Something Really, Really Different!

Today was a really exciting day around here because something very rare happened - it snowed! When I first looked out the dining room window to see the snow, there was a bluebird in the tree outside the window. So I grabbed my camera and just shot a photo really quick (manually setting it but forgetting, once again, to check my white balance which was set on inside light) so. . . the blue everything . . . blue bird, blue tree, etc. I started to delete it but then decided to play around with it on the computer and this is what I came up with and I kind of like it. It looks more like a drawing or painting than a photograph.

I took other pics of the snow but I don't think it was in the cards for me to get a good photo of the snow. It was just such a rushed day. But it was a good day.

More White Balance Results

Today was another babysitting day so we met with a 3rd cousin and her grandmother at Chick Fil A to let them play, eat and spend some time together. This top pic was too blue, had the white balance set wrong.

Here I got the white balance correct.

And here again. They play so well together and had a great time.

Trip to Library

Today was a babysitting today and we went for a little trip to the local library. I had my camera with me and I feel like I kind of "fine-tuned" a little bit with white balance even those these aren't great shots or anything. I am learning that I need to be observant about SO many things which I manually operate my camera. This top photo of Paige and Ms. Sandra, the librarian, I snapped about 3 or 4 times. After the first one, I noticed a bluish tint to it so I automatically checked my white balance and it was set for daylight from photographing the motorcycle guy outside yesterday. So I switched it to tungsten light and it still looked blue. Then I looked up at the lights and realized (duh!) that they were fluorescent lights so I changed the white balance again to fluorescent and got the correct results in coloring below.

An Exciting Shot for Me!

I didn't post the last two days (I hate it because I was committed to post a photo every day of the year on this blog in 2009) but I was just too tired.

Today as I was coming home around 3:30 in the afternoon, I got this shot of the moon in daylight hours with my telephoto lens. I cropped it and probably "over-cropped" it, but you can click on the photo and actually see the craters!

The first shot was not as blue so I checked my white balance and changed it from daylight to tungsten and that made it this blue. I like the effect. It's just fun to experiment with photography.

A Bubble Bath

As I'm trying to keep my commitment of posting a photo every day in 2009 AND I was told I had strep yesterday, I decided to take my photos in the bathtub! Isn't THAT unique?!? ha! I had been lying around studying how to manually operate my camera and I finally figured out how to operate and set the aperture and F-stop manually and how the camera shows the combination as a correct exposure. I had never figured this out before. At first I played around shooting every correct combination of the two at 400 ISO lying in bed last night. I also was reading about depth of field so decided that in the tub, I would go from one extreme to another. I started with the "blue" photos above. No, folks, these are NOT photos using a filter! This ended up being more of a lesson in white balance than anything else.

In both sets of photos, the ISO is set at 400, no flash and the top photo of the blue set has settings of F-22 and 0.3 seconds, the bottom with F-3.5 and 1/90 seconds - extremes in the F-stop for 18mm lens. In the bottom (more true to color set), the top photo is set at F3.5 and 1/90 seconds and the bottom photo is F-22 and 0.3 seconds. On my camera, both of these settings were shown to be correct, not over or under exposed. I cannot see any difference in the depth of field but boy, oh, boy was there a difference in the white balance! This tub is right under a window with no curtain where a north/northeastern light comes in. I did not have a light on because it was mid-afternoon. After I took the "blue" pics, reviewed them and saw that they were blue, I investigated my white balance and it was set for tungsten light. So I first adjusted it to daylight, then noticed I had daylight but cloudy day and set it to cloudy day (because it was a cloudy day) and look at the difference!

But I kind of like the blue effect. It's soothing, goes with a bubble bath and artsy. What do you think?

NOTE: Do you see any difference in the Depth of Field (the crispness and clearness of focus from just below my knee to the tip of my toes and beyond to the wall, door, etc.)?
SECOND NOTE: I did use my automatic focus. (These "old" eyes, you know!)