Category: around the house

We planted our plum tree over twenty years ago.  I’ve always loved seeing it bloom as the first sign of Spring, but it wasn’t until I started Project 365 that I noticed how pretty each blossom is.   I am amazed at how the discipline of looking for a photo each day compels me to intensely look at my surroundings! I have photographed the first buds, the first blossom, and now blossoms when the whole tree is in bloom.

f/4.8, 1/800, ISO 500, 195mm

I shot this looking up into the tree, zooming in to almost 200mm, and then cropping the image.  I am wondering about depth of field- so shallow when zoomed in.  I am already thinking of trying this again with a smaller aperture. . .

We are in recovery mode from the German Chocolate cake, so this week’s grocery trip involved a lot of produce- fresh fruit, GREENS (for smoothies as well as to eat with dinner), and the ingredients for soups and salads.  Antioxidants, omega-3’s, phytochemicals, lycopene, whatever- we’ve got it covered!

f/1.8, 1/100, ISO 1000, @35mm

I have spent much more time than I should have today battling with my 70-300 lens.  We have had heavy rain for much of the day, and I thought it would be cool to capture the action of the raindrops either dripping from something or hitting something.  I should have known better.

After many, many, MANY attempts, I had the choice of either abandoning the project or uploading images with soft focus.  I think the problem was compounded by low light- it was a rainstorm, after all.  So, a few minutes ago I snapped this photo with very little effort.

f/5.6, 1/160, ISO 1000 at 300mm

When I made the same shot at 200mm, the focus was sharper, but the bokeh wasn’t as nice.  I went with the bokeh. . .

Yesterday was busy, tomorrow is busy- so today I am getting things done around the house and trying not to obsess about what photo to take. I walked through the house with my camera and decided to snap some details of a dry arrangement in our entryway.

f/1.8, 1/200, ISO 640 @35mm

After everything I learned in my class yesterday about white balance, I used auto- and it was WRONG!  I had to adjust it in Aperture 3.

Notice the blurry edges- since I discovered picnik.com, I just can’t stay away from it! I have $$$$ invested in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Aperture 3- and I am using the free internet program!  Somebody stop me . . .

Project 52’s theme this week is Breakfast, and one of my favorite breakfasts is a smoothie!

Today’s smoothie is fresh blueberries, frozen mango and strawberries, yogurt, a splash of orange juice, and some protein powder. Yum!  Since we got our VitaMix, we often add greens to the mix too, which makes it extra healthy.

f/1.8, 1/100, ISO 1000, 35mm

I think I have set a new record for myself: 5 minutes to take photos, 5 minutes to edit them, 5 minutes to put into a collage (and probably 5 more to get this posted . . .)! I often spend an hour or more taking photos and then at least that much time choosing, editing, uploading etc.  I am trying to make this process more streamlined.

Yesterday morning there were no blossoms on my plum tree. By noon there were about fifty! Amazing what you have time to notice when you aren’t working!

Tonight is my monthly book club meeting.  I am only 73% finished with the book, so I plan to spend a significant part of today reading.  It would be hard to justify not being done to my teacher friends, who are still working while I am at home, a lady of leisure! Oh well, I can think of worse ways to spend a day . . .

f/3.5, 1/80, ISO 800, 35 mm

I actually RETOOK this pretty boring, simple photo, because I realized the keys that weren’t in focus were “blown out”- even though the histogram didn’t show that.  I ended up increasing my depth of field by closing down the aperture a bit and using spot metering to meter off the kindle so that I could get those darn keys to be more visible.

In case you’re interested, the book is The White Queen by Philippa Gregory.

 

 

It was maybe twenty years ago, that I introduced Pig Week into my first grade classroom.  We were big into weekly themes back then, and our new reading series featured a story about a pig.  I told my class that the next week we were going to celebrate one of the most important weeks in the year, and they were brimming with excitement, curiosity, and anticipation as they entered the classroom the following Monday. What would the new theme be? Pigs? PIGS? After I introduced the story, did some pig art projects, pig writing projects, and read some fabulous pig stories, they became believers! Several of them brought me stuffed pigs that year, because they figured I MUST like pigs.

The first day of school the following year, one of my new students timidly asked me if it was true that I liked pigs! When I replied that indeed I did, the children looked at each other with amazement.  Well, this was going to be an interesting year?!?!?  And I received many, many pigs as gifts that year.

Well, that was the start of it all. Twenty years later, I now own pig jewelry, pig figurines, pig socks, pig slippers, pig wall hangings, pig flashlights, pig calendars, pig pens, pig mugs, pig puppets, and more stuffed pigs than you can imagine! SInce my retirement last year, I’ve been struggling with what to do with them all. I’m surprised at how attached to them I really am!

Here is a photo of a very minor part of my collection- plastic pigs used for counting:

f/2.8, 1/320, ISO 500, 35 mm

My plans for today were canceled suddenly, because my friend Anne woke up sick. Oh no! My out of town photo ops had disappeared!  Rather than use the day for photography (and risk being labeled obsessive . . .), I decided to take a quick photo and be done for the day.  So here we are- water drops on the shower door!

In case the housecleaning police reads this blog- yes, I squeegeed the drops away afterward!

f/1.8, 1/250, ISO 1250, 35 mm

My great-grandmother’s Boston fern stand is the highest-status location in my house for my houseplants.  A ginger jar sat upon it in the house I grew up in, and I never knew it was my great-grandmother’s until my mother gave it to me many years ago.  For a long time, I did put Boston ferns on it, but since we moved here twenty-three years ago, it has mostly been the home for my most beautiful spider plant. Any plant that I acquired during my years as a first grade teacher had to understand that it would be watered every Saturday morning- no matter what.  If it didn’t adapt to my schedule and didn’t mind occasionally skipping a Saturday, well- the results weren’t pretty!  Spider plants and pothos have been the most cooperative!

Awhile ago (maybe ten years?) an ivy plant came to live at my house.  I think it is a grape ivy, and frankly I didn’t give it much chance of making it.  I have unpleasant memories of dusty, unhealthy ivy in my childhood dining room, and, anytime I’ve had ivy, it didn’t adapt well to my rules.  Well, the grape ivy has thrived!  And I was starting to love it more than as much as my most beautiful spider plant! It sat on a sofa table behind the couch and grew so huge it was hard to walk through without bending the vines back.  Last summer, I decided to move it to my front hallway where there was more room.  And less light.  I was also gone for six weeks, because of the birth of my second grandchild.

When I came back, I noticed it looking a little leggy, but didn’t really examine it closely until today.  It’s not doing well! My grape ivy! I felt so bad that, after I trimmed it back, I removed my big spider plant from its place of honor on the Boston fern stand and replaced it with my poor ivy!  My spider plant is now in the greenhouse window, which is not as ideal a location as it sounds- over the kitchen sink- not very prestigious….

Things have changed since the ivy left its first location in the family room.  The fern stand is now located beside the new TV and has the job of making the room look less TV-focused.  The ivy will have to adjust to life a slight bit further away from the window than it liked and beside a speaker.  I’ll keep you posted…

By the way- in case you wondered about my problem with over-exposed photos yesterday- make a guess! It is such a common beginner’s mistake that I am embarrassed to report it.

If you guessed Exposure Compensation Button, you are right.  OMG.

I have been practicing with Back Button Focus, which has my whole hand-positioning thing off.  The Nikon D5000 has dials that do multiple jobs, because it is a small entry level DSLR.  At some point I accidentally turned the mode dial thing- whatever its called- out of Manual to Aperture Priority- and then back again, because I kept rotating that instead of the command dial.  At that point if I hit the Exposure Compensation button it would, well, adjust exposure COMPENSATION and not the exposure for that particular photo!  If this makes no sense, don’t worry about it.

I stayed home most of today- so here is a still life featuring my grandmother’s school bell and some of my mother’s books (sitting on my father’s antique dental cabinet). I do love old things!

I worked on various focusing techniques today- my usual half-pressed shutter-focusing and recomposing, back-button focus, and toggling the focus points.  The focus point toggling seems very awkward to me, perhaps because I don’t have enough points to always hit the spot in my composition that I want to be in focus.  I did not find the back-button focusing any crisper than my regular method, but I did find that sometimes the toggling could produce a more focused image (but it takes me longer). I think that this particular shot was my usual focus and recompose technique.