Day 1 - Already panicking

Due to two separate doctor's appointments for my son and an incredible lack of sleep last night, I was already feeling overwhelmed by this new undertaking. As I went to close the blinds in the dining room, however, the windowsill struck me as interesting.

That splinter of the wood seemed like it wanted to jump right out at me. To emphasize that feeling, I went with a shallow depth of field (50mm nikkor f1.8) and converted to black and white using the channels in photoshop. The window itself is south facing but gets very nice light starting about 45 minutes before sunset (this was about 30 minutes before sunset). I handheld and bumped up the ISO to 400 just to add a little noise.

The channels are a great way to do your black and white conversions, but unfortunately there is no hard and fast rule for settings to use. It varies greatly with the coloring of the subject and even with the particular area or mood you're trying to highlight.

I can't say I'm a hundred percent happy with this image, but considering the day I've had... I'll take it.