oh no... my camera!

It figures. I actually crack open the manual, figure some stuff out, and something crazy happens to my camera. I don't know what might be going on, but I can only take about three pictures before it shows a dead battery.

I tried my dad's Kodak EasyShare tonight. I didn't like anything about the automatic settings. They are hard to deal with and there isn't a very big aperture range. And, after I loaded everything, I realized the photos are date stamped.

Big sigh.

Here are a few that turned out okay.

a little time outside

Scott Adams, in The Dilbert Principle, said,

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Art is knowing which ones to keep."

How true! It definitely applies to photography. You've got to be willing to take chances, to experiment. I've deleted so many pictures. Black ones, blurry ones, white ones. But, I'd gladly make one hundred mistakes to have one photo that I love. I made a lot of mistakes outside this weekend, but I kept some. And those make it worth it!

A few macro shots:

Tomatoes from my parents' garden:

{p} with a moth. He loves looking for and catching bugs. The first shot was f 2.8. The second was f 5, I think. The others are just examples of {p} on the prowl for more bugs.
















And finally, the inside of a bluebird house.

practice, practice, practice

I'm having fun practicing, so that's a good thing. I'm not having fun with shots that do not turn out the way that I expect them to. The lowest F-stop setting on my camera is 2.8. I would expect to get a little background blur with that, but in most pictures, it isn't as much as I hoped for. Let's see... little background blur... would that mean a greater depth of field? Or lower depth of field? Whichever it is, I know what I want, but I'm not always getting it. And sometimes I'm getting a little blur that I don't expect. Where is it coming from?

I'm sharing a few pictures that I took this evening. Some are a little blurry, some are darker than I wanted. But, I enjoy knowing that I controlled the technical aspects of the shots.

This is my favorite. It's a sedum that was my grandmother's.

I had to get in the grass for this mushroom.

I like how the sedum leaves are framing the clover in the middle.

At {p}'s request... picture of his snapdragons. Bless his heart. He said, "You're starting to get good at taking pictures!"

I like how the light coming through the leaves looks almost symmetrical. This was taken standing under a sunflower.

{s} trying a tomato in the garden

Horrible background, but he wasn't interested in moving.

I like the vibrant colors here.

Too dark, but I stuck it in here anyway.

a class experiment

Tonight we went into a neighboring classroom and experimented with using some manual settings on some random junk. Very few of mine turned out the way that I hoped, but here are some that I'm willing to share:




this was my favorite


a pencil eater


hula hoops against a mirror


hula hoops against a mirror... higher f-stop


this had the potential to be a neat photo, but it is darker than I wanted

pics from the park

I took a few pictures at the park today, but I'm not crazy about any of them. It was really overcast, so instead of using any flash I played with aperture settings a bit. I still can't get focal length like I want it... going to have to do some more reading on that.


Here are three:




a little blurry



a little dark





blurry, but hilarious!