Playing Catchup...

So I've been taking a lot of pictures this week, but have been lax about posting them here...I've just been loading them to Facebook.

Here are my favorites from the last several days...

This is one of my niece playing on the playground at her brothers' soccer game...

And here's one of her brother at the end of the game - the players run through a tunnel made of their families' arms. I love the look on his face.

On Saturday, I went out to the U of Michigan botanical gardens to practice using the macro settings on my lens - I got a ton of great pictures, but here are my favorites:

Revisiting last week's squirrel

So last night in class we learned about histograms. A histogram is a chart that shows you the balance between light, dark & midtone colors in your photography. Depending on your camera, this graph is viewable either when you take a photo, or when you review your photo on the back of your screen.

In cases where you've shot pictures where that are either under or over exposed, you can quickly correct this in iphoto by manipulating the histogram. Below are the results of correcting the squirrel photos I took last week that were severly underexposed.

Today's Pictures

Here are the pics from my class tonight...I definitely got the settings better on the darn squirrels than I did last week:

I liked how the shadows fell through these arches, and I changed to black & white to try and show them off a little more.

I got this shot right before I got back to my house. I was chasing the sunset the whole way home, looking for a place to pull over with a relatively clear shot of the sky...this is as good as I could get. I pumped up the saturation in iPhoto to help bring out the colors...

Last Weekend's Photos

Last weekend, my friend, Jane, and I spent 4 days in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with Pat McGee, Stephen Kellogg, Michael Tolcher & the Kin. In short, we had our faces rocked off! It was an amazing time and I had fun playing with both my P&S and the D90. Results are below.

Pat McGee singing at lunch on Friday (taken with the Panasonic on automatic):

Michael Ghegan singing his heart out (Panasonic):

Photo below is of Pat taking a break during a photo shoot. I was trying to frame this with the hang glider in the back. I got the framing right just as Pat removed his sunglasses.

This one was taken with the D90 and is SOOC (straight out of the camera):

On our last day there, there were a ton of pelicans fishing in the morning. I got several pics of them, but the sun was so bright the pictures all came out overexposed. This is one of them after attempting to fix the exposure issues (using iPhoto).

This is the first picture I shot that weekend. DSLR, SOOC:

While we were there, we made friends with the event photographer, David Bergman. David is a highly repected and amazing, music and sports photographer. His stuff has graced the cover of Sports Illustrated (8 times), and he's toured with the Barenaked Ladies and Bon Jovi as their official tour photographer. He does great things with light, using remote flashes on the go. I was very appreciative that he tolerated my very novice questions. Now to convince Chris to let me attend one of his lighting workshops in NYC sometime. The pic below is of him shooting Pat and Pat's sound guy, "Big Sexy" Jay.

Check out David's website, www.davidbergman.net, and his store where you can buy his concert photos, www.tourphotographer.com .

Today's Pictures

I had class tonight and got some great shots of a squirrel...unfortunately I had the ISO set to 1600 and the apeture wasn't large enough so the shots are noisy and dark. But...I installed PS Elements last night to see if I could rescue them - here's one of the shots:

So, lesson learned - ALWAYS check your setting before snapping the photo. I was so worried that I wouldn't get the shot, that the shot that I did get wasn't ideal. And the darn squirrel kept posing for me so I definitely should've been more patient.

I think I still need to go back in and see if I can lighten up the photo more and get a little more color back into it, but that will have to wait until next week, when I have more time...

So, let me know what you think of the shot - I think he's pretty cute!

Today's Pictures

So today, I wanted to play around a little bit more with setting the shutter speed. I went to Partridge Creek Mall and took some pictures of one of the fountains there - these are my 2 faves:

I really love how the water in the first picture looks like jellyfish or aliens or something.

I also got to take some pictures of my nieces and nephew when we headed to their house to visit for Griffin's birthday...Happy Birthday, Griff!

How cute is that kid? I love those freckles! OK - here's one more of him...

here's his baby sister, Daphne...she's a cutie to photograph...I took like 100 pictures of her today so I had to severely restrain myself and only post 2.

and finally....a couple of Kendra, the ham.

...and a couple more

Have I said how much I am in love with this lens?

Today's Pictures

So today I got home from work and my new lens just arrived in the mail! Thanks, Amazon for your superfast shipping - it wasn't scheduled to be here until tomorrow but it came today!

So...I immediately went out to the backyard to take some pictures. The lens is s 50mm f/1.8 and it's awesome! It took some great shots! Here's my favorites:

These pictures are of our doggies/children, Hamlet & Ophie.

This first pic of Hamlet is good, except I didn't catch him in the sunlight so I think his face is a little too dark.

Better, I realized my shadow was in the way so I moved:

Ophie. I LOVE this. It really captures her personality. I can tell how much better shooting with SLR is. Normally I can't get this much color and definition in her face...usually you just see undefined blackness.

So that's it for pictures today....let me know what you think...critiques are appreciated!

Today's Pictures

So today, on the suggestion of my photography instructor, I headed to George George Community Park in Clinton Township to take pictures. My main goal today was to play with some perspective/framing hints we were given in class last night.

This one has the sky too white, but once I learn how to use photoshop, I'd like to go back and try to darken it up so you can see the statute better.

I changed this one to black and white to attempt to show off the angle and arches of the swingset a little better...

I tried playing with the aperture on the last photo in an attempt to blur the background and focus on the flower...it didn't work the way I wanted it to, but I do like the photo.

A point of reference...

So, to give you a point of reference, I'm including some photos I've taken in the last few months...all of these were taken with my Panasonic Lumix point & shoot. Hopefully over the next several weeks, my pictures will get better. I'm starting to use our Nikon D80 so the pictures I post as part of my photography class will be shot with that.

This first photo was taken at my newphews' soccer game. My nephew is in the blue jersey - and I got this shot with luck...when shooting sports I usually use the continuous shooting mode and that's how I captured this shot.

One of my favorite things to photograph is concerts. I love capturing my favorite bands' performing on stage - especially when I get a fun shot that really showcases the band's personality. Also, the stage lighting usually makes for some cool effects. Below are a couple of shots I took on the Rock Boat this past January.

This photo is of Kyle from Dexter Freebish. I LOVE the angle of this photo, but hate that it's not in focus.

I like the next one for several reasons: the lighting and how the color matches Scott's tie, the facial expressions and the overall effect.

This one I like because I think I captured the moment really well.

And this one is the best one I think I took from the whole trip. Great interaction between the guys, it's in focus and you can see the Rock Boat logo in the background.

So that's a few of the photos I've taken before my class....hopefully the photos I get over the next few months will be an improvement on these.

Why are we here?

I finally decided to join the blog world. I'm starting a photography class today and I've decided I wanted to have a place to keep track of what I'm learning and a place to post the pictures I take.

I also love to cook and to try new recipes - occassionally I may post some of the recipes I'm whipping up.

So, welcome to my little corner of the interwebs!