Afloat on Grandby

Since I had just told a friend a few days ago that my people (redheads) aren't boat people, I was a little nervous when my husband wanted to rent a pontoon boat today and spend some time out on Lake Granby.  But, I was envisioning a gray rubber raft, not the nice little boat with seats and awning that we actually had.  It was quite a wonderful evening on the lake.

Nikon D90

Nikkor 50mm f/1.8

18mm ISO 200

1/250s f/8

Bouncing baby boy

We got to spend some time with my husband's sister and her family today, including our little nephew, who LOVES to be tossed up in the air.  I was shooting on pure auto mode, and missed a bunch of them, because the shutter speed was too slow, but managed to get this one!  It is a little blurry, but I thought that it still deserved to be the picture of the day.

Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 24-105mm f4
24mm - ISO 2000
1/50s- f/4

(Leaving) Home on the Range

We will be in Colorado this week for a much-needed vacation.  We finally made it to the mountains this evening, but this was much more representative of the day.  Lots of open, rolling plains.  An advancing storm was looming up north.  We realized that we weren't going to make the mountains in time for a picture before sunset, so we stopped along the interstate about an hour out for this shot.  It is probably a bit frustrating to be my driver in these situations: "Ooh, that looks pretty.  Can we stop at the top of the hill?"  [slows down]  "No, that doesn't work. How about the next one?"  [speeds up]  "Ooh!  Stop now!  [screeching halt]  But, all of this gave me time to estimate my shot settings, since I didn't want us to be stopped by the side of the road for long.  My thought process was a lot like yesterday's; set the ISO for best quality, get a nice medium aperture for fine detail throughout, and then a shutter speed to get the desired dramatic exposure.  It is a good exercise to think these things through before you look at your meter; over time it will give you a good eye for settings, and you won't have to be tied to the meter so much.  I was quite pleased to get it pretty close on my first try.

Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 24-105mm f4
24mm - ISO 200
1/15s- f/11

Happy Fourth of July!

Today I got to shoot fireworks from the hard hat zone of Topeka's annual July 4th fireworks show.  This is my second year in a row shooting from this spot, and it is always a trip!  My advice for shooting fireworks:  set your ISO to something you can live with - and hopefully print from, then set your aperture to somewhere around 11, which will let you pick up on the sparkles and trails, and not just blow everything out.  Focus to infinity and then back off a twinge.  Finally, shoot in Bulb mode if you have it, at varying shutter speeds throughout the show.  Bulb mode lets you manually open and close the shutter at will.  My philosophy is to always catch multiple fireworks in each shot, which requires a longer exposure.

This photo was taken at a three-second exposure, and it is about impossible to tell when each shot was fired during that exposure.  What always amazes me is what the color cast from the fireworks overhead does to the ground below (and the passing smoke).  It is pretty amazing.  Check out more photos in my Flickr Photostream on the right side of the page.

Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 24-105mm f4
40mm - ISO 640
3s- f/11

Sweaty pepper

It was so humid today that I'm not sure if this was rain or sweat dripping off of the leaf on my pepper plant.  If you look really closely at the right edge of the water drop, you can see the little plant tag on the far-right side of the picture.  If you are wondering about the blue, it is the side of the big tub that my little garden is planted in.  Have I mentioned that I love the macro aspect of this lens?

Canon 5D Mark II
Promaster 70-300mm f4-5.6
300mm - ISO 400
1/50s- f/5.6

Independence weekend

We had a beautiful sunset tonight, which cast a golden Tuscan-ish glow over everything it touched, including the passing clouds and the rippling flag.  I wanted to get as much of the clouds as possible, which is why I used as small of an aperture as I could get.

Nikon D90

Nikkor 50mm f/1.8

50mm ISO 200

1/100s f/20

Cold as ice

We have been living with some truly scorching temperatures this week, and I have been dreaming of my college days working at TCBY where I would hang out in the blast freezer for a few minutes to cool down after walking to work on summer days. 

I was taking some pictures of the condensation on a bottle of vodka we have in our freezer (left over from our attempt at homemade vanilla extract using vodka and a vanilla bean).  As I was putting the bottle away, I decided to take one last shot.  It is lit almost completely by my flash, but I set my white balance to tungsten, which automatically compensates for the orange cast to most tungsten lights with the addition of blue (I'm sure there is a better scientific explanation of the process out there somewhere).  This caused the icy blue look of the photo.

Canon 5D Mark II
Promaster 70-300mm f4-5.6
300mm - ISO 800
1/50s- f/5.6

Canon 580EXII
TTL
On-camera, bounced up to ceiling