365 Day Photo Challenge - October 2012

Insanity has been described as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition I'm possibly insane because I keep working on my daily photo project without a plan or even a general idea of what I want to do other than take just one hopefully interesting picture every single day for a year. Predictably, that shows in the results - I've gotten a few really good pictures but quite a few duds as well. At least for this month I have a few ideas - it's October and that means octoberfest which is perfect for me since I love beer.

I decided that since it's October, I'll make my daily photo journal this month a celebration of Octoberfest since I really love beer. I've also got a lot of work planned around our house this month, and hopefully we're closing on a small rental property that needs a lot of fix up work, so I shouldn't have any shortage of picture ideas. Just in case though, I ordered myself a copy of Extraordinary Everyday Photography: Awaken Your Vision to Create Stunning Images Wherever You Are. It looks really interesting - I don't get out as much as I should and this book claims to help you see photographic opportunities no matter how boring your existence is:) I can't wait to get it and see if it deliveres on the promise:)

Well, it's October, which means Oktoberfest, and my fellow beer lovers know what that means:) Well, my kid was sick and I had a lot of house cleaning to do so instead of opening a beer to take a picture of I just took one of a beer stein my mom painted for me when she used to be into doing ceramics. The live beer shots will start this Friday:)

I was reading Chapter 5 (Discovering Pictures Where You Live) of Extraordinary Everyday Photography and decided to see if I could find anything interesting to photograph by digging up my back yard. After only 10 or 15 minutes of digging, I found this incredible dinosaur fossil!!! Well, actually it's just dried soy sauce on a plate - the remains of my son's breakfast. It really does look like a dinosaur fossil though, and it proves the book's point that you can find interesting pictures to take just about anywhere - even in your kitchen.

It's not cold in Sparks yet, but the nights are getting a little chilly so most of the flowers are looking a little ragged. I saw this one on a bike ride through the park by my house and it looked nice so I decided to snap a picture. Usually when I try taking a flower picture, part of the flower comes out blurry but this one actually came out pretty decent.

OK, I work at a Community College. While walking around campus today I noticed this delivery truck at our loading dock. Hmmm... I never see this in any of the vending machines...

This little guy was sold as an HO Scale locomotive, but when you look at the size it's really more like an S Scale model. I'm going to detail it a little, replace the drive, and use it as a switch engine on my Sn42 Owens River Valley Railway.

The park by our house has a couple of BBQ's for people to use, and when I was on a bike ride with my kids this one just stood out to me. To mee it looks like a smiling robot:) Taken with my ancient Nikon Coolpix 4800.

There's just something about a sunrise I just can't resist - especially since my little ELPH 100HS makes them look so good when it's set to Super Vivid mode. This one actually looked drab in real life, but my trusty little pocket camera took care of that for me, no post-processing necessary.

Tonight we went to Ferrari Farms to buy a pumpkin and take our son through the corn maze. It was almost dark when we got there so it was hard to get some decent pictures. Luckily, the sky had some ominous looking clouds that made a good backdrop for the corn stalks. This shot kind of reminds me of the movie Children of the Corn. Taken with my Pentax K200D.

My mom came over tonight and brought us some apples and tomatoes grown organically in my parents' garden. Home grown tastes so much better than store bought...

I was going through some of my things today and came across this Santa Fe locomotive. It's a Tyco HO Scale model and it was part of the first train set I ever got. I think I was 10 or 11 and it was a Christmas present - probably the best one I ever got.

Today was awesome. Our house finally closed. This is an absolute doll house about 1 mile from my work. It need some TLC but once it's done I don't think we'll have any trouble getting it rented out. I love real estate:)

We love taking our son to Lowes Build and Grow clinics. He gets a free toy and has a blast building it himself. I get a kick out of helping him and mom enjoys watching us work together. Here he is building today's project, a "Spook Bus."

Today we went to my parent's house to make a batch of coffee can bread, eat dinner, and most important carve a pumpkin:) Robert got a pumpkin carving kit at Walmart that he was anxious to try, grandma picked up a pumpkin at Trader Joe's, and we had a great time carving the pumpkin.

I like collecting reefers, especially beer reefers. I found this kit on eBay for about $10. Some day I'm going to have enough to make a beer train for my HO Scale layout.

I love HP calculators - their RPN entry system makes them easier to use then any other. The HP 12C is the only one they still make from the Voyager series. The design is about 30 years old and it's still the first choice of many real estate and financial professionals. Since I dabble in real estate I figure I should have one:)

The previous owner of the house we just got put this Wonder Dog on the fence. I like it:)

I don't just collect beer reefers - I'll collect any reefer with an interesting paint scheme. This Brookside Dairy reefer is probably my favorite. This one is in S Scale, made by S Helper Service. They went out of business this year so I'm really glad to have it.

Hmmm... I wanted to do lots of beer shots this month but October is half done and I haven't done any so far??? Well, was shopping with the family for a Halloween costume for Robert and saw this Sierra Nevada Amber Ale. Kind of pricey but really good:) Nice dark amber color, excellent flavor, very smooth, not bitter at all. I love it...

I was shopping with my wife in Scolari's and saw this pretty purple cabbage. Shot with my Droid phone.

This is why I get depressed sometimes... less than 2 weeks ago I had this room (dining/living) totally spotless. I haven't put anything out and this is what it looks like today. I know guys aren't supposed to be bothered by a messy house and I'm not usually, but when I came home to this today it just put me in a really bad mood.

I've been trying to find things around the house to take pictures of - the days are getting shorter and the weather is getting crappy so I need some indoor subjects to keep this project going through the winter. Nothing really striking about this picture of my TV remote control except for the amount of detail picked up by my Canon ELPH 100 HS. Not bad for a cheap point and shoot camera...

It's still dark when I get to work in the morning which is great - I'm here for sun rise so I can get some spectacular sunrise pictures. Today was not the day for that - too many clouds so it was going to be gray and dreary. However, I was walking to the library today and this window against a dark cloudy sky just kind of jumped out at me. Taken with my ELPH 100 set to Super Vivid.

My younger son has been going to an after school chess club for the last 6 weeks, and today was the last day of the program. Each week there was a tournament, so today the scores were added up - and my son got 3rd place overall:) He's in 2nd grade and he beat out kids in 3rd - 6th grade to get his award. He was happy and his brother was really proud of him:)

When I was a kid I was a "scale model" railroader and I wouldn't be caught dead with "toy" trains. Now that I'm older I love them. I especially like Tyco HO and American Flyer S Scale toy trains. I never had Tyco's Spirit of 76 train as a kid, but now I really want one. I got the locomotive and caboose awhile ago, and just recently got the first freight car to complete the train. This one was pretty easy to find, some are rarer and harder to find. I hope to completer the train by July 4, 2013.

I've finally figured out that I'm going to have some kind of plan if I'm going to finish this photo challenge, and one of the things I'm going to do every month is take a picture of the state of my model railroad. This is my Varney Docksider sitting on my Timesaver layout. Hopefully next month I'll have some progress to show.

When I was a kid I liked collecting old stuff like real silver coins. Now I'm trying to simplify my life and when I found out my silver coins are worth about $250 I decided to sell them. So next week they're getting shipped to a silver dealer back east so I thought I'd take a picture for posterity.

When we bought a rental property, we knew the floor in the back room needed work, but it turned out worse than we expected. About half the joists (one entire end of the room) were not just rotted, but completely fallen apart. The only way to fix it is to rip out the whole thing and start from scratch. The good part is the floor will be level - it's an old house so it will probably be the only level floor in the whole house:) This is what it looks like now with the old floor ripped out and new supports being put up around the sides.

My son's best friend is a little girl who was adopted out of China. He thinks it's just about the coolest thing in the world since his mom is Chinese. One of the high schools in town has a Trick or Treat night on Oct. 30 as a fund raiser, so we took them. It was a blast:)

Since I already got my Halloween picture for the year yesterday, just decided to take a picture of some of the junk in my garage. The METLHED license plate is from a 73 Duster I owned a long time ago. I miss having a hot rod and all my money is tied up in a house we just bought. Hoping to get going on my Barracuda by spring though...