Catching up on my Capture Your 365

1/320, f/2.8, ISO 800, 50mm

 

For some reason, I have not been able to upload any photos on my blog since last week. So I uploaded this photo I took last week to my neglected Flickr account and was able to add the HTML code and voila! I can work around the problem and still upload a picture! Took me a few days to figure it out... :o)

 

I am still borrowing a 50mm lens from a friend. On the day that I took this picture, I had been listening to an instrumental CD from Mark Schultz. I just love a good instrumental CD! Listening to the CD was the inspiration for this photo. I wanted something with sheet music and piano keys. I did apply an antique black and white preset to the photo in Lightroom to give it an aged look, otherwise the photo would have been just black and white.

 

What have you photographed lately?

 

 

 

Simple things

ISO 100, 55mm, f/5.6, 1/50 sec

 

Day 2 of Capture Your 365!

 

It has been so cold here in the mornings! From our kitchen window, we can look out and see our frost covered glass patio table. This morning, there just happened to be a couple of leaves on the table and it hit me...I just had to take a picture! I probably should have attached that 50mm lens that I am borrowing, but I really didn't want to have to go back out into the cold to take another picture.

 

We really didn't have to go anywhere today and I am thinking we are going to wait until next week to resume our school schedule. So today, Kelsey and I watched all of Anne of Green Gables - The Sequel. It was such a nice, lazy day together, just us girls. We also learned that it was National Cream Puff Day, so Kelsey made cream puffs this afternoon and they were amazing! I may just count today as a school day after all :o)

Save your calendar pages!

I still like to have a wall calendar at home even though our family uses an electronic calendar these days. This past year, I had a calendar from Dayspring which had beautiful illustrations with Bible verses for each month. Instead of just throwing the calendar away, I turned the pages into a project to send to my Compassion kids!

 

 First, I took apart the calendar, page by page.

 

 Then I trimmed the pages down to 8 1/2 x 11 inches.

 

 I pulled out some card stock and a glue stick. I mounted each of the pages onto some cardstock to strengthen the pages and to cover up last year's calendar pages.

 

We wrote letters to our Compassion kids yesterday and I was able to include these in our mailing. I hope they enjoy them!

Adjusting Aperture

Today is the first day of my participation in the Capture Your 365 project. My goal for this project is to take at least one picture everyday to improve my photography skills. Last week, I reserved a few photography books at the library and was reading through Understanding Exposure today. Our library only has the 2nd edition of this book, which is still proving to be very helpful.

 

So I decided to do a little experiment with some chess pieces. This is something that is easy to set up. I made sure my camera was sitting on a stable surface since it would be impossible to get an in focus shot while hand holding the camera at the shutter speeds I was using.

 

 ISO 100, 50mm, f/5.0, 1.6 sec

 

 ISO 100, 50mm, f/8.0, 4.0 sec

 

ISO 100, 50mm, f/22, 30.0 sec

 

When I adjusted the aperture, I needed to adjust either the shutter speed or the ISO to get a proper exposure for the photo. Since I decided to leave the ISO alone, I had to adjust the shutter speed each time. Notice the difference between each of the photos? In the near future, I would like to try this same 'experiment' with moving objects to compare the results.

 

In this experiment, I would have to say that my favorite photo of the day would be the middle picture. I like that the snowman pillow in the background is not quite in focus,  but you can make out that it is there. Which one is your favorite?

The Walt Disney Family Museum

Today our family drove into the city (San Francisco) for a day trip to

 The Walt Disney Family Museum.

 

 The museum is located on the grounds of The Presidio which is a beautiful area in San Francisco.

 

 We started off in the hands on studio where Kev and Matthew worked on a stop motion video with Kelsey looking on.

 

 The subject of the movie short, very colorful!

 

 While they were creating, I took a walk around and found a couple of fun things to photograph. Wouldn't this look great on someone's bedroom wall?

 

 Kev's dream desk...animation desk at Disney!

 

 Matthew ended up working on his little short by himself

 

 One of the very few things I was able to photograph in the lobby area

 

 A replica of the apartment that sits above the fire station at Disneyland. While we were at the museum, we watched an hour long movie about Walt and his love for Christmas. This was included with the admission price. After the movie, we toured the museum. Like a lot of museums of this type, no photography was allowed.

 

We learned a lot about Walt's early life, saw a lot of pencil sketches that had been saved, and saw many old family photos. The museum had many different rooms filled with a lot of history and artwork. Toward the end of the museum, there was a large model of Disneyland with a few things that I remember from my first trip a long time ago.

 

 I was able to take this picture from inside the museum. It was a beautiful clear day!

 

 Once we were outside the museum, I took just a couple more photos...

 

Wish I could grow these at my house!

 

Again, I took these photos in RAW and did a quick edit in Lightroom. I was really hoping that a book that I had ordered would have arrived today to help me to establish a good workflow in Lightroom. Guess I will need to wait until next week.

 

This trip will be a great topic for my next letter to my Compassion kids! And I will be sure to get some of the photos printed to send to them. Which photos do you think I should send?

A little photography experiment

Today, I did something I haven't done yet with my photos...I shot RAW! This morning, I formatted a memory card (which basically erases everything on your memory card). This way I was able to start with a fresh, empty memory card since RAW files take up a lot of space.

 

Then I went into the shooting menu on my camera and changed the image quality to RAW. According to my 'Nikon D3100 for Dummies' book, shooting RAW will give you 'greater creative control', 'higher bit depth', and the 'best picture quality'. Shooting RAW requires you to edit them since you can't share them like you can JPEG images.

 

When you first import your RAW photos into Lightroom, they will look very flat. So after a little bit of editing, here are some photos I took today:

 

 1/10 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, 55mm

 

 1/6 sec, f/3.2, ISO 100, 50mm

 

 0.4 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100, 200mm

 

0.8 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100, 200 mm

 

I wish I could show the before photos on each of these! Once I figure that out, I will try to post the before and after photos so you can see the difference also.

 

The January photo list has been e-mailed for the Capture Your 365 challenge. I am looking forward to it! Will you join me?



December Photo Project - Day 24

Going to be playing a little catch up on my December Photo Project posts. This picture happened completely by accident! I am borrowing a 50mm f/1.8 lens from a friend. I was intending to take a picture of our tree, but didn't even have time to readjust the settings on the camera before I pushed the shutter button. After doing a quick edit in Lightroom, I have to say that I just love my accidental picture!

 

One thing I am considering doing in 2013 is a Capture Your 365 challenge. It is not really a challenge, but in a way it is. It will be a way for me to challenge myself to take at least one photo everyday. It will give me a chance to try some new things with my photography. After all, if I can accidentally capture pictures like the one above, I am thinking the challenge will be a lot of fun!