Photo 52 Project - Week 7 (Black & White)

So I've been a little lax these last few weeks.  I haven't stopped taking pictures, but for the last few weeks, they've been mostly pictures of my family.  I did take some pictures over the last few weeks that I might post soon, but probably not part of my weekly challenge.

Now that we're getting into my favorite season, I'll be taking my camera out with me even more.  I have a bus trip to Sleepy Hollow coming up at the end of October.  I'm very excited about that one.  I've always wanted to go up there but haven't gotten around to it.

Today I decided to start shooting in RAW.  My camera has the option of shooting in both RAW and JPEG at the same time, so it's like training wheels for me.  I downloaded a trial of Photoshop Elements, and I spent part of tonight playing around with a couple of pictures.  Here's one of my cat, Felix.  I adjusted the white balance and changed the file to black & white.  I have to say that I was surprised at what a big difference playing with the white balance made.  I thought the picture looked nice as it was, but when I changed it around a little, it looked much nicer.
Tomorrow night I'll play around with a few more pictures to see what else I can do.  I can't wait to see what other options the program has.  

Photo 52 Project - Week 1 (Pets)

 After some research, I've come up with 52 (plus a few) ideas for my project.  I don't plan to number them, because I don't feel that forcing myself to come up with a picture is going to help me stick with it.  This offers me a little more flexibility with my plans.  My goal is to use my Canon Rebel most of the time, in order to learn the features better.  Sometimes that might not be possible, but I'm going to do my best.

So the topic for Week 1 is Pet(s).  This is my cat, Felix.

  As I was having my lunch yesterday, working on my list, my cat was napping in his bed, as usual.  He got up to stretch and decided that napping on his scratching box looked better.  To get my shots, I got down on the floor near him and started shooting.  I think I disturbed him, but  he was posing for me after a minute.  I even got some pictures of  him in his "cute mode," where he shows us his belly before he got bored and went back to napping.

The second picture I took with my Canon PowerShot.  One of my topics for the project is "sun flare," and I decided to fool around with the PowerShot in Manual mode.  I took a few shots of flowers back-lit by the sun, and when I was reframing the shot, my camera focused on the reflection of my neighbor's skylight.  I thought the effect was pretty cool.