ABC's Around Town (98/365)

So today I made it my mission to make an alphabet from stuff around town, because I was feeling really sick and didn't feel like a long walk, so I just grabbed a friend and went out for 15 min. The picks aren't very good but I had fun. I'll probably redo this idea a few times soon since I enjoyed it so much. Here is the full mosaic from flickr (read top-bottom, left-right, view in full res obviously):

And a couple fun flower/puppy snaps from the walk:

Flowers (97/365)

Narcissus 'Geranium'

Crataegus laevigata

Not sure about this one, any thoughts?

Taraxacum officinale

'Fondant' Hyacinthus orientalis

Tulipa

Not sure about this one, any thoughts?

'Northern Sun' Forsythia

Fritillaria meleagis

More tulips in a garden full of them:

Potentilla

Dicentra Spectabilis

Not sure about these, any thoughts?

Maple tree, Acer platanoides

Yet more tulips:

A puppy we met on our walk, Angel:

Viola tricolor

Not sure about these two, any thoughts?

Nighttime is the Right Time (97/365)

Some quick Penny pictures:

Some star photos. I've found an easy way to get decent sky pics in the city. I set the camera to "auto without flash", focus it on auto focus to something far away (or if there is something like the tree below in the picture, focus on that), then switch it to manual focus (canons wont take pictures in autofocus if it is not bright enough). Find a car/garden wall/play structure, and then just set the camera pointing straight up on it. That will let you take pictures straight up (the least light polluted part) and has some pretty nice results:

Another thing I have been messing around with is street lamps. I've found the best way to capture them is by zooming in (in the auto without flash, auto focus) on the light, focusing, and then zooming out without refocusing. The camera will set a shutter speed depending on how zoomed in you were when you focused and so you can control how bright the light is:

LAST thing I was playing with was zoom blurring at night, with so very fun effects. This kind of looks like that car is going to crash into that pole:

More interesting effects can be gotten by leaving the exposure stable for the most of it (say, four of five seconds) and then in the last second or so, zoom in:

Blurring while moving the camera (left to right):

In a circle:

More blurring in the last moment:

And my personal favorites of the night, zooming while tilting the camera (in effect, twisting one hand on the lens one way, and the hand holding the camera body the other way):

Twisting with waves:

So, yeah, I had fun. :0)

Stauffer Library (95/365)

Procrastination at work:

Leeeetle itsy bitsy flower on campus:

More books! I know you guys are shocked:

The sun sets on Stauff and the students hunker down:

Campus at night is really pretty: