out my new creation on a gift from my Chinese friend. 2007 was the year of the Golden Fire Pig. Three years ago he gave me this small keychain of a pig holding on to a Chinese gold ingot.

I didn’t notice until post processing that the light sources reflected off of the dome portion of the gold ingot.