This is the beginning of a year’s worth of photos! I’ve been looking forward to starting this project for a long time, so it’s great to finally get a chance to get the ball rolling on this thing!

7/01/07

On the first of the month, Amber and I went to Nathaniel Greene park to take some pictures of the flowers. While we were there, I also snagged a picture of the statue of Artemis that they have in the garden there. We left soon after because the tornado sirens were going off, but nothing came of it. We didn’t even get any rain.

That night we went to see Firefall, but instead of paying to get in, we parked our car at the head of the bike trail and walked about 2 miles in to see it! I think we actually got a better show than the people who paid to get in, because we were a lot closer to the action than they were. In the middle of the show, I managed to snap this great shot. I like this one the best out of this week’s images.

7/04/07

When I got off work on the Fourth, Amber and I took one of her clients to the park and then to an Independence Day celebration… I grabbed my camera and tripod, and we headed out the door.

We went to the park first, where I got some pictures of a purple flower that I cannot seem to identify (any help would be appreciated). Camera was hand-held, lens at 55mm, 1/160s at F/8. I was trying to reduce the depth of field as much as possible, so I got up real close and ended up with the following shot:

Then we were off to see the fireworks. We sat down with some friends of mine and took pictures of each other, the sky, the stage, and some random people while we were waiting for the fireworks show to begin. When it finally did, I had my tripod up, my camera on bulb, shutter release in my hand, and I was ready! Unfortunately, at several points throughout the show there were large concussion fireworks which were powerful enough to knock my camera out of focus. I lost a few shots that otherwise would have been great, but there were still a few keepers in there:

7/08/07

Amber and I went bike riding around Springfield today to test out the bikes we got yesterday. And because anything worth doing is worth overdoing, we rode about 8 or 9 miles, from Sequiota down to Highland Springs and back. We’re both incredibly sore, but we both made it and the bikes are turning out to be a good investment. I’ve always been fascinated by gears and when we were about to take the bikes off of the back of our car I noticed the bike rack made for an interesting composition, so I snapped the following shot before our epic ride.