I was working late and just happened to step out for a while (okay, I used the bathroom) and saw the fiery sunset from the lobby. I quickly ran to my office to grab my camera, and then ran to one of the empty offices in the building to take a few shots.

Clouds off in the horizon, as seen from my office window. I suspect that my window’s glass is to blame for the green tint (maybe whatever inert gas is in between the panes is refracting the light somehow?). And maybe the ghost images are from the double panes.

The sun was setting, and I was still in the office. This shot was taken from the building’s atrium.

I mistakenly shot it in the wrong white balance, but it looked better with that setting, so I just used it.

A strong summer afternoon storm bore down on us, but it went as quickly as it came. The sudden downpour was too much for the sewer system to handle, and for about half an hour, we had a pig bond in the parking lot.

It’s the Memorial Day weekend, and we went up to a reservoir for a picnic. Off in the distance, I saw a kayaker on the water. I waited for him to sail by and pressed the shutter release.

My wife and I were invited by a very good friend to watch a play (“My Fair Lady”) at a dinner playhouse up north. We’ve never been to a dinner playhouse or watched a play together, so we graciously accepted the invitation.

This was a lamp just outside the theater building. The shot was taken as the sun was going down.

I worked from home today via the magic of remote desktop.

After working the whole day and before my my fiancée and I headed out to a party, we had dinner not far away from our place.

It was dusk, the clouds were amazing, and the setting sun lit them up in interesting ways.

A big snow storm came in today. I looked out from my office window and saw the storm clouds rolling in. 2 hours later, the snow started to REALLY come down. The drive home was horrendous. Visibility was poor, traffic was slow and the snow made my side mirrors almost unusable, but I made it home in one piece.

Two friends alerted me of the mesmerizing moon rising (special thanks to Lori and Paul). It was the Wolf Moon for 2010 (the biggest full moon of the year, owing to how close it was to Earth).

I grabbed my camera and took a few shots, each with different exposures. I thought the image on my LCD failed to capture just how eerily large the moon was. That, and that from my LCD it didn’t look very different from my previous Project 365 moon entry, made me gave up after just 5 exposures. I resigned myself to finding something else to shoot.

The lessons I learned from that previous moon shoot came back to me. It was either I exposed for the moon to capture its details, or expose for the surroundings and blow out all the details on the moon. This time, though, I realized I had enough to actually play with combining two exposures.

Lots of layer masking here. One for the clouds, one for the tree, and one for the moon. I wish I was more careful with the street lamp when I was shooting, though. I think it’s distracting, but I just ran out of energy to even attempt to edit it out.

For my first entry for Project 365, I thought I would capture the blue moon that greeted 2010.

I learned that the moon isn’t as easy a subject as I initially thought it would be. It was either I exposed for the moon to capture its surface details and underexpose the things I wanted to frame against it, or expose for the framing elements and blow out all the details of the moon. I did both, and ultimately decided on the latter since it seemed to make for a more interesting photo.

Shot on a tripod after waiting for the moon to hang low in the sky. Shot in aperture priority mode and maxed out the f-stop to get the most details I can. Forgot to turn off auto ISO, so it was shot at 1600 ISO and it got grainy at the dimly-lit parts of the the clouds. Post-processing adjustment of contrast to hide most of the high ISO noise, and then white balance to give the moon a blue hue.