Nine days and counting.

by | Jan 10, 2025 | Photography

Good day, all! I have BIG news coming tomorrow or Sunday, but today, I wanted to share my first nine photos for those of you who are not following my 365 Project. I plan to periodically include a quick slideshow of these in my blog posts. Comments are appreciated. If you aren’t sure what I am talking about when I say 365 Project, please read my last post (scroll down). Two quick notes. If you want to read the captions, you need to open the photos by clicking on one of them. Then, in the lower right, you will see two buttons. One is an info button. Click that to see the caption and camera info.

Today, I’m sharing my other hobby besides photography: cooking. In fact, this is just basil that I’m growing in a hydroponic garden. I took this shot today to make use of my 50mm f1.4 lens, which I haven’t used in over a year. Additionally, it’s an older F-series lens, so I need to use an adapter to attach it to my Z7. I still appreciate what the “nifty fifty” does at a low f-stop.
This is a different kind of photo, and I admit that. I got the idea for it while walking home from the gym today. It was sunny outside. I wish I had taken it as soon as I got home while the shadows were still visible, but I waited, and they disappeared. With this photo, I wanted to show what I do almost every day of my life—I walk. So far this year, I have walked slightly less than 43 miles. Last month, I walked a total of 137 miles. So I see this scene (my foot) quite often. But it would have been better with a shadow.
Hallelujah! For the first time since before Christmas, we have sunshine. So I had to take a sunshine photo. About a mile from our house is Duck Lake. You don’t have to hike too far into the brush to see this lake. This is the way it looks in the winter. In the summer, it is hard to tell that it’s a lake because it is covered in lily pads from shore to shore. One thing that has already hit home with me just since I started this on the first. We truly live in a very beautiful place.
This is a throwaway. I’m posting it because I have OCD about completing tasks and sticking to them. You’ll notice this as the year progresses. Some days, like today, I settle. I dislike settling, but the alternative is to go out right now at 6:00 pm and find something interesting to photograph. Dinner is over, and I’ve had a long day, so you get this ornamental cabbage, which I took this morning while running errands.
I am going to call this my real estate shot. Earlier today, I decided to get out all my lenses, put them on my camera, and shoot a few photos with each. Part of my 365 journey will be to make sure I have at least 20 photos with each lens by the end of the year. As a travel photographer, I never travel with any lens other than my 28-400mm zoom. It covers everything I want to cover and hasn’t failed me yet. One of my lenses is a 10-24mm fisheye lens. It’s the one real estate photographers use to get photos like this—they make a room that isn’t that big, look like you could play full-court basketball. In this case, this is our dining room. The wall on the left has artwork from every country we have visited and many cities as well. #365 #diningroom
This morning, the weather forecast was still for lots of rain, but the web radar said we would have a break from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. So, I hustled out to take a few shots, knowing that if I waited, I might only wind up with rain again. Walking around our neighborhood, I found this guy in one of those faux stream beds. We have one, too, and I liked this guy so much I almost stole him to put in ours, but I think our neighbor would have noticed. It’s his eyes that pulled me in.
I wanted to show what today was all about here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. It was about rain. Lots of rain. Took this with my seat reclined in my Ioniq 5 with the moonroof open and trees in the background. It’s dark, it’s moody, and it’s exactly what I was after. A really cold and dismal day.
For Christmas, my daughter and her wonderful family bought us a visit to the brand-new Illusions Museum in Seattle. It was a veritable wonderland for photographers. I would say that this was my favorite shot, but I can’t. There were others I liked better, but this one was the easiest to silhouette. I have a policy that I won’t shoot photos of my grandkids that are identifiable and post them online. But that’s OK. The rest are more family photos than this one, and I will keep those
Today I begin a 365 project where I will be taking one photo a day and posting it. Learn more about the project on my blog at www.jimbellomo.com. Today’s photo is of Welcome Lake on Redmond Ridge in Washington State. I plan on taking this same photo on one day in every season.

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.  —Henri Cartier-Bresson

1 of 365

by | Jan 1, 2025 | 365

Today I begin a 365 project where I will be taking one photo a day and posting it. Learn more about the project on my blog at www.jimbellomo.com. Today’s photo is of Welcome Lake on Redmond Ridge in Washington State. I plan on taking this same photo on one day in every season.

One of my biggest faults as a photographer is that I primarily shoot travel photos—(pretty decent travel photos, IMHO ?), but still, photos I took while traveling. Since we don’t travel every day of the year, I don’t use my camera for about three months a year. The rest of the time, my camera resides in my office cabinet.

Fifteen years ago, Kathleen told me, “You only take pictures when we are on trips or for holiday family shots.” I agreed, and in January of that year, I started my first 365-day project. I took one photo a day for the entire year and posted it. I have done three of these 365 projects since, the last in 2018. It’s time for another, so here we go.

This exercise is not just about taking the photo; it’s about learning more about my camera, my lenses, the features I don’t use and how I can use them. I realized the last time I did a 365, I was shooting a much older camera—I believe a Nikon 750. Since then, I have owned a Nikon D-810 and now have a Nikon Z7II. It’s time to learn my Z a little better.

When you are a travel photographer and go out to shoot about three times a year (when I shoot thousands of photos in a short amount of time), you forget things about your camera in between the trips. The simplest things to turn off and on can really mess you up when you start taking photos that you really want.

So, this project I am starting today is about two things: learning how to use my Z7 from top to bottom and finding new and different ways to shoot everyday life. I have seven months and one day from today until our next big trip to Southern Africa, so that gives me a chance to really get to know my camera and learn a little bit more about myself as a photographer.

Above is today’s shot. About two miles from here is this beautiful, small, private lake that is part of a very high-end and expensive development. I walk by this lake all the time, and as my friend Bob will tell you, I have sent him many photos I took with my phone while walking. Today is the first time I have photographed it with my Nikon. It does make a huge difference.

Now, I don’t want you to worry that you will get a notification every day. I would unsubscribe from that myself. But I am going to take the photo and post it on a new page called 365, which you can see in the menu bar above. Then, one day a week, I will post a quick slide show gallery of that week’s photos. If you want to see them sooner, you can check the 365 page anytime. I will also caption them on that page with exactly where I took them, why I took that particular photo and any technical stuff I might have done to it.

Photography is a way of feeling, touching, and loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things long after you have forgotten everything.  —Aaron Siskind