271/365 Lily of the Valley

It stopped raining for a few minutes today and that is when I ventured out to the cold wet back yard and got this shot.
It is shots like this that really make me pine for a macro lens for my new Canon. I have one in mind, but am still recovering from the last purchases and the switch to Canon.
However my Olympus gear is now up on Kijiji and what a steal of a deal that is going for. If you are interested in a slightly used Olympus E-30 with four lenses (a perfect semi-professional kit)- two of which are top notch lenses - then send an e-mail my way.
Back to the non macro lens macro shot.... AKA a lot of cropping...

270/365 Morning LIght

269/365 Chocolate Zen!

Imagine having family traveling through your city, stopping in for a visit and arrriving at your door with this....

 

Chocolate Zen Bakery is a local Winnipeg bakery that specializes in a modern European style of baking.
Absolutely deee.....liscious!

268/365 Rain, rain, rain

Is anybody else here in Saskatoon sick of the rain? And the wind? And the cold?
Are we in for a repeat of last summer?
Are we having trouble taking global warming seriously yet?

Are your rain gutters overflowing too?

267/365 After Eight

And how appropriate that I am posting this after eight.
Yes there is more chocolate around here and people just keep bringing it out. I am choosing to photograph it rather then eat it.

Okay...I had one. But just one.

266/365 Off the program!

Man am I off the program. I have been skipping the 5:30 am gym visit for two weeks now opting for sleep after staying up way too late working on THIS. Add to that potato chips which I NEVER eat! And tonight these chocolate covered almonds calling out to me.
It's sad I tell ya - very sad.
It had better pass soon!

265/365 juliecortensphotography.com

Only one hundred photos away from completing my year. Actually 100 seems like a lot of photos.
But tonight's photo is very special.
It represents all my evenings for the past two weeks, sometimes until 2am and most of my weekends.
I finally have my own web site with my own domain name.

sigh.... I have learned a lot and it has taken this old brain of mine a lot of time to figure it out - not to mention countless e-mails with domain sites and web hosts and pulling out that visa a few times.

But here is the photo of the day -  a screen shot of my home page.

I have kept it simple - very simple. I don't want words on this site, just good solid photography.


It offers private password protected galleries for all my customers.
You can also purchase photos and if you really want one on a t-shirt - I can do that too.
or perhaps you want a large canvas of the South Saskatchewan River.

If you find a photo you want to share on facebook - just click on the facebook icon and it will load to your facebook after you sign in.
Or just sit back and enjoy. 

The wonderful feaure is that bride and families can share their gallery on facebook and give friends their password - this way their gallery is shared with their facebook pals.

So, please visit.
Please leave me a comment.

Feel free to contact me for photo shoots - so much better then trying to get me on my yahoo account.

Blessings!
Julie

264/365 Baby Robin

They are in the cedar hedge next to the house. Tonight I got a glimpse of one of them.

263/365 Heintzman

Just when I was sure I had run out of things to photograph indoors on miserable weather days.....

262/365 Rain

...and wind....and cold....
The plan was to take a photo of some fireworks my son brought home the other night. However the rain, wind and cold would not let up this evening. It just seemed to become worse actually. So here is all I managed for a photo today. It is taken from the warmth of the kitchen. The furnace went on twice today!
As a child I always remember the Victoria Day long weekend as hot, sunny and likely involving a sunburn. As a teenager it meant going camping. And as a young mom it meant planting the garden and the planters.
But for the past several years it has been cold and rainy. If it is anything like last year, it could be the middle of June before things get planted. Let's hope it is nothing like last year!

261/365 Jessica and Darcy

So in love. Didn't have to tell them to do anything - it all came naturally.
Kind of made Sherpa and me feel like new lovebirds again.

260/365 Rain Storm

Got caught in a downpour on the way home from work.
My only photo of the day.
Yuck! I don't like it when I have nothing to work with but yesterday was busy and no photo ops.
Glad I at least pulled out the Canon powershot on the way home.

259/365 Transformer?

Just an ordinary drive home from work.....

Does anyone know what this is called?

258/365 ROYGBIV

I was sitting on the deck this evening enjoying the heat (in the 80's for you Americans), the BBQ'd pork chops and the sound of the sprinklers watering the lawn. What a beautiful moment. Then I saw that the sprinklers were making a spectacular rainbow.
I was composing the 365 shot of the day when Mr. Resident Robin walked into the frame.
Nice.
Thanks you Mr. Robin.

 

Here is a really cropped in version of the same angle but faster shutter speed. 

Aren't you glad I didn't make you guess what it was?

257/365 Kens 50th

Our good friend turned 50 today.

Happy Birthday Ken!

256/365 Baby

Our daughter and son-in-law are expecting their first.

255/365 Fabulous Day

What a fabulous day. I have so many photos I don't know which ones to post so check out the regular blog for all the photos of the day.
The one I chose for the photo of the day was the one I took last - the one after the morning of bike rides, coffee date with sweetheart, a visit to the farmers market and four hrs of yard work followed by a long shower and a fabulous dinner all shared with my sweetheart.
Those are fiddleheads there on the plate with the BBQ chicken. We ate on the deck. A perfect end to a perfect day. Thankful!

254/365 Sunset

Ahhhhh  sunsets on the prairies......
Happens to be the same location as yesterdays photo. :)

253/365 I Love Spring

I love spring. And it has been a little slow in arriving this year, but it is here in all its splendor! The lawn mowers are humming (smell that sweet grass?), the neighbours are out walking their dogs, I smell the BBQ's going. People are coming out from the long winter of hibernation and just reveling in the sun again.
Yup! Spring is wonderful.
And the  5 yr olds are in the field across the street are practicing their soccer skills. Well the dads are really trying, but the kids are more interested in just playing. But, oh my, how I am reminded of those spring evenings of soccer practice with the boys, or baseball. Setting up the lawn chairs, watching them 'practice' and trying to keep tabs on the baby and the toddler while visiting with other mothers. Ah, wonderful days. Cherish them! They will be gone in a flash!

And now, all nostalgia removed, I am gloating over my 70-200 zoom IS lens that captures these shots from a long way away! If you have a Canon - you NEED this lens!

I apologize again for my verbosity....my husband is out of town all this week..... it's quiet around here.
But perhaps it might encourage all you lurkers to comment???

252/365 Fiddleheads

Every day I ask myself the same question with a minor variation.
"Man, have you been taking a photo every day for 252 days?"
And then I have this moment where I wonder if I will go into withdrawal symptoms when I reach 365 and stop. Or maybe I am addicted and won't be able to stop?
And then I wonder why I am doing this and really, does ANYBODY care? Don't answer that Paul!

And if it is just for me, then why upload? Heck if it is just for me I can think of other things to do to improve my photograpic skills....like purchase some Lightroom presets and Photomatrix.....but I digress.


from the garden after work today....

Fiddlehead ferns refers to the unfurled fronds of a young fern harvested for food consumption. The fiddlehead, or circinate vernation, unrolls as the fern emerges from the ground with new growth. As fiddleheads are harvested early in the season before the frond has opened and reached its full height, they are cut fairly close to the ground.

So this Sat morning the plan (and sweetheart doesn't know yet until he reads this) is to bicycle down to City Perks for coffee/tea (I am sworn off even decaf now), then to the farmers market for fiddleheads and then to the grocery store for butter.

If you haven't had fiddleheads lightly sauteed in butter....well you haven't tastes a true bit of Canadiana.

Sorry to make you read so much. It was a productive day at work and I am on a roll.....

251/365 Fountain

Out for a walk with my neighbour this evening - and it was a beautiful evening for a walk. The sun was setting and shining on this fountain in the middle of the lake giving it a beautiful hue.

250/365 "I Don't Know"

My son walked around the corner of the hall carring what I thought was a dog! Scared me half to death for a second there because we don't have a dog! But it was a stuffed dog from the basement. I had been asking him what I should photograph for the 365 today - this was his suggestion.
So here he is.
Asked  my son what the dogs name is.
He said, "I don't know".
Works for me.

249/365 Happy Mother's Day

Okay, I didn't take the photo, but I supplied the camera and set the options. My son Harold took the photo - man I look tired.  :)
We went to Boston Pizza for lunch and Harold gave me the funniest card ever - he always finds the most hilarious cards. And he writes the most wonderful things in his cards to me.

All the rest of the gang phoned to wish me a happy Mothers Day - so it was a very special day for me.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there. 

248/365 Greening Up!

Despite all my whining and complaining, Saskatoon is starting to green up quite nicely. This morning there were even rowers on that very cold river which had ice on it less then a month ago.

My first river photo of 2010.... I think.

247/365 Bud

... on my maple tree. A sure sign that spring will come is all it's glory and splendor.

246/365 Shoes

This is why I do this 365 thing. Because when I am dog tired from working an intense day with SHR and editing photos all evening and I remember I still need to upload a photo of the day, it is okay to pick up the camera and flash and take a photo of the shoes at the back door.
See, if I wasn't compelled to honour my commitment to this daily ritual, I would never have a photo of the shoes at the back door.... some of which I see belong to people that do not live here!

245/365 MORE Snow

Enough already!

244/365 Orchids

Beautiful orchids.
But what you don't see is the blowing, wet, cold, miserable snow and high winds on the other side of the window.
Trying to stay inside and having trouble thinking about what annuals I will plant this year.
If any!

243/365 Pickerel

It is a lame shot today. Absolutely no creativity. Maybe it is work, or being tired, or taking so many photos over the past two weeks (between two weddings and vacation I have logged 2700 photos).
But I was not in the mood for photo taking - which is very rare for me.
So here it is. My sweetheart made supper tonight as I was working job two on the computer.
Pickerel - our favorite fresh water fish.

242/365 Pals

All creativity was all zapped out with 12 hrs of wedding photos yesterday. So finding a shot of the day today seemed more a burden than anything else. I am not sure I want to pick up my 200 lbs of camera for a few days (at 9:30 pm last night it felt like 200 lbs).

But as I was sitting in church, dog tired, I saw it.

This father/son pair are so wonderfully close. The son adores his father - you see it in the way he looks up to his dad, listens to his dad, with his Bible on his lap -  just like dad. He tries to be grown up like dad but every now and then he puts his head on dad's shoulder or cuddles up to him. I love this little guy- he is so polite and well mannered - a joy to be around.
But today... well I glanced up and saw this father son team dressed alike and it made my heart smile -  a real big smile.

So I pulled the little 4 oz PowerShot out of the bottom of my purse and took one photo - no flash, no one knew. One photo today - that's it.
And I LOVE it!

241/365 Brothers

Loooong day - 12 hrs in heels (and on my toes  and a few chairs as well) with a heavy camera in my hand. Too tired to cull thru the hundreds of photos tonight, but here is one that caught my eye.
I am liking the attitude. :)