Silhouettes

My photo group did "silhouettes" tonight and it was tons of fun!

Here are my favorites... sorry I couldn't resist sneaking in one with a model!
None of these are edited, because I really dread editing, so here is how they came out. Thanks to everyone for all your help!

Ode to Carly

So, I noticed today that my little girl hasn't had a lot of pictures posted lately, so in honor of her upcoming 1st birthday, here is my little ode to Carly. All of these pics have been taken within that past couple weeks.

Head Lamp

Jakob had fun wearing his Daddy's headlamp the other day and decided to go out and ride his trike...
...unfortunately, it didn't help him see where he was going...
He thinks he's so funny!

Family Reunion

Well, the kids and I traveled to Black Beach Resort in Republic, WA. with my Dad for our family reunion. While I took nearly 400 pictures on the trip here are a few highlights...



Carly and her Great-Grandma















Jakob with his face painted...which he was very reluctant to do, but once he saw the other kids he let his Auntie give him some war paint too.









Carly LOVED eating on this trip...and she didn't have to do much to get somebody to give her something. Here she is enjoying spaghetti and watermelon, but later she got her Grandpa to give her a rice krispy treat! I knew my uncle had given her a couple small bites of his, but it wasn't until the next morning that I found out that my Dad had gotten her a whole other rice krispy treat and fed it to her. Sometimes I think I've got to watch those grandparents more than I have to watch my own kids! :)






Everybody loved playing in the water and riding on the boat.






























And we all LOVED spending time with our cousins!

Jakob's Birthday!

We celebrated Jakob's 3rd birthday yesterday and it was lots of fun!

We celebrated by having his best friend and favorite cousin over to play...
Then Jakob enjoyed talking to everyone who called him to wish him a "Happy Birthday"...
...especially while sitting in his new lawn chair from his Aunt Mandee

Then after dinner we took Jakob outside to see what Mom & Dad got for him...
A NEW TRIKE!!!
...well, "new" to us, Mommy found a great deal on Craig's List

Jakob even tried a few tricks all on his own! His Daddy and I have no idea where he saw anyone do this or why he even thought to do it, but he did and the faces he made just made us both crack up!Look! No Hands!
Yeah, I know that he is pushing himself with his feet but, hey, he'd only been riding a bike for 15 minutes!

Look at those mad skills!
Our boy's got talent!

Jakob enjoyed opening his other presents too...

a shape puzzle from his G & G Day
and there's nothin' better than money in a card!

and of course we finished with cake and candles...













it was a great birthday and lots of fun! Daddy was also really happy that Mommy has a digital camera because Mommy managed to take 300 pictures in one day! Yeah, I know that is a little excessive but I just wanted to catch every moment!

Shutter Speed Assignment

For this assignment I went out to Twin Falls State Park and took a few pictures of the river, when it was very high from all the melting snow due to our heat wave. Now, I don't have a tripod and didn't have anything to balance my camera on, so my "slow" shutter speed picture is not extremely slow. Also, I didn't know if anyone else would find this helpful, but I did, in my manual I read that to help reduce camera shake that you should not select a shutter speed that is slower than the length of your lens when you take the inverse of your lens length. SO, if you are shooting with a 300mm lens, then your shutter speed should not be any slower than 1/300 of a second. So, my lens came with my camera and is a 18-55mm lens, so the slowest shutter speed I used was 1/60.

Here is my first picture with the water in focus:

shutter speed 1/4000, f5.6, Exp. 0.0, 55 mm

Here is my picture with the water blurred:

shutter speed 1/60, f 22, exp. 0.0, 55 mm

What I find interesting is that even though both my exposure readings were 0.0, that the first picture is obviously darker than the second, and I would say that both of these need the exposure adjusted. But my eye needs more training to recognize whether the picture is over or under exposed, and I need to practice adjusting my exposure too.

All in all a very interesting assignment because as I was taking the pictures I thought they all looked the same until I got home and looked at them side by side.

My Pretty Pink Hat

So, Mom found this hat a little while ago and thought it was SO CUTE that she HAD to put it on me today so she could take some pictures. It was fun for a little while, like two minutes...but then I was done... hey, I am ONLY 8 months old!

Depth of Field (DOF) Practice

f5.6, ISO 800, 55mm, shutter speed 1/60

f5.6, ISO 800, 55mm, shutter speed 1/500

f 4.5, ISO 800, 32mm, shutter speed 1/60

none of these picture have been doctored, my focus was her face then her front foot, I left my WB on Auto, matrix-metering, shot in P-mode on my camera

I like the last picture the best because the shutter was slow enough that both her face and foot are well lit, also I like that her face is a little blurry but not indistinguishable. It looks more on purpose to me.

Bare with me, I got a new camera for Mother's Day (early) and am still reading the manual, but I couldn't help just playing around with it and probably took at least 60 shots of Miss C that night playing around!

Early Morning Visitirs

My hubby woke me up at 7:45 am today to see our visitors. These guys were in the field behind our house... these elk are so domesticated that I was able to open our back door to take these pictures and people from the trailer park were getting in their cars for work, and they just leisurely walked around. But, the one was keeping an eye on me and our dog.

Apple Bread

So, for those of you that need a background story... a few weeks ago I asked Suzie (my MIL) for a German dessert recipe for a Stake Enrichment Activity for which people were asked to bring desserts from different countries around the world, perhaps to do with our heritage. So, I thought a dessert from Germany sounded good and since Suzie had lived there I thought she would be a good resource. Well, Suzie came through for me and emailed me a recipe for German Apple Bread.

So, I made sure I had everything to make the bread and decided I would make it on Friday since enrichment was on Saturday. However, something told me that I needed to make something in addition to the apple bread. So, I looked online for a simple recipe and found one for Cinnamon Swirl Kuchen. When Josh came home Friday night he asked why I had made two things and I told him I didn't know why I just felt like I should, and I thought that perhaps it was because the single loaf of bread wouldn't be enough or it would be too crumbly or something.

Friday night I had a photo class to go to, so I headed off to my class leaving the apple bread cooling on a wire rack and warning Josh to keep an eye on Jakob because he had been trying to get the apple bread ever since I pulled it out of the oven. I kept telling Jakob that the bread was too hot and that he needed to wait for it to cool before he could have some. But, he is 2 1/2, so that obviously wasn't sinking in. I ate my dinner really fast and told Josh that he and Jakob could have a piece of the apple bread after Jakob ate his dinner, and headed off to my class.

However, the communication flaw occurred when I left the apple bread on the table, because dinner was on the counter, but Josh thought I had put the apple bread in the kitchen where Jakob couldn't get it. So, while Josh was feeding Carly he didn't realize that the apple bread was still on the dinner table where Jakob could reach it if he wanted to.

So, I came home from my class and saw the following picture...

...and I thought to myself, "Ok, so the boys tried the bread, I wonder if they liked it?"
Then I turned around and as I was headed out of the kitchen I saw this picture...


"Oh, your kidding!" I exclaimed, "Jakob took a bite out of the end of the loaf?!" I said to Josh, "Why didn't you cut off that end of the loaf?" And Josh just smiled a great big smile and sorta laughed and said, "Oh no, he didn't take just ONE bite out of it, go and take a look at the OTHER side." And here is what I found..

Yes, that is right, my lovely little son took bites down the entire side of the loaf of apple bread making it completely unacceptable to serve to anyone other than our little family. There was no way that I could slice up this bread and take it to a church function! The funny part is that I wasn't even mad, I just laughed and said, "well, I guess we know he likes it" and knew that was the reason I needed to make two things.

So, on behalf of Jakob, "Thank you Grandma for the yummy bread!"

Photo Assignments

Photo Assignment #3: Picture quality vs. Number of pixels

Ok, so as I was reading my notes I realized that I wasn't taking pictures correctly for this assignment. I took several pictures of the same thing but was only changing the picture quality (SHQ, HQ, SQ, etc,). When I got home and was looking at the picture specs I noticed that the first few all had the same number of pixels, I had thought that changing the quality standard would change the pixel size.

I tried looking through my manual to see if I could figure out how to change the quality & the pixels, but I can't figure it out. So, I am sorry that I did not complete this portion of the assignment. However, I will mention that I always take pictures in SHQ (super high quality) because it really shows when I print the pictures and when I edit them (I didn't know before about not editing in j.peg) and I seem to lose a lot more pixel faster if I am editing a lower quality picture.

Photo Assignments

Assignment #2: Loss of j.peg quality in editing

All I did was vary the color saturation. When I zoom into the pictures the loss of pixels is quickly apparent.

Here is my original photo:























Here is the 10th edition:

Photo Assignments

Photo Assignment #1: LCD Screen vs. Viewfinder

Ok, I took these two shots and I am pretty sure that the first one I used the LCD screen and the second I used the viewfinder, but I really can't tell and I had forgotten to take a pen with me to take notes.

Personally, I like using the LCD screen because I feel like I can see the picture better, when I am looking through the viewfinder my eye has a hard time focusing to see the picture clearly. I do struggle to get a clear picture using the LCD screen and have observed that I brace my elbows on my body to steady myself.