It's been a day and an age since I have posted a project to the web site. For anyone who has been paying attention, my apologies.

Today, the project is all about exploring color. Go out into the world and find a way to make the colors really pop.

You can either isolate a color against a muted background, or fill the entire frame of the photo with the color. Either way, make sure that the color is the primary subject of the photo, regardless of the objects in the image.

Also try some techniques for "enhancing" color. For example, take a photograph that is predominantly blue sky and intentionally underexpose the image. You'll find that a pale blue sky has suddenly turned a deep, rich blue, which will alter the quality of the photo.

Good luck - I will try to post projects with more regularity from here on out.

It's time to get up close and personal with the subject of your photo. Whatever the subject may be.

Getting right up close achieves several different things. First, it allows you to see the subject in a whole new way. Objects that are fairly commonplace look completely different when you get right up next to them.

Second, you can see details when you take photos up close that you can't even see with the naked eye. Once you take a closeup of a flower or leaf, you may suddenly notice all the small bugs on it when you look at the photo on your monitor.

The only trick to this type of photography is making sure your camera has a macro focus setting. If you don't switch your camera to macro focus, every shot you take will look blurry.

Other than that, just get out there and get right up next to things. The results of this type of photography can be very surprising sometimes.

Rest assured, we will have a new photography project for you to work on soon.

Patterns can be found just about anywhere — in your backyard, on the street, even right in the middle of your home.

The trick is seeing them and then capturing them with your camera. The reason that this is difficult is that the angle of your camera can distort the pattern.

Minute adjustments in the angle and position of your camera lens relative to the pattern result in substantial changes to your photograph.

This is why pattern photography lends itself well to the digital format. Take 100 photos of the same pattern. Delete 98 of them, and you will have 2 very interesting photos to look at.

Experiment. Play around. Really explore the pattern. The surprising thing is that once you perform the exercise with one pattern, you will begin to see others everywhere.

This project's goal is to capture a silhouette - any kind will do. It can be a building, a person or any other object with a unique outline.

You want your subject to appear completely black in your photograph. For many digital cameras, this is not as easy as it sounds.

Their sophisticated metering systems do not want to let you take a photo like this one. Typically, the buildings would be properly exposed and the sky would be over-exposed.

Here a way to get around this: point your camera at the lightest part of the image (in the example above I pointed the camera at the clouds). Now hold down the shutter halfway. This will lock the exposure so that the light part of the image is properly exposed.

If the lightest part of the image is properly exposed, it makes any object in shadow appear completely black: and there's your silhouette.

This photo was over-exposed
by almost 2 stops

Today's project focuses on exposure. The idea here is to play around with your exposure settings and try to get some photos that are intentionally over and under-exposed.

Why do this? Shouldn't all photographs be exposed so that colors are balanced and there is detail throughout the picture? Most of the time the answer is yes.

That stunning landscape should be properly exposed. So should the pictures that you take on your next vacation. Photos of your child's birthday party will look odd if they are all under-exposed.

But every so often you are going to want a different look. Something that makes an ordinary photo extraordinary. You can get this look if you bracket exposures.

Here's how it works. Set your digital camera to its manual setting. Adjust the shutter speed and aperture so that the scene is correctly exposed (your light meter will let you know when it is). Take a photo.

Now, over-expose the photo by two stops. Many cameras will indicate this by displaying a +2 symbol on the LCD. Take a photo.

Under-expose by two stops. The camera should now be showing you a -2 on the display. Take a photo.

Change your subject and repeat.

More often than not the results won't be very interesting. That's why 9 times out of 10 you want to properly expose your photo. But every so often, especially with portraits of people, you might be very surprised by the results you get.

The great thing about working with digital photography is that you can experiment like this and no one ever has to see the crummy photos you take. Save one brilliant one, and take that to share with your friends.

Are you going to get a digital camera for Christmas? Congratulations if you are! This project will give you the opportunity to use one of the less-common features on your camera.

Many digital cameras have a menu setting that lets you take all of your photographs in black and white. They commonly refer to this setting as a "picture effect". Another picture effect is sepia, which will make your photographs all look like they were taken 100 years ago.

For this project, I'd like you to set your picture effect to black and white for at least a day. If you can go for an entire week, even better.

The goal here is for you to learn how to see things in black and white. I find that black and white photography is more challenging than color. Why?

You must pay attention to your composition when you are taking black and white photographs. Since there is no color information to separate different visual elements, a photo that is cluttered won't look like much in black and white.

Taking black and white photos makes you simplify your compositions, which will also improve your color photography.

Happy Holidays and New Year!

The goal of this project is to capture photos of your relatives and loved ones this Thanksgiving holiday. The trick will be to take photos of them that don't look like every other Thanksgiving holiday.

If your camera has a black and white setting, switch to that, especially if you've never taken black and white photos. Change the white balance on your camera, adjust the focus.

Think of new and creative ways to pose your family members for group photographs so that they don't look quite so static. Some of your family memebers will be willing, others won't want to participate.

The camera-shy are best captured when they are not paying attention and are relaxed. Use your zoom lens creatively to capture shots without being right in front of the person you're photographing.

Do anything and everything you can think of to come up with at least one truly unique image. While you will probably wind up with a lot of photos you have to discard (this is typical of experimentation), you may also find one real gem, something that breaks out of the standard holiday photograph mold.

The goal this week is to pick one object or subject (only one now, no cheating) and spend an entire day photographing it. Change your camera settings as necessary to get a correct exposure, by try very hard to maintain the same framing in each photo you take. Always photograph your subject from the same angle.

This exercise should help you see the color of light. Since you are taking a photo of the exact same thing at the exact same angle throughout the course of the day, the only variable that is changing is the color and quality of the light.

You should notice a distinct difference between morning, noon and afternoon in terms of colors, contrast and mood.

Once you've done this exercise, view the photographs on your computer, but also make sure to order some prints. Looking at the color in the prints is what's really going to open your eyes to the subtle light differences at different times of day.

Once you have determined how the time of day affects the quality of light, you can go on to photograph other subjects, and intentionally wait for a certain time of day to get your photograph just right.

This is an example of the shoe project. It was a slow day photographically speaking, and I just wanted to get my eyes working a bit. I started out with my shoe.

It's a long way from brilliant photography, but it did give me the opportunity to get my camera in my hand and take some photos.

One great thing about taking pictures of your feet - they are always with you no matter where you go. You always have the opportunity to take a few photos of the mundane to get you going.

I sat in my chair that day, and took a few photos of my shoe. And what do you know. I looked up from this fascinating subject, and the next thing I saw was the photo to the right.

Hopefully this illustrates that sometimes you have to start with a simple subject in order to see something more interesting. This is especially true when you are photographing a location you are familiar with.

You may look around and just see a lot of the same old things that you see day after day. But after photographing something commonplace (like your shoes) the ordinary can become extraordinary.

I hope this technique works for you. Happy picture taking!

The challenge that we all face as photographers is the same thing that writers encounter from time to time: block. You're standing in a park, or a field, or downtown, and would like to take a photo.

But you have no idea where to start. Nothing catches your eye. Nothing leaps out and says "Photograph ME!"

So what to do? Start with your shoes. Point that camera you have in your hands straight at your feet. Take a few photos: get closer, then get far away.

Now look up. Do you see something now? If so, take advantage of it.

What this project addresses is that sometimes when you are stuck in a photographic rut, the best thing to do is just start taking pictures. Those first few shots get the synapses in the right side of your brain fired up.

Once started, you begin to see things that are interesting, where before there was nothing.

I can't say for sure that this technique will work for you, but it has certainly helped me out in the past.

And who knows? You may just wind up with a remarkable shot of your own two feet.

All you have to do is carry your camera into your backyard. Don't have a backyard? Not a problem. Just head out in front of your house, or to any location nearby that is very familiar to you.

In photography, familiarity typically leads to a loss of creativity. While it's quite easy to take photographs of the Grand Canyon if you've never been there before (everything is new and different), it's much harder to find something of interest right around your home because it has lost its novelty.

In this instance, despite your familiarity with the subject, you will be looking for something new. Maybe it's some detail of your home, the water pipes, maybe the electrical lines. Maybe it's something growing in your backyard, or a spider building a web that you had not noticed before.

The wonderful thing about taking your camera into an environment where you think there is nothing to photograph is that you WILL begin to see things that weren't there before.

This approach to photography will improve your ability to find these small details even in new locations. Why is this important? It lets you see places in ways that no one else does. While everyone else might just see the Grand Canyon, you might find a spectacular tree that is just begging to be photographed.

Your photograph of the Grand Canyon becomes a unique part of your experience. While others take the photo that has been taken a million times, you are able to capture something more.