52 week photo project: Week 15 - Vienna

Brandon and I travelled to Vienna, Austria this past weekend so I could run a half marathon.  Fortunate for us, the race wasn’t until Sunday so we got to do some sightseeing on Sunday.  Vienna is such a beautiful and classical city and race day was absolutely perfect.

Hofburg Imperial Palace, this was also the race finish area.

The race expo.

Schönbrunn Palace

and the Palace grounds and gardens…

52 week photo project: Weeks 13 & 14

I’ve been a horrible blogger and photographer these past couple weeks.  Even with the gorgeous weather, I’ve been a bit of a slump.  Not really feeling too inspired to pull out my camera.  But I think that is okay, sometimes it is nice to take a step away from the camera and just enjoy the scenery.

I took these photos of some jewelry that my Mom made for one of my friend’s birthday.  After taking a 2 month trip around the world, courtesy of the US Postal System, the package finally made it here safely.  Even though the gift was a little late, my friend loved the jewelry and I was pretty impressed with my Mom’s skills.  I love the deep green of the jade.

Here is another macro from my garden shoot that I did last week.  Because I have such a hard time dealing with the posterization of reds and pinks I just cropped this image and left it as is. 

52 week photo project: Week 12

I played around a bit with my settings to get this sunset shot.  I metered off of the sky instead of the building to get a silhouette.   In reality, there was actually quite a bit of light left. 

These two photos were taken in Heidelberg’s Altstadt.

52 week photo project: Week 11

As I’ve said before, I love vintage cameras.  I love researching them, I love going to flea markets to find them, and I love photographing them.  Here are a couple that Brandon and I found recently at a flea market. 
In our hunt for cool vintage cameras, we have actually found a couple that seem to be in working order.  We bought some film and plan to go out shooting in the coming weeks to experiment a little.  Stay tuned and we’ll see how it turns out!

Also, check out more cameras and photos in my "Vintage Camera" tab.

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52 week photo project: Week 10

Playing with string is one of the most fun activities in my house, at least according to our cats.  Even with all of their fancy cats toys, string remains their favorite play toy…hair rubber bands are a close second.

52 week project: Weeks 8 & 9

I fell a little behind on my project with my recent vacation to Los Angeles, so I am doing a little bit of catch up now.  I took a ton of photos during the trip, but here are just a few of my favorites.

The Central Perk from “Friends”

One of my favorite stars from childhood

Cool graffiti in Hollywood

Delicious cupcakes from the Frosted Cupcakery in Hollywood

Disney’s California Adventure at night

52 week photo project: Week 7 - Strasbourg

Brandon and I took at little trip to Strasbourg, France this weekend since we had never been there together, and it is only about an hour and a half down the road.  Even though it was a bit chilly, we really enjoyed relaxing and exploring this beautiful city.  As we walked through the area of Petite France we found this very colorful bike and thought it would be perfect for the Simplicity photo challenge, not to mention my 52 week project.

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52 week photo project: Week 6

There are so many things I love about living abroad, one of them is the number of historical sites that are within a short drive of our house.  One of the places that we have been wanting to visit is a place called Thingstätte, in Heiligenberg.  Tucked away in the forest overlooking the city of Heidelberg and it’s castle, is an old open-air amphitheatre built in the 1930s by the Nazi party.  I need to research Thingstatte a bit more, but it was apparently used by the Nazi party during WWII for rallies and festivals.  Standing on the stage and looking out at the rising rows of stone seats, it is hard not to wonder what it looked like when it was first built and think about that dark time in German history.  It is truly an impressive site and one that is hard to capture with just photos. 

52 week photo project: Week 5

Since I have participating in quite a few photo challenges lately, I haven’t posted too many photos of my kitties.   Since my little girl, Mia, loves to have her photo taken and loves attention even more, I decided to post photos of her this week.   Isn’t she gorgeous?

52 week photo project: Week 4

As I said last week, Brandon and I decided to play tourist in our town and visit some of the places that we take for granted.  One of those places is definitely the Heidelberg Castle.  It is too easy just to admire it from afar and keep telling ourselves that we’ll visit it again someday. 
In the numerous places I have lived, there are always one or two places that I have passed by and always wanted to go visit, but never did.  Who knows if I’ll ever be back to those places or if they are even still there, but we are trying to make it a point to visit the places that we want to go and not hold it off.  We have a little over a year left here in Germany and our to-do list is long, so I guess we need to start working on it! 
-Visit Heidelberg Castle together (we have been there separately)----check!



A couple of the huge wine barrels within the castle.
 

A bit of a repeat from my SOOC Sunday post above, but this is the same photo with a tiny tweak of editing in LR.

52 week photo project: Week 3

Our week started in Mayrhofen, Austria and ended with a day in Heidelberg, Germany.  Although it may sound pretty exciting, everything in between involved work, laundry and just hanging around the house. 
Sunday ended our snowboarding trip to Austria and I got a couple pictures of our wonderful little hotel. 

On Saturday we decided to play tourist in Heidelberg (about 20 minutes down the road from our house) and headed to the Zoo to play with the animals.  We were pleasantly surprised by the zoo and had such a great day checking out all the animals.  

52 week photo project: Week 2

This week wasn't a good week as far as photography goes.  Although we had another great snowboarding trip planned to the Alps (Austria this time), I was more focused on boarding than photography.  So on Saturday night (my last day of week 2), I broke my camera out in hopes of getting at least a couple shots for this project.  This definitely not the way I hope this project to go, but I blame the short work week and a day on the road.  Also, snowboarding on the mountain isn't exactly convenient for photography.  I have a camera backpack but since I'm not the best boarder I don't want to risk wiping out and damaging my camera and my own body.  Plus, I'm not sure how much I want to push the weather-proofing on my D300s.  One of these days I hope to take my camera out to the mountain and I was definitely wishing I had it as I watched the crazy boarders and skiers do flips in the snowpark.

Anyway, here are a couple shots from this week.

Tossing the pizza dough.

The view from our balcony.  Excuse the "noise".

One of our favorite places to eat in Mayrhofen.

A self portrait while shopping.

52 week photo project: Week 1

After completely failing at the 365 project last year, I have decided to try the 52 week project. I figure this will be a less daunting task then having to pull out my camera each day and then upload a photo. Instead of FORCING myself to take a photo a day, I hope to feel ENCOURAGED to challenge myself each week to take a few photos and post them here. We'll see how it goes...

The first week of the 2011 will be a bit different because the 1st was on a Sunday, so the dates of my Week 1 are from 1-8 January. Yeah, I know, it's technically more than a week, but this is my blog, my project and I reserve the right to change the rules as I go along.

Today we decided to play tourist and took a little trip to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. We did a little sightseeing, shopping, eating and, of course, photography.


This handsome guy may look a little grumpy as he overlooks the neighborhood streets, but he found time to let us pet him and pose for a photo or two.


I'm not sure if these wine bottle were left from New Years or if they have some other significance, but I thought they looked interesting.






Looking down the sprial staircase at the Rathaus (city hall).


If you can't tell from some of my other photos, I love interesting doors that I see throughout my travels.