I am in the process of working through a backlog of photos to process, including the many photos I took on my vacation back in February. Every so often when I see a scene that is just too much to take in one frame, I like to snap multiple frames with the intent of stitching them together later. As the boat was leaving Istanbul, we were treated to the beautiful and expansive shoreline. I snapped 20 overlapping frames at 135mm to get incredible 30,000 pixel wide panorama with detail throughout the scene. What you see above is a crop of a small portion of the scene shown in the file below.

UPDATE: I have added a “Zoomify” viewer that allows you to zoom and pan around the full resolution image. Hope you enjoy checking it out:

The full resolution file is available upon request.

Ok, now I’ve gone and done it.

I’ve decided to make the year long commitment to a 365 daily photo challenge. Deciding to do this challenge is something I’ve considered in the past, but frankly I’ve never thought I could stick with it for an entire year. Finding something interesting in my fairly routine day that typically covers a span of only 3 miles of travel and most of it inside either my office or home has seemed rather daunting.

I’ve come to the realization of a few things though that I thought I tackle with the 365.

I need the creativity boost. My camera has sat in the closet far to much lately. I need a reason to have it always with me and to be continually on the look out for something interesting.

I know that not every day will be all that interesting. In the past when I’ve done some shorter daily challenges I spent far too much time & brainpower trying to create something unique or what I thought as a better-than-average photo for the day. Though I don’t want this challenge to be just about getting a photo of the day, I am going to be ok if the photo is simply something I observed. Some days will be more interesting than others.

Some days I will take a photo, others I will make one. What that means is some days will be about observation, others will be a window into a project I am working on. In 2011 I have a goal to do more personal work, including an effort to pre-visualize some photos, then go about making them however that may be.

Daily photos, not necessarily daily posting. Though there will be a photo posted for every day, some of those photos may come in batches when I get time to process & post. I hope to post nearly every day, but there will definitely be breaks where the photos will not be seen for a few days. Case in point, I am going to be on a vacation for a bit in February and plan to be fairly disconnected through the trip.

This is for me. Though I sincerely hope some of you follow the posts on the new blog, this effort will be for my benefit. I hope to push my creativity, get out more with my camera, and this will be one of the personal projects I do for the year.

With all this in mind, here is the link to the new blog: 365.greatproj.com

You can get the RSS feed in the top right of the page to follow. Click through and Feedburner offers some email subscription options if you’d prefer to get the posts in your inbox. Hope to see you on the other side.

Note: This blog isn’t going away (quite yet). I do plan to still post here on various projects until I finally get my photo biz blog online, but you will get the daily photo post over on the 365.

I haven’t been blogging or really even taking many photos lately due to some very busy projects in which I am involved. I will be opening up a studio co-op with some other talented photographers in January, plus launching a new product through an online store. Lots of fun, but just a few more things added to the already full plate!

Despite being busy, I find it refreshing to take a moment and enjoy the little things around me. Typically that is mentally putting things aside for some family time, but this morning I happen to notice the sunrise out the front window. Rather than just smile and move on, I grabbed my camera and enjoyed a few minutes watching the colors unfold while capturing the moment. My day already feels better.

This last weekend I had the opportunity to spend time with my friend Kenneth Linge at his last edition of his Photographing People series. Kenneth is switching his workshops to some new topics and format, so this was the last time he was offering the third session of this series.

Unlike earlier sessions in the series, Kenneth prodded us to get out and create some scenes on our own with the model we were provided. We were to create something that we could later receive critique and ideas for improvement. Needless to say there were plenty of mediocre to bad images created, but also a few I was happy to have created. See more after the jump.

A big snow storm was headed our way, so there was plenty of wind and cold flowing through the back of the studio were we working outside. As a result, we ended up spending very little time outside. Our model Amy was a trooper though, braving the cold, wind and dust as it billowed around us.

I appreciated the some of the detailed ideas I received for posing, lighting, and in general finding ways to try and make people look their best. I have so much to continue to learn and practice, but it is through these kind of experiences I find myself gaining some ground. I find it fascinating to take time to simply create images for myself rather than with a specific deliverable in mind. A much different experience than doing family portrait work.

Here are a few more images from the day.

You can see some additional images of Amy from this day as I add them in her gallery here.

Thanks so much to Kenneth and MaryLyn for spending so much quality time with me throughout the day!

Last night I still had my lights set up from some previous shooting and decided to take some self-portraits. I figure when I don’t have anything else to shoot, I might as well volunteer to be my own subject. I like trying to cement in my head some of the differences in ways I can light the same scene and see how it changes the mood.

As with many photographers, I’m never really a fan of seeing myself in front of the camera, but if I am going to ask others to do it, I gotta do it too!

Canon 5D Mark II. Lighting: AB1600 camera right shot into collapsed reflected umbrella; AB800 on axis high & behind camera for fill. Processed in Lightroom for increased contrast, color & saturation.

Newport Beach, CA.

Last night was the harvest moon, so I thought I would try and get some photos of the moon. Unfortunately the weather – and some other obligations – were not cooperating. As the moon came over the mountains it was hidden by clouds.

Before heading to bed near midnight I went to turn off the outside light; but, when I hit the switch it actually turned the lights on. It was so bright outside from the full moon I actually though the porch light was already lit. I went outside and saw this beautiful, bright sky lit entirely lit by the moon. So, of course, I ran inside and grabbed my camera and tripod.

Here are a few other shots of the sky, moon and clouds I snapped over a few minutes.

Camera info: Canon 5D Mark II. 70-200L 2.8 and 24-105L. Most shots are at 1600 ISO, f/8 and f/2.8, 10-20 second exposures.

This last week I acquired some new (used) studio lights from a friend. I am excited to get to use them and understand how to improve my lighting with the new tools. Without doing much set up, I asked my daughters to pose for me to just see how much light they cast compared to my old, cheap lights. I was happy with the results.

Though I wasn’t trying to make any memorable portraits. I captured a few of my beautiful little girls that I thought I would share. Robyn above and Allison next.

…A counter full of freshly canned peaches and a house that smells wonderful!

Ok, happiness is a lot of things, but this is definitely one of them in my book.

I am continuing to take food photos for my wife’s ongoing recipe projects. Heather is testing, selecting and gathering up our family favorite recipes for a “best of” book to cook from. As she creates a new favorite recipe, she’ll prepare a plate for me to photograph to put in the planned book. Here are a few other recent photos from this project.

If you’d like to see the recipes for these and many other most excellent dishes, head on over to the “recipe” tag on our family blog: http://www.hallblog.com/search/label/recipe