Wordless Wednesday

Monopod

On a recent tour-de-Walmart, I found a monopod.  Given my new lens that my husband gave me… and all the issues I was having with camera shake… I thought this dandy little monopod might just work for me.  It’s like a one-legged-tripod… expect without the "tri" part.  (tee, hee, hee… yeah, I think I’m clever.  Don’t correct me.)

It looks like a great big walking stick.

IT’S GREAT!  You can adjust it to any height you want and it helps with the whole camera shake issue tremendously.  It’s much less cumbersome than a tripod and you can adjust it to suit your height and your angle much more quickly.  Sometimes when you are in the moment, you need to move your camera around quickly yet be able to hold it steady once you get the angle you want.  For $18, it’s a fantastic little tool to add to your equipment list.

Here is what the package looks like – if you go hunting for one. 

And speaking of hunting… it has a little V shaped attachment you can put on top to hold your gun steady.  Good to know… unlikely in my world but good to know.

When I was shooting my Memorial Day flag shot from yesterday, I used my monopod and my zoom lens for all my shots.  I was delighted to find that all my pictures were camera-shake-free! 

Happy Memorial Day!

When I was coming back into my neighborhood after running an errand earlier today, I realized how blessed I am to live in a town that acknowledges Memorial Day with public displays.  There were rows of flags in the ground leading into my neighborhood and again on a corner near the entrance.  I thought it was a nice opportunity to pull out my camera and practice.  This is one of my favorite shots.  Although it wasn’t entirely planned, I thought it was nice when my daughter wandered into the frame to hunt for acorns on the sidewalk.

When I came home and started to play with it, I upped the contrast to 51 and cropped it a little bit. 

Happy Memorial Day!

Best Shot Monday – Week 1

Over at Tracey’s blog, she sponsors Best Shot Monday every week.  The idea is for those who read her blog to post their favorite shot of the week.  Then we all tour around and visit each other.  This is my first week participating so here we go.

This was the final week of preschool for my two oldest.  There was an outdoor party for all the kids and siblings with a moon bounce, other games, pizza, ice cream and what-not.  Toward the end of the party, it started getting pretty hot.  Here is my baby indulging in one of those ice cream push up pops that are hard for a two-year-old to master.  He was basically shoving his face into it and then dunking his tongue into it as far as he could. 

Photo Hunters – Colorful

It’s not terribly exciting, I know.  It’s all I can find this morning.  I promise to put some thought into it for the coming weeks project though.

Photoshop

Guess what I have…  I just got Photoshop!  If you are serious about photography, I’m told that you need to own photoshop.  We’ll see about that.  I hear it can do wonders.  We’ll see about that too.  I hear it’s difficult to learn.  I’ll let you know.  If you don’t hear from me for awhile, it’s because I’m knee-deep in Photoshop!

Have a great Memorial Day weekend everyone!

A Boy and His Truck

While I was visiting my parents, I thought it would be a nice opportunity to try to get a portrait of my middle child.  Once upon a time, my father made beautiful wood crafts.  He has this one wooden truck that he made by his own hand.  From start to finish.  By that, I don’t mean he used a kit… I mean he had blocks of wood to start and this truck when he was finished.  He is amazingly talented if you ask me.

I thought it would make a lovely and meaningful prop in my portrait of my boy.  Since my father hasn’t relinquished the truck to any of his eleven grandchildren yet, I thought I’d at least get it in a photo just in case it doesn’t end up in my household.

I dressed my sweet boy in some simple but nice looking clothes and took him to the front porch.  My mother has some nice wicker furniture out there, the brick house is a nice textural back drop and there is shade but lots of natural light.  Sounds like a photographer’s dream, right?  Well, I made a few mistakes and I’d like to share.

Can you see how crisp and perfect the chair looks?  Even the brick looks like it’s in focus.  Yet the fair skin of my boy along with his clothes appears to be slightly out of focus or over exposed or something.  I’m not exactly sure what happened here but I’m going to take a guess.  I think that my camera used it’s "brain" to make sure that the majority of the portrait was properly exposed and thus the chair and the wall were what it focused on instead of my subject.  When I was taking this photograph, I allowed lots of space in order to allow some cropping room.  I think that may have been my error.

Now this second picture has him in focus, the chair mostly in focus and the wall behind him slightly blurred.  I let my camera make the decisions and this is what it gave me.  A nice portrait, but my heirloom prop is not in this one.  Still, it’s nice.

For this one… I used my handy dandy new (fake) reflector to bounce some light back into his face.  I had it off to the left of the photo under his right foot.  I didn’t have it angled quite perfectly because you can see the shadow on his right eye socket.  But still, his right cheek wouldn’t be illuminated at all if I hadn’t used the reflector.  I’m happy to be practicing.  Someday, I’ll master all this stuff.  At least it’s getting better.

No reflector here but it’s still my favorite – I think.  I  like it.  I wish the truck was more visible in it’s detail.  The reflector would have helped with that.  Still, there is something about it that makes me happy.  What do you think?

 

My Baby is TWO!

I guess when I signed off last week, I failed to mention that I was leaving town for a week and that is why I elected to submit my computer to the "doctor" that week instead of any other.  Well, the family and I went to visit my parents for a week.  While we were there, we celebrated my son’s second birthday.  What a bitter sweet day.  Now, I no longer have a baby.  I could claim he was still a baby while he was one, but now that he’s two he really is not a baby anymore.  That makes my heart ache just a little.  Now, on the other hand… I no longer have a BABY!  And when you say it like that, I’m one step closer to having a bit of life back.  And that makes my heart soar.  So… it’s bitter sweet.

As my first real post back at home, I thought I’d share a couple shots from his birthday.  These are not anything more than a mother’s snapshots capturing her baby on his birthday.  The flash was on (gasp!) and everything.  But I elected to just get the shots rather than try to use this as a masterful photographer’s artistic learning day.  So here you go.  My baby becomes a boy.

In case anyone is counting – there are 13 packages there for him to unwrap.  Isn’t that crazy?  Grandparents (only one set at that!), siblings and parents were all the givers.  But he loved them all.  He actually said "thank you" each time he was handed a new one to open.  Can you believe it?!  A two year old who says thank you?!  My mommy-pride is oozing right now.

A little aside… every wonder what my hubby looks like?  That’s him.  He’s the man who makes my toes tingle.  (Insert happy sigh here….)

It was a big Thomas the Train fest.  Most of the toys were related to the Thomas theme.  Probably 7 or 8 of them anyway.  The boy loves trains.

 

Here he is pretending to know what to do with that candle.  He never did blow it out.  He is also smitten with fire trucks lately which is why his loving Grammy ordered him a Fire Truck cake.  Now…  this woman can make a killer cake and decorate it to look like it belongs in a magazine or something.  I know because she made many for me and a couple for previous grand children’s birthdays.  But she had her three beautiful grandchildren visiting for only one week and she didn’t want to spend many hours doing that – so she ordered it.  I still think it’s lovely and he was all aglow over it.  Fire truck is one of the newest things he points out and talks about.

And just to prove my point about why this was not the occasion for me to attempt to play with f stops and turning the flash off… I tried one picture and this is what I got -

 

Sometimes, you just have to let auto-focus and the flash make the picture good enough.  This was one of those times.

And my final picture of the event.  I think it might be my favorite from the birthday party – not in a technical way… just in a mommy-who-loves-her-kid’s-glee way.

Thank you for looking at my family photo album with me.  I promise to get back to photography lessons and reviews soon.

I’m Home

I’m back at home.  The dust is settling.  Laundry is in full swing.  I hope to upload a few pictures for you tomorrow.  It feels like forever since I’ve been here with you.  Right now it’s 11 PM and I’m finally sitting before my computer (which is working much better now) so I think I should probably just call it a night and head to bed.  Talk to you tomorrow!

Storm Light

In my books, they are always talking about light.  Study light… observe light… use the light.  Last night at 8PM it was time to put my children to bed but I looked out and saw this gorgeous light – the kind you see right before a storm.  All of the pictures here are ROOC.  (Right out of Camera)

Isn’t that gorgeous?  Everything was aglow!  So I talked my daughter into posing for me.  She was delighted to delay bedtime a few more minutes and gladly obliged.  I took many shots but here are a couple of my favorites.  I was shooting in Aperture Priority with the lowest F stop I could.  I should have just gone with automatic with no flash.  A lot of them were fuzzy, but I suppose that is what practicing is all about.  Live and learn.

The thing I like about this last one is the way her face is crisp and clear yet everything around her goes a little soft and fuzzy.  I didn’t do that on purpose, but I think the effect is cool.  I can only guess that it happened because I had it set at a lower f stop number (5.6) and that is what caused it.

I will be away from my blog for awhile.  I’m taking my computer in to get fixed and I don’t know how long I’ll be without it.  I’ll try to blog with someone else’s computer while mine is in the shop but I can make no guarantees.  Have a happy Mother’s Day!