Here are some of my favorite photos from the second part of 2008.

July – Plant

This is a plant I bought for my Mom for Mother’s Day. I really like this type of plant. It’s just different.

August – Butterfly

I like photographing butterflies almost as much as flowers. I even bought a book on different butterfly species. It’s fun to snap these photos especially since butterflies like to hang out at colorful flowers. It’s a win-win for me.

September – Spider

I bought a ‘macro’ lens. Well it’s basically a huge magnifier for your existing lens packaged as a macro lens. Technically I guess it is but it’s not a true macro lens. Still it’s a lot of fun to play with.

October – Sunflowers

I looked forward to our trip to the pumpkin patch for weeks because I knew there would be sunflowers. Our first trip was disappointing as the deer had gotten into their first planting and ate practically all of the sunflowers. So they had to replant. But those were out in full bloom by the time we made our second trip.

November – Motion

I think this was a photo challenge I had read. It was to photograph something on the move with the idea to have a blurry background and in focus subject. This is the closest I’ve gotten yet. Most of the time everything has been blurry.

December – Water

This picture demonstrates why I wanted a DSLR in the first place. I have been an awe of photos that had water features the showed the water more natural looking instead of frozen. When I took this photo, the background was really washed out since I had to use a lower setting that let in a lot of light. I did some corrections with Paint Shop Pro and this is the final result.

Looking back through the year of photos, I see that I have learned a few things and that I have experimented on occasion when taking photos. My goal for 2009 is to learn more about my digital camera and taking photos. Hopefully my photo a day goal will help me with both of those things.

2008 was a good year for us. We are looking forward to 2009 since we do have some big plans. I also have a new blogging focus and one of my resolutions is to take a photo a day. But before I start that, I wanted to share some of my favorite photos from the past year.

January – Dice
I took some photos of my husband’s dice collection and liked how the pictures turned out. It was sort of a slow picture month even though I had just gotten a new digital camera for my birthday, I accidentally dropped it. I did get it back sometime in February but was heartbroken I had been so careless and didn’t take many pictures.

February – Cat
What’s a best of gallery without at least one picture of our cats? Calisto sadly was run over this year, so I treasure these photos of her. She was such a good cat, not that our other cat isn’t but she was just special.

March – Raegan
Again what would a best of be without a picture of my daughter? I just love this expression.

April – Flower
One of my favorite subjects to photograph is flowers. I just love amarilyis, too. Very attractive flower.

May – Mississippi State University
We stopped by MSU on a trip and I snapped some photos. Boy was it nice to be on campus again.

June – Sky
Not many photos I can find from June. I do love nature photos and taking pics of the sky. Rarely do they turn out how I envision they should. But I do like this one.

I will post the rest of the months a little later as my laptop needs a rest and possibly a reboot.

One of my new favorite blogs is the Goody Blog. Well, when they had the a link and a picture from ManBabies.com, I thought this is too funny not to share.

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

ManBabies is a blog of user submitted pictures of babies(or kids) and their fathers(or grandfathers or another grown male) with the heads swapped.

I think I may have to look through our photos and do one for Father’s Day. Print it out and frame for Daddy to take to work!

I have been reading a few lessons on photography and feel like I am learning something. So the past couple of days I have been using the ‘M’ (manual) setting on my Canon. It’s an exercise in learning what settings work in what situation. I have horrible reading comprehension skills and learn a lot better by doing than reading.

My first challenge is to take pictures outdoors. As you can see from these two pictures, I am making some progress.

It’s hard to see the bottle tree at all. Way too much light coming in. So I did some adjustments and the next picture turned out much better.

Maybe one of these day I will actually get the hang of the M setting. I take 20 shots and only have 3 that are worth anything. Still it’s fun to practice especially when I have such a cute subject.

Last week I ordered a portable hard drive to store all my digital photos. It arrived two days later! I can’t wait to start transferring all of my photos onto it.

I do plan to organize my photos as I go instead of just dumping them to it like I have been doing to my hard drive. Once I thin out some, I will probably have a lot less but at least those will be the photos I want to keep and won’t be taking up space.

Once I get them sorted, I plan to back them up to a CD/DVD just in case something happens to the hard drive. It feels good to have a plan to organize. Once I’ve accomplished my goal, it will be even better.

Photonovice.net is having a little experiment that involves search terms that has led visitors to people’s photo blogs. I don’t publicize my little photo blog that much and don’t write much content for it. But some visitors have found me through some search terms that are interesting.

Photo hunt DS – I take part in the Photo Hunt meme and posted a Nintendo DS for one of the hunts. This might have been someone wanting to find it again. Sometimes it’s easier to search Google than it is to find a comment on a very popular meme.

Lynn – My name is Lynn, although I don’t know if I’ve ever used it in a post. The username I post under is Lynn. I guess Google is finding it through that.

Dirty Mom Photo – heh. I’m sure when they came across the picture of my child covered with dirt wasn’t exactly what they were looking for.

That’s about it for search results. Like I said, I don’t get many referrals to this blog. The few referrals I have gotten, these are the ones that were the most unusual.

YES!! My new digital camera is fixed. It’s not back in the store yet but has been shipped, so in a few days I will be snapping lots of photos and learning about my new camera. And you can be I will be extra careful with it from now on.

My husband’s dice. My collection is not this many yet but could be one day. I love to buy dice.

My new digital camera is still in shop. For those of you who don’t know, I bought myself an early birthday present right at Christmas – a new Canon Rebel digital camera. I had it for a few weeks when I accidentally dropped it. The lens was damaged. Luckily I had purchased the accidental insurance coverage, so at least getting it fixed won’t cost me anything.

So, here is roughly the timeline of getting my camera fixed:

Tuesday, January 8th – dropped by digital camera. Took it to Best Buy to get it repaired. They only took the lens and filled out the paperwork. Was told it should be back by January 20th.

Sunday, January 13th – Was called by Best Buy and informed they did need my camera. Took the camera to Best Buy January 14th.

Monday, January 28th – Call Best Buy to check on my camera. It is still out for repair but has been approved to be fixed under plan. They said they would put in a request for additional info and to call back Friday to check up.

Friday, February 1st – Call Best Buy. They have no new information about my camera. The request to fix the camera was approved January 22nd.

I’m getting antsy about this whole process and fast losing faith in one of my favorite stores. Hubby will go by today at lunch to see if he can get any more information. Best Buy is 45 minutes away from where we live.

Oy Vey! I hope I never have to go through this again.

No, it’s not a picture of the little one but a picture of the NEW camera. It is also serving as my entry into the Shoot Yourself photo contest put on by Epic Edit Weblog.

After taking the photo, I realize one thing. It is definitely time to invest in some hair dye. I wanted to try some different shots but the cat kept rubbing against the tripod, and I feared it would fall any given second. Here are the requirements to enter the Shoot Yourself project:

* Take a self portrait and include your camera in the frame.
* Post your photo on your photography blog or photoblog. (or use Flickr or Zoomr account)
* OPTIONAL: Translate the project requirements to your blog’s native language and post it on your blog
* Go to the form at the bottom of this page and send me your name, email (kept private), and link to your project entry.

DEADLINE: JANUARY 6TH, 2008

I’m still learning about my new camera and hope to take a lot of photos this weekend since the weather won’t be so bitterly cold as it was this week.