Foggy Mornings

The answer to the question on picture #3 is Yes, yes I was.

Night

Night is kind of hard without a tripod. I can hardly ever stand quite still enough!!

Cincinnati's Finest

Little Sis and her babies

Thanksgiving

Well, so much for posting at least once a week. So far, I've failed meeting that goal! We went to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, as is our custom. The in-laws live there. They were nice enough to put us up at the Red Rock Resort & Casino. It was really, really nice. I've stayed in a lot of casino hotels, and this is one of the nicest yet. It helps that the place is relatively new and that the decor is decidedly uncasino-like. It was just for one night, but what an enjoyable experience. I got up the next morning as the sun was coming up over the Red Rocks and went out to the parking deck to enjoy it. Even though it was COLD, I was still glad I did. Hope you like!

Flowers...

...are cool. I've seen some real beauts lately. Hope you enjoy them. Just a side note: I have not PhotoShoped or altered these in any way except to resize for web view. Beauty just like God made it.

This one seems to have a shimmer like organza or twinkle fabric. It looked so pretty in the sun.

This one seems to have it's own inner light source. It glows!

Birds and Bees

A New Month

Wow! October is over. It seems that this year has sped along and is almost over as quickly as it began. I've had a lot of fun in October, and some of my October pictures will be showing up during the rest of the year. I guess I don't have to limit my posts to pictures from the current month. I did get some fantastic sunset action to start out the month of November, though. I am so thankful to God for the beauty that He created. It is just awesome to watch the action in the sky that happens during a sunset. I mean, it changes all the time. By the time you take a few minutes to futz around with something, you look up and the sky has changed. I remember the first time I noticed that. I was leaving South Lake Tahoe and my sister told me to pull over to take pics of the sunset. Well, it was spectacular. We pulled over, and then decided that we wanted to go a little higher up the mountain to get a better view. By the time we pulled back onto the road to go up, the sky had changed dramatically! She yelled at me that it was changing fast and we needed to hurry up. I tried, but we really missed the best of the setting by trying to find a better vantage point. I learned my lesson, though. Stay right where you are and keep snapping.

I got there about 5pm.

changing.....

golden glow leaving, firey glow entering....

I was done, picked up dinner and ate, all before 6pm! Beautiful!

I've got to make a habit......

.....Of posting to this blog at least once a week, preferably once a day. I have so many pictures! I'm not proficient at PhotoShop or any of that stuff. All I know how to do is open it in some pre-installed or purchased easy software and play with the saturation, hue, contrast, brightness, midtones, etc. The EASY stuff. I wish I knew how to use the other stuff. I kind of dislike the idea of manipulation but I appreciate the ability to tweak something here or there to make the shot better. I have to ponder the idea some more. I have a few programs that would probably do what I needed and then some, but I don't know how to use them with any proficiency. I have the JASC Paint Shop Pro 8 (yeah, I know it's older than dirt) and Adobe PhotoShop Elements. I also have the Fuji Finepix Viewer and Microsoft Picture It! software. The bones are there to learn this digital manipulation stuff, but I gotta reconcile some grey matter to jive with some old concepts I have about real art and digital manipulation of art. Oh well, while I'm griping, I may as well post a pic or two!

This is my view on the way to work. (Yes, I work in that green/blue glass building.) I love how the square mirror tiles seem to almost be a drawing superimposed into the background of the picture. This is almost like one of the two I submitted as a donation to the charity auction at work. The submitted photo didn't have the moon in it and the composition was a little different. I called it "Squared" because of all of the squares and cubes (or perception of cubes) in the picture. Simplistic, I know, but it works for me!

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This is the view outside one of my co-worker's office window. The clouds were beautiful that afternoon.

Get it over with already!!

I donated some photographs to an auction for a charity at work. They were put up for sealed bid today and bidding will end on Thursday. I am curious to know how much they go for. I know they probably won't tell me, since it's a SEALED bid, but I still want to know. It's kind of like validation, you know? I've never sold a picture before, and even though I'M not being paid, it's still kind of like I sold a piece of my art.

Oh well, here are a few wonderful shots I got recently.

I thought the angle of view for this flower was kind of neat. I used my handy dandy macro setting. I didn't really notice the spider webs at first. After I uploaded the pic and had the webs pointed out to me by my husband, I realized that the shot wasn't as clean as I thought I had gotten it. I still like it, though. Here is the flower petal end of the plant in this next shot.

A beautiful ending...

I saw this guy's reflection and knew I had a wonderful shot. It was a beautiful ending to a beautiful day.

A new day

The sky is beautiful and it's a great start to a wonderful day.

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Cincinnati's Krohn Conservatory

I went out shooting with my Dad on a visit home to Cincinnati. We had never done that before. I mean, I had gone with him on weddings to help out and to have a 2nd camera there,

but it wasn't MY shoot. It wasn't going out to shoot for ME.

Needless to say, this was a BIG DEAL.

Out of his 15 kids, there are 4 that have the bug. I think a couple of my brother's are interested, they just don't see the value in having anything more than what will look good on their myspace pages! :-)

Eye of Paisley

I love shooting faces and then cropping the eyes. This shot hasn't been futzed with. I took it in front of a lamp because the macro didn't want to work in the available light. Too bad most people won't let me get right in their faces and snap their eyes!

Photography

I'm an amateur photographer. I have lots of insecurities about my talents, though. I guess I'm far more critical than I should be. I like a lot of the stuff I shoot, so you would think that I would like the results I get. Sometimes I don't.

I think about my Dad alot. He has so much talent, and he has the same problem I do. He takes awesome pictures, but he constantly second guesses himself, and lacks the confidence to promote himself and his pictures. Unfortunately, my Dad doesn't travel alot, so the pictures he takes are of the local and surrounding area of his home. The thing is, he STILL makes that mundane, everyday, "I see that all the time," stuff look so good! His wedding stuff is amazing. No matter what he shoots, it looks fabulous.

When I was growing up, just about everything Dad shot was medium format. He never got his film developed like my film. He went to a camera shop instead of to the local chain store. His film intrigued me because it was so different. Back then, I thought that taking pictures with my 110mm film was an achievement! Then I graduated to 35mm and felt like I was in the big time. But Dad's negatives still looked different. 120mm negatives were bigger and cleaner and the corresponding pictures were crisp and bright.

I borrowed a Yashica camera from my brother in law to try the 120mm film, but I was dissapointed when I realized that the shutter didn't work. It was cool having it in my hand and looking down into the viewfinder. It reminded me of when Dad would let me hold his camera when he was changing film or charging his flash.

I hope that looking at my pictures will inspire someone to use whatever camera they have, and not to think that great pictures only come from big, expensive cameras. True, I wouldn't turn one down, but I think that my little point and shoot 8mp camera can do awesome things by itself, not to mention the everlasting workhorse Canon AE-1.

I found a site recently that made me swoon. This guy makes me feel more confident in my own eye. I freely admit that his camera and techniques produce cleaner pictures than mine, but I'm encouraged that with more experience and time, I can create the same atmosphere in my photos that he does. Some of his stuff really spoke to me and the way I look at lines through the camera. Take a look at his site. His wife also has a site, one that is more ethereal.

Wet

After the rain, outside at work. Lovely stuff.

Nature

Such beauty that God made! Hallelujah!!!

10.3.07

Moon Set

The moon still up one morning as I walked to work.

My Photos

I love the lines, in nature and in architecture. A lot of my photographs will have lines that figure prominently in them. At least they do to my eye. It might just be me. Anyhoo, my dad is a first rate photographer and I caught the bug from him. I've only ever taken one photo class, but I want to take more (when I find time, or they start offering them on Saturdays!). My cameras aren't anything special, at least as far as photography is concerned. They're actually QUITE special to me. I've got my:

• Pentax ZX-50 that my hubby bought for me when our 1st kid was born,
• Canon AE-1 that my brother-in-law found at a yard sale for $40 (included 50mm lens, 2x converter, 80-200 long lens, case and original manuals)
• Fuji Finepix 3.1 megapixel (my first digital)
• Pentax SF-10 bought on Ebay
• Pentax IQ Zoom 80E bought on Ebay
• Pentax ZX-60 bought on Ebay

I have a few other cameras around the house, but most recently, my husband bought me the Olympus FE-280. I've been having a ball taking pics with that. I've had it since the 1st of October and I've already taken about 500 pictures! Well, I'm looking forward to hearing your comments and following your links to other photo blogs. Cheers!

Pushing Daisies

Experimenting with the Macro on my new camera. Looks pretty good!