Day 128- Homework

Yup- I have homework! As I’ve mentioned, I’m taking Karen Russell’s fabulous photography class, which I wish I had taken a year ago instead of stumbling around learning in bits and pieces from everywhere. The lesson I focused on today was on Exposure Compensation, which I remember learning about on Pioneer Woman’s blog when I was first starting out.  Since I went almost directly to manual, pretty much bypassing Aperture and Shutter Priority, I haven’t had occasion to practice with this much- until now.

It’s interesting- and has made me think about Ansel Adams’ Zone System, which I was trying to learn before I started taking this class. Without going into it much, I noticed today that the tones I metered/focused on directly affected how much exposure compensation was needed (metering/focusing on a darker tone made the whole photo over-exposed).

I did the assignment twice, with two different types of flowers. I liked my focus best on the geraniums, so that is the photos you are seeing.  Both shots are straight out of camera (gasp!).

The original exposure:

 

My preference, which is -2/3 stops exposure compensation:

It really is a matter of preference in this case. I prefer the deeper tones in the flowers in the second shot and the lighter background in the first. The other flowers I photographed today were DRAMATICALLY over-exposed, using the camera’s exposure without exposure compensation.   And in that case, I had focused on the deep brown center of my daisy.  Zone System!

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Day 127- Mothballs, Moon, and Macros

I couldn’t resist being one of the many out last night photographing the “big moon”.  My husband suggested a parking lot overlooking the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet (the Mothball Fleet), and it seemed many others had the same idea.

I enjoyed using the macro lens today after being away from it for a week.  Here are some views of geraniums that bloomed during our absence.

 

 

 

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Day 126- Home- and Bonus Birds

We are home- and missing our little Yellowstone family. I had Facetime with Miles this morning, which helped some.

We came home to Spring- at Yellowstone it has barely begun. Here is some of our lavender in full bloom.

Yesterday, we took a short drive with our son-in-law and Miles.  Our son-in-law has the amazing ability to drive and spot wildlife at the same time. We stop- and then it takes my husband and me several minutes to see what he was able to spot while driving.  Here are two birds we saw on our drive; both photos are very zoomed in, but he identified them while driving.

Sandhill crane (which looked like a rock until it finally lifted its head)

Kestrel

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Day 125- Morning Playtime

It’s our last morning to wake up to the sounds of “Go, go, go!” from Henry and Miles’s stories of Bun-Bun (his favorite “lovey”- or what he calls- nominee).

Here is Henry watching an elk out the window- and both boys playing boat.

 

 

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Day 124- Drive to the Lamar Valley

The Lamar Valley is my favorite drive in Yellowstone National Park.  This visit to the park, however, has been solely devoted to playtime with the grandbabies and helping out with childcare, as our son-in-law has been working out of town for most of our visit- and we haven’t had time to do much else.  Today is our last day in Wyoming, so Lonnie, Miles, and I took a quick drive over to the Lamar Valley.

This was a great day for wildlife!  Earlier in the day, I had seen my first fox, a fluffy little guy walking across the lawn by the house (alas, no photo). On our drive this afternoon, we saw hundreds of buffalo, including some new babies!

 

But the highlight of the day happened on our drive back. From the car, I spotted a grizzly bear walking along toward a pull-out, where a ranger and a few others were watching him.  This was my first grizzly sighting at Yellowstone (we had seen one at Glacier National Park years ago).  We pulled over, and I took MANY shots of him zoomed in at 200 mm.  I’ve decided that the next time I take this drive I will bring a tripod and a longer lens for better focus. Wildlife and landscape photography are not my forte.

This is my favorite image (I like the open mouth!)- it is cropped and was overexposed in aperture priority (although I thought it looked OK in camera).

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Day 123- It’s all about eyelashes . . .

A buffalo was in the yard yesterday, so Henry spent some time at the window this morning trying to see if he came back today.  It made a great opportunity for wonderful window light.

 

 

Later Henry and I were home alone, while his Caitlin and Lonnie went to pick Miles up from preschool.  We had some special time playing with the iPhone.

The above photos were all taken with Caitlin’s Nikon D5000.  This morning I tried to take photos with my camera and discovered that the extra battery I had charged at home was dead. Fortunately I had brought the charger; unfortunately, I had forgotten the cord! So. . . I used Caitlin’s camera- and these are all JPEGs.  Later, my friend and fellow photoblogger, Carol, suggested that I use Caitlin’s cord with my charger- and it worked- WHEW!

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Day 117- Rainy Rerun

It’s packing day- getting ready for our trip to Wyoming!  This week’s assignment in my photography class is shooting an object with another object slightly behind it at different apertures and distances to learn about depth of field.  I hope to do this with my family in Wyoming, but I’m not sure about the level of cooperation I’ll get.  So I’m hedging my bets by shooting flowers before I go.

The weather wasn’t too cooperative this morning- April showers. Between showers, I managed to take all the required shots of my iris (from Day 115) with daisies behind it- and then took a couple different angles for the Flickr group.  Then I looked again at the topic for today- and realized that the challenge was to have your whole photo be in only three colors.

Oh.

So here it is anyway- and I’m aware that there are at least 5 colors in this image.

And I’m aware that Day 115’s photo is very similar- and better- but I need to get back to my to-do list!

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Day 116- Blasts from the Past

De-cluttering has become an obsession, as I go through bouts of determination to sift through our old possessions, as well as those of my grandmother, mother, and our children.  We have this vision of a sleek, uncluttered, low maintenance smaller house in our future- and we know that we’ll never be able to even think of downsizing until we get rid of and organize the contents of our closets, cupboards, and garage.  I have been working on this in fits and spurts since my mother died fifteen years ago- and it seems never-ending.

Today I went through old record albums, each one with so many memories. I still have about a hundred to go through (trying to black out my name and seeing if the right record is in the right album cover).  I have no idea yet what I will do with them! I thought of photographing them for today, but decided to go with the theme from Saturday- RECIPE.

This recipe box is where I keep recipes from my early marriage years- all hand-written and many in the handwriting of the person who gave it me the recipe.  My current recipes are in binders- and often printed out from the internet- not nearly as personal.

I used Aperture Priority with Easy Exposure Compensation and AUTO ISO. Because I focused on the recipe cards, I had to lower exposure by 1 stop (so easy since I changed my settings to Easy Exposure Compensation).  It felt like shooting in AUTO- kind of like cheating!

 

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Day 115- Change

Back in my comfort zone- manual settings, macro lens, flower, photo-editing- ahhhhhh!  I am learning SO MUCH in my photo class, but it was a relief today to go back to where I feel competent.  The theme today is CHANGE- and, since this iris just popped out over the weekend, I think it qualifies.

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Day 114- In motion

I’m using an image I took for my photo class this morning as today’s photo of the day (I’m tired and a little lazy this afternoon).  The assignment was to take 5 shots at 1/15 of a second, then double the shutter speed and repeat until reaching a shutter speed of 1/1000 second.  I did this last week- but wasn’t satisfied with the photos because I was too close (cutting off the top part of my husband’s body).  My very supportive husband allowed me to repeat the series this morning, and this one is the one I like best.  I posted the SOOC one for the class- and edited this black and white version for the blog.  It was one of my first shots- the very low shutter speed (1/15 sec.) shows the movement of both ball and club.

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