Dessert

It was hard to refrain from eating a piece while taking pictures.

Architectural Frame

Two unlike buildings superimposed through reflection. The black-and-white is a bit of a cop-out here, since the colors in the original just didn't match very well.

A Bug's Perspective

Four strong colors and an unusual perspective. Too bad about the traffic light's shadow in the background, though.

Shards 2

It works even better with back lighting.

Shards

Shards from a broken CD case between two polarizing filters. The plastic's stress patterns produce interesting color variations.

Shadow on Sidewalk

Shadows often make for interesting geometric shapes.

Crown

More droplet photography. It takes quite a bit of experimentation and patience to get a good picture. I had to stop experimenting when my flash ran out of battery.

Droplet

A first attempt at droplet photography.

Reflections of Britain

The window of Ye Olde King's Head, a British pub in Santa Monica. The contorted window pane mixes indoor and outdoor views in an interesting way.

Wheels and Heels

Exploring new perspectives.

Racing Duckling

This family of ducks was resting next to a pond, and got irritated at being photographed pretty quickly. I took this picture when they made their escape to a more peaceful corner of the pond.

Stairs and Stripes

The owner of the RV showed great stylistic sense by parking in front of this wall.

Space Salt

Ordinary table salt, photographed using the "reverse lens technique." The "stars" in the background are air bubbles in the glass I used as a background.

Waiting for the Cook

Another try at food photography. Now what to make out of these ingredients?

Life

A cluster of buds and open flowers. I almost feel like I can watch the buds develop into flowers.

Blue

Another exercise in color and geometry. This is the Blue Bus maintenance facility in Santa Monica.

Leaves

The afternoon sunlight playing in the leaves often catches my eye. Unfortunately this picture doesn't really have anything for the eye to focus on.

Hibiscus

When shooting macros, I tend to forget that I don't *have* to open the lens as wide as possible. Would this picture have benefited from a slightly wider depth of field?

White

An experiment with structure and tonality.

Mirror Image

Inside Bar Pintxo, a tapas bar in Santa Monica. The fuzziness and graininess are intentional, to capture the mood of the place... why don't you believe me?!

Math

This photo brings back memories of grad school. Except that my desk was never that clean, and I didn't own a nice espresso cup.

Newly Weds

I'm a lousy wedding photographer, so I'm quite happy that I got this one good shot.

Juicy

I've tried various ways of front and back lighting on this slice of orange. But in the end, natural lighting worked best.

Spouting Dragon

The water spouted by this dragon on 3rd Street Promenade forms interesting patterns. But the picture is too cluttered - I'll have to try again with a wider aperture lens.

Light as a Feather

A leaf backlit by the evening sun. Focusing was difficult since the leaf was shaking in the wind.

Trastevere

The façade of the Trastevere restaurant at the Santa Monica promenade.

Still Life with Plums

I usually don't try photographing food, but I found out how important lighting is, and how much I have to learn about the subject.

Night Mission

This lamp is illuminating the entrance of the San Gabriel Mission.

Deep Purple

I'm not sure if these flowers motivated the rock band's name, but this is one of my favorite colors.

Mondrian in 3D

I wish we had more interesting architecture like this around here. Bright colors and bold lines.

With Strings Attached

I haven't played the guitar in years, but at least it gets some photographic attention now. The shallow depth of field makes the strings look as if they're vibrating.

Pig-a-boo

A quick snapshot on our way to dinner. Pig is a permanent passenger in our car.

Bullseye

A close-up of this dartboard at work provided an opportunity to play with different depth-of-field settings. I am thinking of turning everything except for the dart and the bullseye into black-and-white, but I don't have a good workflow for photo editing yet.

Skyscrapers

These palm trees stretch into the sky from a Santa Monica side street. Yes, they're not very pretty. But if I keep with my picture-a-day program, you'll have to get used to seeing quite a few mediocre pictures here.

Up the Wall

An interesting combination of texture and color.

Stair Geometry

At the Santa Monica library. Straight lines and bold colors are a photographer's friend.

Tree Time

This awesome tree is rooted in the frontyard of a house nearby. It's hard to get the entire tree into the picture without introducing too much clutter. I'll have come back to it another day :-)

Composition with Spokes

I was intrigued by the blue and red colors, as well as the criss-cross pattern created by the spokes.

White Roses

I noticed the evening sunlight playing on the petals of these roses on my bike ride home from work. Unfortunately, by the time I had my camera out, the sun had disappeared behind a cloud. But the soft light also does the flowers justice.

A Picture A Day

My goal with this blog is to take a picture every day and publish it here. Usually I only take my camera out on vacations and weekend trips, and let it gather dust in between. But when on vacation, it's sometimes hard to be creative with your camera and to just enjoy being where you are at the same time. So I hope this project will motivate me to explore some different approaches to photography, and to look for photo opportunities where I haven't necessarily looked before. At the very least, it will force me to be more creative.