Neglected blogs are so sad.  To be clear, I have not been taking as many photos in the past few months.  I finished my 365 project and it burned me out for awhile.  But I have started working on some things in the past couple of weeks, and I hope to have many new pictures in the future.

Here are some new images that I’ve processed from my trips out west last summer.  Hope you like them!

I have taken pictures of a few different babies this summer, so here’s a sampling of pictures.  This is what I’ve been doing when I’m not working on the 365 project or on vacation.  (Though some of these were taken on vacation.)

269/365: I have this orange flowering plant in my backyard.  I really like it, but I don’t know what it’s called.

270/365: Rag rug.  This lives in my laundry room.

271/365: Queen Anne’s Lace in my backyard.  I have a lot of this growing in my backyard.  I suspect that the previous owner may have planted it there.

272/365: This sunflower was growing in my backyard, but not because I planted it.  The birds make a mess at the feeders, and a few weeks later I have a lot of baby sunflower plants.

273/365: An old friend and her little girl.

274/365: A CFL bulb in my bedside table lamp- this was a late night photo.

275/365: Rose of Sharon tree blooming in my backyard.

276/365: Hibiscus blooming in my front yard.

277/365: A bee on a blooming weed in my backyard.  (I didn’t say I was much of a gardener.)

279/365: Hydrangea blooming in my front yard.

280/365: Modest Mouse performing at the Pageant Theater in St. Louis.

281/365: The St. Louis Ethical Society building.  This isn’t much of a photo, but I love this building.

282/365: Cupcakes I made for a party.

284/365: A scarf on my pretty blue couch.  I love these colors.

285/365: Pine trees in my backyard.

287/365: Detail on my vintage swivel rocker.

288/365: On my aunt’s front porch.

289/365: My grandmother gave me these dishes, which are vintage Franciscan Tiempo.  They’re very out of character for her, but they were a wedding gift to my grandparents in 1950.

290/365: This grows in my backyard.  I think it’s mint.

291/365: I posted another picture of these orange flowers above.

292/365: A new pillow on a vintage chair.

293/365: The parking garage at work.

294/365: Hydrangea in my backyard.

295/365: I don’t know what kind of flower this is.  It’s growing through the fence from my neighbor’s yard.

296/365: Ceiling fan in my bedroom.

244/365: I returned from my trip Out West and immediately left for a family reunion at a state park in north Missouri.  It involved s’mores.  It was fun.

245/365: Another from the family reunion.  This cutie makes an appearance twice in the 365 project this month.

246/365: A picture of (most of) the family.

247/365: Purple coneflower in my front yard.

248/365: Shadows on my popcorn ceiling.

249/365: The Mongolian chain restaurant in my town has a Make-Your-Own-S’mores dessert option, which my sister chose as a birthday dessert to share.

250/365: White clover in my backyard.

251/365: My dog in the white clover in my backyard.  It was past dusk.  She likes to sit outside and monitor the world with an eye on the house.

252/365: I was really sick.  Really, really sick.  I took this with my iPhone because I was sick.

253/365: The front yard of my parents’ house is so lush in the summer with hostas and green things everywhere.

254/365: Milkweed grew all over my weedy backyard this summer, which was much appreciated by the local bees.

255/365: Hydrangea in my front yard.  I love hydrangea.

256/365: My bedside table lamp and stack of unread books.

257/365: Coreopsis in my backyard.

258/365: A trip to DC at the end of June for a work conference, but it involved visiting family & friends and eating at lovely restaurants.

259/365: Inside the DC Metro (the Chinatown/Gallery Place stop).

260/365: A building in downtown DC with pretty blue sky behind it.

261/365: A 5-month-old cutie-pie.

262/365: Old friends and their toddler.

263/365: Another family photo!

265/365: These grow in my backyard as well, but I am not sure what they are.  They kind of look like orchids, but I am sure they are not.

266/365: Purple shamrocks in a pot.  This was for a friend because how I acquired the first purple shamrock corm was… hmm, well, maybe not very ethical.

267/365: Acquisition of purple coneflowers in my yard was entirely ethical.  They continue to multiply regardless of my feelings on the subject.

268/365: The second of the two pictures of this cutie.  I love her blond hair that goes all curly in the Missouri humidity.

269/365: A chair in my living room- a vintage Cromcraft fiberglass shell chair.

I finally have my computer back to normal, and I’ve been busy processing photos over the past couple of weeks.  I finished the three different sessions that I did with new families of my acquaintance (the acquaintances are old; the families themselves are new) and may get to post some of the pictures here sometime.  Now I’m working through my backup of 365 photos, and soon to start photos from family reunions before I can tackle everything from my June travels.

But here is a nice selection of photos from the Out West trip- one picture per day, for the 365 project.  Plenty more where this came from.  These were all taken between May 28 and June 10, 2010.  (That’s how far behind I am.)

230/365: This was the first 365 photo that I took with my iPhone (though I’ve taken a few more in the weeks following this), using an app called Hipstamatic.  My camera gear was all packed up because I was leaving the next day for the trip.

231/365: A windmill in northeast Missouri at sunset.  These actually face east, so they’d be really nice at sunrise.  I really hope that I make it back there sometime to do them.  I like windmills.

232/365: In the Sand Hills of Nebraska.  I loved the drive through the Sand Hills.

233/365: In the Black Hills of South Dakota.

234/365: Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming.

235/365: The Tobacco Root Mountains in Madison County, Montana.

236/365: A female bighorn sheep near the northwestern entrance to Yellowstone National Park.  This is actually in Montana.  This was taken through an open car window in the pouring rain.  It rained for a good bit of my trip.  It didn’t seem to bother the sheep, though.

237/365: The entrance gate at the northwestern entrance to Yellowstone National Park.  A rain-free moment on an otherwise rainy day.

238/365: Hot springs at the West Thumb Geyser Basin along Lake Yellowstone in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.  The sun was out for this.  You can tell because the colors are vibrant with the overhead sun lighting the depths of the pools.

239/365: Yellowstone Lake.  This was taken on June 4, 2010, and that is ice covering this section of the lake.

240/365:  In Jackson Hole, the main valley of Grand Teton National Park.  It was a dreary day until the sun started poking through the clouds, and then I had a beautiful evening.

241/365: Closeup of a mountain in the Teton Range on a pretty day.

242/365: Sagebrush hills in central Wyoming.  I liked the sagebrush and the landscape of central and eastern Wyoming.

243/365: Scotts Bluff National Monument in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.  I had a very pretty morning at Scottsbluff before I spent the day on the interstate back to mid-Missouri.

It is July and I am back from a long month of being away!  I spent most of the month of June traveling, and when I wasn’t traveling, I was ill and handling busted computers.  I am glad to be healthy and home at last, getting into a normal routine of work and play.

I have thousands of photos to process from my trips- photos of every type!  Nature & landscapes, wildlife, touristy snapshots, family photos, baby photos… I have a lot to do.  And I’ve been keeping up with my 365 Project even though it will be awhile before I’m caught up on Flickr with those.

I am busy uploading new photos to Flickr from my trip Out West (I drove to Yellowstone National Park and saw a good deal of Wyoming and Montana).  Keep up with them here.  And I’ll upload a few of my favorites now and again to this site as well.

In the Sand Hills of Central Nebraska.

Northwestern Nebraska in Oglala National Grassland.

Oglala National Grassland.

In the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Mount Teewinot in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

Teton Range, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

And me!  Next to the Snake River with the Tetons in the background.  This was the last night of my trip, but it was the only real self-portrait I took, so I had to get it done.

I’m really skipping around with my processing, so I have no idea what I’ll post next!  More to come!

215/365:  I love this glass, which has a gradient from orange at the top to red at the bottom.  But they are remarkably fragile and not for general use.  (Yeah, that’s right- I missed a third picture right between the last one I posted and this one.  Nice work, eh?  But missing three out of 229 is not terrible!)

216/365: Blue false indigo growing in my backyard.  I really love this plant, but I am trying to phase out its current flowerbed home.  I didn’t get to moving this one this spring, so I will have to wait to move it until after the blooms go away.  It is such a pretty color.

217/365: My LensAlign system, which helps to perfect focus on camera lenses.  I spent quite a lot of time getting it working.

218/365: Johnson’s Blue geraniums, which I planted the first year that I lived in my house.  They have gotten steadily bigger every year, and this year they’re the size of small shrubs.  The blooms are quite beautiful.

219/365: My hand and fingers.  It is remarkably hard to get a good composition of your own hand while looking through a viewfinder.

220/365: Beautiful spicebush swallowtail having a feast on the blooming honeysuckle in my yard.  It was gorgeous and smelled deliciously.  I was taking pictures of the honeysuckle when this guy made a noisy appearance, clearly taking advantage of a pretty spring day.

221/365: A bamboo cutting board in my kitchen.  I like the grain of this wood.

222/365: A pretty blue bowl that I’ve had for years and years.

223/365: A gorgeous day at the ballpark, watching the Colorado Rockies beat our hometown Kansas City Royals.  We had a lot of fun anyway.  And this was taken pretty much from our seats.

224/365: Lovely texture in a red towel in my bathroom.

225/365: I like the colors of the KC Royals team.

226/365: Red osier dogwood blossoms in my yard.  This tree doesn’t bloom much, the flowers don’t have much of a scent, and it doesn’t put on much of an autumn show.  But that’s why I like the tree- it’s just a nice tree.

227/365: Detail on my fiberglass poinsettia lamp shade.

228/365: A small shrub that blooms in my backyard at this time of year.  I don’t know the type!  I will have to look it up.

I am nearly 2/3s of the way through this project, which is awesome!  I leave for a big vacation in a couple of weeks, and I hope to be caught up with all of my 365 photos by that time.

198/365: I have a small tiki mug collection.  The one in front is a moai, and it’s my favorite.

199/365: The full moon from my backyard.  I just kind of love the full moon, you know?

200/365: The full moon again, but a night with a little cloud cover.

201/365: My very silly dog likes to roll in the grass.  I love the big grin she wears when she does this.

202/365: A rusty grate near my office.  I liked the pattern and the color.

203/365: Marigolds at the Kansas City Farmer’s Market.

204/365: My grandmother (center) won a lifetime achievement award at her church’s women’s group.

205/365: These are weeds growing in the cracks of the sidewalk in front of my house.  The front of the house gets nice backlighting from the sun late in the day.  I often make use of it.

206/365: Ozark Bluestar blooming in my backyard.

207/365: A burning CFL bulb in my laundry room.  I broke the cover for this light fixture at some point, so it’s just a bare bulb in there, but who cares?  It’s the laundry room.  I thought the bulb looked cool on its own, though.

208/365: Honeysuckle blooming in my side yard.  I love the color of these.

209/365: A polka dot scarf that I love but never wear.

210/365: A pillow in my living room.  I like the pattern.

211/365: Sweet rocket blooming in my grandparents’ backyard on Mother’s Day.

212/365: My back and my hair.  I was trying for a self-portrait but I wasn’t feeling it.  But then I turned around and started to try some movement photos with my hair.  I think this one is okay.  I am really very picky and controlling about self-portraits.

213/365: I’m not so picky and controlling about pictures of other people, though!  This is my sister and her friend.  I made them pose and they did a few funny shots.  I liked this one.

Columbia had a rainy, rainy weekend.  I had some plans that were put on hold by the weather, so I found myself with a weekend and not much to do!  So I spent most of my ‘found time’ in front of the computer, processing a huge backlog of photos, including more than two weeks’ worth of 365 project pictures, and family pictures dating back to (gulp) Christmas.  I know, right?  But it was a good weekend.  I got a lot of stuff done.

175/365:  These are saucer magnolia, but I grew up calling these ‘tulip trees’.  This tree is near campus and, though I was driving past it on the way to work every day, it was a Saturday when  I went out to grab a few pictures.

176/365: Easter often means bunny cake in my family.  The cake is carrot cake, of course.  I love Easter bunny cakes.

177/365: These daffodils grow in my backyard.  For some reason, I couldn’t get a good shot of them this night and I ended up taking all the life out of them with this processing.  But here’s a better one that I did this past weekend.

178/365: A glass vase in my house.

179/365: Cat Tail vintage china, from my cupboard.  It was one of several vintage bowls that my grandmother gave me many years ago.  I think they came from another relative, but I’m not sure which one.  I like this pattern a lot.  I see it at antique malls sometimes and consider starting a collection.  So far, my pocketbook has won out.

180/365:  Redbud trees!  I went out specifically looking for redbuds and ended up with quite a few shots on a pretty spring evening.  I do not remember if this tree was around the corner from my house or downtown.  I think this picture was taken downtown.  More shots from this day available here.

181/365: Grape hyacinth in my front flowerbeds.  I like these.  They spread, though.  But then they’re gone again, almost immediately, like crocus.

182/365: Spring beauty at my parents’ house.  They have a ton of it that blankets the yard.  It grows about the height of grass, so I lay out on my belly to take these pictures and was quickly joined by a cat who thought that it was about time that someone shared his passion for lolling about in the sunny grass on a spring morning.

183/365: I ended up at my parents’ house two days in a row, and caught my dad with his tractor on the second day.  He planted his sweet corn that afternoon.

184/365: Crabapple blossoms in my yard.

185/365: Dandelion seed head and clover in my yard.  I used to have quite a number of bunnies that ate up the clover in my yard, but another dog moved next door and I think they’ve moved on.  Too bad!  They were cute to see in the mornings.  (But I don’t have a serious garden, so that’s why I can be so bunny-friendly.)

186/365: Dogwood blossoms on the University of Missouri campus.

* I am disappointed to say that I missed another photo in my 365 Project, ironically on April 15, the day that I posted my last 365 Project update blog post and not long after I hit the halfway point on this project.  I’ve only missed two days, both by accident.

188/365: Lilac blooming in my yard.  I love having a lilac bush.  I need several more.

189/365:  I went to a fiddle contest.  This guy was the winner, and it was just a coincidence that I decided to take a picture of him.

190/365: This guy did not win a fiddle contest, but did jump full-sized out of a sealed bag of topsoil when I was doing some gardening!  I think he was blinded by the light, so I was able to get a few photos of him (from a reasonable distance, obviously).

191/365: A shrub in my yard.  I can’t remember the name and I haven’t looked it up.

192/365: This is one of a few pictures I took at the Jeff City Photo Club last week.  It was a hands-on teaching class that went very well.

193/365: Columbine blooming on my way to work.

194/365: These mourning doves were waiting for me to go away so they could get back to eating at the feeders in my yard.

195/365: This is the spin cycle on my washing machine.  I put the bright colored laundry in there on purpose, and then fiddled with the load so that the fun colors would swirl together on the long exposure.

196/365: This is a pile of makeup and face products that I have, most of which was sitting on the bathroom sink.  I was going to take a picture of that, but then decided that it was far too messy for a photo, and that I liked the idea of the colors against a white backdrop.  So I arranged everything on a white towel on the bathroom floor.  There was a lot of post-processing here.  I was trying to avoid visible brand names.

197/365: Yesterday’s shot!  The dandelion seed heads all lost their seeds in the rainstorms, and the stems bent over.  I should have mowed on Thursday or Friday, but I didn’t, and now I’ll have to wait until it’s dry enough to mow.  Right now the yard has turned back into a huge puddle.

More pictures on Flickr!  On several of these days, I took many more pictures than just one for the 365 project.  They are available on Flickr.

I am so far behind. I know, you probably thought that I quit my 365 Project, but I didn’t! I’ve been dutifully snapping away every single day, but I haven’t put aside time to actually work on any of these images and upload them.

I’m still not caught up, but I’m ready to do a mid-catch-up post.

157/365: This is one of my patented late-night shots of stuff around the house.  I’m trying not to do so many of these now that it’s beautiful outside and it’s light until late.  This is a magnetic toy that sits on my desk.

158/365: Buds on tree branches on St. Patrick’s Day.

159/365: Crocus blooming in my front yard.

160/365: A giant pit of dirt near where I work.  They tore down three houses.  It’s been so long since I took this picture that there is now a foundation and walls going up in this spot.

161/365: What was possibly the last snow of winter 2009/10.  We got a couple of inches and I took a drive south to McBaine to look for a picture.  This is a center pivot irrigation system on the bottomland near the Missouri River.

162/365: I’d been meaning to take a picture of my bedroom lamps because I’ve well documented the rest of my lamps, but my bedroom is rarely clean enough for photos.  But this one resulted from spring cleaning.  Martha in the corner was posing very nicely.  The wide angle lens makes the room look a little distorted when really the bed is in the center of the wall.  That’s just how it goes.

163/365: Vintage salt & pepper shakers, a birthday present for a friend.  I took a picture because they’re so cute.

164/365: Mini daffodils bloom in my backyard right after the crocus but before the rest of the daffodils start blooming.  This ant was very gracious and allowed me a few shots with my macro lens.

165/365: Electrical outlet- a late night shot.  I wish I’d framed up the light so that the shadows were a little more perfect.

166/365: I think this is the male of a pair of geese that often have a nest down by the lake in my subdivision.  I took this from the car with my long lens.  He was pretty wary of me and I got this stink-eye most of the time that I was hanging around there.  The female was pretty busy eating everything in sight.

167/365: Fuzzy buds cracking open on my star magnolia bush.  I really love this bush.  The buds are so cool all winter and then the flowers pop open overnight.  Then they’re gone in less than a week, and it’s just a boring shrub for the rest of the year.

168/365: A road trip to Des Moines, Iowa!  My cousins took me to this book sale at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.  It was enormous.  This photo doesn’t cover even 1/8 of the size of it.

169/365: On the way home from Des Moines, I took a route through Lineville, Iowa, and got this picture on the Iowa/Missouri border.  It was a beautiful day.

170/365: More new little blossoms in the yard.  You can see that the flowers are about the size of the grains in the concrete sidewalk.  Very cute.

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171/365:  And the star magnolia bloomed!  I love this shot.  I like backlighting and I like the way the sun washes out the color in certain shots.  I love the fuzzy buds at the base of the flower.  Star magnolias, yay!

172/365: In my backyard.  The goal of this was to try to get some pictures of the stars, but I’m not sure it worked.  It certainly highlights the flowerbed mess (which I have since cleaned up).  I think it might be better on black.

173/365: A day late for my self-portrait day (it’s supposed to be the last day of the month, but that hasn’t worked out so well).  I took several dozen pictures and then only a few of them were actually in focus when I looked at them later (when it was too dark and I was too pajama-clad to be retaking anything).  I was pretty irritated with myself, and then went a little apeshit cleaning up my complexion in retaliation.  (Wait, retaliation against who?  What?)  So, yeah.  I have a very weird relationship to self-portrait-taking and -processing and -uploading.

174/365: This is actually a gas station near my house.  It was late and a rainy night, and I ended up driving around, loving the way the lights reflected off the wet pavement in the rain.  I started taking long-exposure shots with my 80-200mm f/2.8 lens set on manual focus so that I could get some dreamy rainy pictures.  This one has an abstract Rorschach look.  (I went to wikipedia to see if I could find a name for the overhang with the lights at filling stations.  It might be forecourt?  But look at the wikipedia entry for gas stations!  Interesting!)

More 365 Project photos to come as I work to catch up.  The last photo was taken on April 2, so I am just about two weeks behind.  But I’ll make it happen!  Last weekend was the halfway point on my 365 Project and I am confident that I will stick it out.

In the meantime, it is nearly wedding season!  I hope to shoot a few this spring, and I look forward to posting links.  I am also only a few weeks from leaving for a big photo-centric vacation, and it is my goal to get a lot of those photos done this summer and next fall.