I Can See It!!

I wanted to photograph this beootiful tomato that was given to us. It was grown in a greenhouse. Can't wait to see how it tastes! We're waiting for it to ripen. Anyway, I decided to go from one extreme to another with my F-stop (aperture - opening in the camera) and adjust my shutter speed to what my camera said is correct and see what happened. I was trying to get a blurred background (shallow depth of field) and I finally did it manually. I can see it! This top shot was as far as I could go with the smallest F-stop - F27. You see, an F stop is a fraction so it's actually 1/27th. My camera showed a correct exposure to be 1.5 seconds for the shutter speed. As you can see, it is "clear as a bell" from front to back, everything is in focus.

So I went the other way as far as I could go and used an F4 with a shutter speed of 1/30 and the background is blurred, a shallow depth of field. I like both photographs but I preferred the background to be blurred, as in the bottom photo, so the tomato would be the star!

A Decorating Tip

A few years ago, I was shopping in a little gift shop and fell in love with these pillar candles. All three of these photos were very difficult to photograph. I need to study more about low light. Anyway, I hope you can see the detail. They are decoupaged with stamps from different countries and I just thought they were beautiful. BUT. . .they were expensive. The shop owner saw me lingering over them and I told her I just loved them but couldn't justify spending that much money on something that would "burn up". So. . . she gave me this little suggestion and I think it's so clever - clever enough that I bought the candles! ha!

Some of you may already know about this little tip but I didn't. She suggested burning the pillar candles down far enough so that you have a hollowed out place deep and wide enough to put either a votive candle or one of these little tea lites and burn them instead. And they come in scents. So you never burn the expensive pillar candle down, just replace the smaller candle. Clever, huh?

Here is a photo of the candle with the smaller candle burning but it looks as if the larger pillar candle is lit. I've had these candles about 4 years or longer and I still love them. I'm not a fabulous decorator by any means but just thought I'd pass along this tip to any of you who didn't know about it and would be interested in using it.

A Gift for Me!

While Paige was in Mothers' Day Out, I went shopping. Got some essentials first and then I bought me a nice little gift - a set of 24 Prismacolor Markers!!! Whoooopeee! I know I haven't drawn in a good while so this little gift should make me excited about it again. I want to do it and it's strange that I stopped at the same place in the book I'm using as I did about 10 years ago. I think this point in the book is my point of fear. I'm scared to go any further. But I will do it!

A Family Early Birthday!

Today was our son-in-law's birthday celebration at our house although his birthday is not until Friday. He and my daughter are leaving for a cruise tomorrow so we celebrated early. This is our second attempt at having this early birthday dinner but we had to cancel the first one because of a little germ caused strep.

I made dinner and a cherry pie dessert instead of cake - one of his favorite desserts called Cherry Scrunch. We put star candles on it and here is my daughter lighting the candles.

Here are Paige and her daddy blowing out the candles together. Happy Birthday! Getting closer to 30! And Happy Cruisin'!!!!

Color Saturation

This shot was how our day started - art, art, art!! Paige-ee-Poo and Paw Paw colored together - a beoootiful rainbow, sunshine, and Paw Paw even drew an airplane up in the sky.

I am completely shooting manually now (except for auto focus) and really enjoying it and learning a lot plus getting faster with it. You have to be fast with a 2 yr. old!
This top shot is straight out of the camera.

I'm also playing around with editing on the computer. The above shot I just brightened up a little. I like it a little better. Do you?

Then tonight for the first time, I pumped up the saturation as far as it would go and I REALLY like it! Which of the three do you like? I would really appreciate your input. Thanks.

What's On YOUR Mousepad?

Ever get those "Get to Know Your Friends Better" emails? More than once, I've gotten them with the question, What's on your mouse pad? Well, THIS. . .

And THIS. . .

And THIS together!

Who Cares?

According to Bryan Peterson, the F8 is called the "Who Cares" F stop because you really don't care about whether the background or foreground are focused or out of focus.

As I was soaking in the tub yesterday, I looked all around me for different subjects to photograph. One was this almost dead *sigh* Rabbit's Foot Fern on the window ledge above the tub. (You'd think I would water it before or after I photographed it.) But, anyway, let's get back to the subject of photographing it. I love the textured container, the rabbit's "feet" and the one lone fern frond so I got in the empty tub and decided to photograph it from underneath the frond. It's late afternoon when I did this and today is a cloudy day, southern light window. I wanted to frame the frond in the curved pane of the window (and I tried to place it in a "sweet spot". I decided to shoot 3 shots at extremes and one in the middle. The top photo is the Who Cares F stop at F8. I am manually setting the F stop and then turning my dial until a correct shutter speed is indicated on my camera, focusing and shooting. Shutter speed was 1/6.

In the photo above, the F stop is set at F 3.5, the biggest opening possible for the lens and ISO (400) I was using (on my camera). The correct shutter speed was indicated at 1/125. So the shutter didn't stay open as long as the top photo and you can see it is a little darker and you cannot see the texture of the plant holder or rabbit's feet as clearly. I'm keeping all other factors the same in all three photos - ISO 400, 18 to 24mm lens, auto focus, white balance on cloudy daylight.

Now this last and darkest photo was set at F27, the smallest opening possible with the other conditions I have with the camera, so the camera indicated a correct shutter speed of 1/10. It almost looks like a silhouette. Not much light came into the camera.

All three exposures are "correct" but I got different results and more freedom with creativity to get the effect you want. Then there are other factors that could be used in this as well such as a different lens length, different lighting and white balance, different ISO, etc.

Which of the three do you like the best and why? (Now I will go water the fern :)