T'was the day before Christmas in Florida

T’was the day before Christmas and Florida was cold,
Jeff’s sister Gaye was visiting and she felt quite bold,
So off to the beach we flew through the chill,
And as she entered the water, she felt quite a thrill,
For the water was chilly, down right cold it is true,
But Gaye smiled and laughed as her toes became blue.
“It’s the beach,” she said with a grin on her face,
“I’d rather be here than any other place!”


So, despite the wind, the waves, and the cold water there,
We had fun at the beach as the wind blew our hair.
We waded in the surf and drew pictures in the sand,
Afterwards we headed for the ice cream stand!
Well, actually to COLD STONE for a chilly little snack -
Which we ate in the warmth of the car heading back.

Ummmm...Cookie-making Cousins and the Birthday Girl

After missing Andrew's baptism several years ago, I promised myself that I would never miss another baptism. So, thanks to my generous and wonderful husband, I was able to fly to Utah on December 3rd in order to be there for Cali's baptism on the 10th. In the evening on Monday, December 6th, almost all of the Utah cousins gathered at Cali's house for a cookie-making extravaganza and 8th birthday celebration.

Take Gumdrops...

... sprinkles, red hots, and mini gummi bears...

...add frosting, cookies and cousins. It was a fun, noisy, sticky, messy, yummy time!

more cookie makers: Aidan and Colton

Cannon and Cali

Nya, and Hunter with a skinned nose and goose egg from falling on his face the day before!

Adam in his Grinch shirt,

Eden

Rexy

Andrew wrote a letter to Uncle Jeff...

The COOKIES!

The Birthday Girl makes a wish before blowing out the candle :)

Thankful!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This has been a whirlwind week of activities with the kids out of school, lots of projects needing attention, and 21 people for Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know what made me think that I would have lots of photo opportunities on Thanksgiving because when one is the hostess over a great feast, there just isn't much of a chance to stop and pick up the camera...however, the following day we had some friends come over for an air boat ride. Russ brought his old Pentax film camera to try some shots. (The pop of red under his chin is the ear protector worn to muffle the sound of the huge fan that propels the air boat.)

1/250, f5.0, ISO 400

I was intrigued with the color and shape of this water lily and how the water

droplets clung to the leaves as it began to rain. Another time it would be fun to see if a raindrop could be captured just as it landed on the leaf!

1/250, f5.6, ISO 400

We don't always have such calm conditions during a ride, but the water was as smooth as glass and made for a perfect mirror image on this tree lined canal.

1/400, f4.0, ISO 400

Thanks again, Brooke, for opening my understanding of how to use my camera in manual mode. It opens a whole new world and I feel like an infant taking those first unsteady steps. Just like anything worth doing well, becoming a photographer will take diligence and practice in order to master exposure, composition, the use of light, and bring them all together into beautiful, creative photographs. I'm glad that I still have a lot to learn. After all, Helmut Newton said, "The first 10,000 shots are the worst." That gives me plenty of chances to find my own style! Next week I'm off to Utah to try my new found knowledge out on my grandchildren - Yippee!!

Carrying on the Legacy

"If pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this: I was here. I existed. I was young. I was happy and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture." ~anonymous

My dad, an avid photographer, captured the wonder of Christmas in the photo above, taken when I was 4 years old. It embodies the essence of what I think we try to do as budding photographers - capture the authenticity of life's moments, whether they be significant or mundane - or perhaps making the mundane, significant!

This is the agronomist and the home economist, parents to one little girl. Among the legacies left to me from my parents is a curiosity about almost everything and a desire for continued learning. From my mother I gained a desire to be like her - positive, organized, faithful, compassionate, musical, patient, wise, and a thoughtful cook. I'm still working on it (practice, practice, practice)! From my father I gained an appreciation for travel, other cultures, languages, and peoples and to document it all in pictures. They both taught me that it's possible to learn to do, to make, and to try many new things. From this tiny family unit, my world has quickly grown to include all of the people in the photo below...

...and they are the reason that I do what I do in life. My husband is my best friend, advocate, and support. Our children, their spouses, and our grandchildren are my favorite people in this world and I am so proud of them, their character, their abilities, their accomplishments, their enthusiasm and energy. Each adds a unique and "awesomazing" thread to the tapestry that is our family. They are my whole motivation to become the master of my camera and fulfill my desire to artistically capture our important moments in time.

"It's not so much the choosing which door that matters,
but pulling one open and enjoying the journey." ~Thomas S. Monson

Huge thanks to Brooke for allowing me to join her journey and
sharing the things that she has learned along the way. To my classmates, I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing your photos each week and hope that our paths will cross in the future!

It's All About the Light

Side Light
f5.6, 1/15, ISO 400
Bradley is one of the children I borrowed for this shoot. It was really a good learning experience to pay more attention to where the light was coming from. I realized that I have a lot more to learn about directing my subjects while posing. Brooke, you make it seem so effortless and conversational...this pose came naturally while Bradley was waiting for me to get the camera settings ready to go.

Back Light
f 5.6, 1/320, ISO 200
This week's assignment was the hardest for me so far - I took a couple hundred shots of the kids while trying different aperture, shutter speed, and ISO combinations. Practice, practice, practice, right?! Shooting into the sun made my camera "spaz"...but...in the end I am happy with many of the shots. The addition of the hat as a prop kept Emalyn's interest long enough to get some fun shots of her pulling it in different directions.

Front Light
f 5.3, 1/200, ISO 200
It's funny how fast a three year old's moods and expressions can change.
One second she's all smiles and the next those little brows are knit in a frown,
all the better to capture her personality! I like the way the palmetto leaves in the background point to her cute little pouty face.

Natural Reflector
f 5.0, 1/25, ISO 1600
The late afternoon light coming into this tack room cast the
golden glow from the walls onto the saddles below.

Silhouette
f 18, 1/1250, ISO 400
This was a fun effect to try and capture. I laid on the ground and shot up and didn't really know how the photos had turned out until I got home and uploaded them from the camera.
I chose black and white to emphasize the silhouette effect,
but the original with the dark blue cloud was cool too.

Here are a couple of Jackie's (the kids mom) favorite shots:

Emalyn was laying on the pool table, which is by a big picture window.
We (her mom and I) were saying, "Look happy...look sad...look surprised..." and got catch lights in her eyes :)

Creating a Composition

1/30 second, f 4.0, ISO 400
This is my Grandma Hunter's flat iron and one of her hand-sewn quilts. I put a photograph of her as a young woman in the shot above and used a large aperture to blur her image to give the feeling that even though she's gone, her memory lingers on in her handiwork.
Contrast this with the shot below:

1/25 second, f 4.0, ISO 400
I feel that this is a little stronger composition because an odd numbers of objects, in this case 1, in the shot seems more pleasing to the eye than an even number...but it's missing the personal element of grandma's photograph. Any suggestions?

1/15 second, f 20, ISO 400
I wanted to make 3 totally different compositions in terms of subject and feeling. This week while we were giving a tour of the ranch to some more out-of-town visitors I saw this shed on one of the cattle units -- Who was it that said that she was going to start carrying the camera with her all the time? - - I have been doing that more...not ALL the time, but more, because you never know when you might come upon a photo opportunity. So this shot uses elements of color, texture, and the lines of the corrugated metal in contrast to the weathered wood of the door. The line of the hitching post and the small contrast of the dark horseshoe both seem to draw the eye to the door. It would have been nice to be able to have the door a little more off-center, but the building wasn't wide enough to do that.

1/1250 second, f 16, ISO 1600
Even though I took this photo on my first day of shooting...before I realized that I needed to change the ISO or check the white balance (I must have been fiddling with the menu one day before that and changed the ISO to 1600)....I like it. I was concentrating on getting the hang of spinning the command dial while at the same time trying to get a 3 year old to stand still and pose. Consequently, all the shots I took that day were underexposed or over-exposed as I struggled to figure out what my camera was doing. The ocean was really calm that day so the waves look soft right before they break on the beach. The composition elements used, some of which I was already aware, were the color of the sea next to the sand, the contrast and lightness of the clouds, the texture of the footprints, and the rule of thirds in placing Emalyn as she gazes down the beach.

Selections in Shutter Speed - Assignment 2

Implied Motion
Shutter Speed 1/25
Aperture f22
ISO 200
Taking Brooke's advice to heart - to practice, practice, practice...I took a ton
of pictures trying various shutter speeds and apertures and even ISOs.
After all that I really was the most happy with just this one shot of blurred motion. The upside is that I am feeling so much more comfortable shooting in manual mode and I think that I'm getting my head more around the concepts and actions.

Frozen Motion
Shutter Speed 1/1600
Aperture f 5.0
ISO 400
The way the water catches the light is interesting.
I wonder why it picks up light from the purple range of the spectrum...

Panning Effect
Shutter Speed 1/60
Aperture f16
ISO 200
This week was so filled with out-of-town company among other pressing matters that I really was able to try panning only once. On the way home from town on Saturday, my husband stopped along the road to our house (not heavily traveled) so I could practice panning on several cars and a motorcycle that passed by before I got this cyclist. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon, I was facing west, and I could tell that I had sunspots in each shot...but this was it...my one opportunity to try this technique. I couldn't tell from the rear view screen if I had achieved my goal so was happy when I got home, loaded the photos on the computer and found that the experiment worked! Yay!

Shutter Speed 1/1250
Aperture f 5.0
ISO 400
We were riding in an air boat going about 30 mph with the birds staying beside us or sometimes swooping ahead and then back again. I was shooting away (and yes...I flipped back and forth between manual and automatic in my quest to capture the birds in flight) and I don't really know if this one particular shot was manual or auto, but I like it.

The Wonder that is an Air Boat

One of the best things about living on a ranch in Florida is that occasionally we get to take an airboat ride. Usually it happens when we have out-of-town visitors and this week our daughter, Carina, and her husband, Brady, are visiting - plus our friend, Chris Davis, who just moved to Florida from Virginia came out for the ride. Dale Vaughn, air boat driver extraordinaire, gave us an AWESOMAZING ride to places we had never been before!

Everyone gets a pair of red earmuffs for protection due to the very LOUD noise from the airplane motor that spins the blade to move the flat-bottomed boat over water or land.

It was a beautiful day for a ride!

This flock of birds seemed to want to challenge us to a
race as they flew alongside of us for quite awhile.

Dale knows all the places where the mama gators stay and took us to see some baby gators. This is a few week old baby gator's head (nose pointing left, eyeball in the middle) with his eye reflecting in the water. Dale told us that of the 2 dozen babies that were there, perhaps 2 would make it to adulthood due to predators like large birds, other gators, or turtles.

Adventures with Aperture - Assignment 1

This has been a week of firsts: First time using camera in manual mode...First time creating a blog...First time being audited by the IRS...

Directions: please open lid on head
and pour knowledge directly into brain. :)

SINGLE THEME APERTURE

f4.2 at 1/320 ISO 200
I struggled a little with the 18% gray concept and took a lot of shots that were too dark even when I metered off my palm. So I did that, plus over-exposed these shots. Did I do too much or too little?

f11 at 1/50

f22 at 1/10
Ummm, that morning light is pretty...see how the plate kinda glows on the left side? I like the shallow depth of field in the other shots better.

WHO CARES APERTURE

f22 at 1/6 ISO 400
This is Chris, our 15 year old grandson, who had just finished his share of the weed whacking using his preferred method - a machete. You'll see that in a second. He hates to get his picture taken but condescended to help me as long as he didn't have to wash up first. He's in front of the shed door to get the "all on one plane effect" and I see from this shot that because I was hand-holding the camera and didn't use the rule exception, this shot isn't really sharp.

f11 at 1/25

f 3.3 at 1/400
Of course, Chris likes this shot the best. ;D

STORYTELLING APERTURE

The horse pasture behind our house. I should have taken a ladder to stand on because the dog fennel (the feathery weed) has gotten almost taller than I am.

f25 at 1/125
I like this one the best since that feathery fennel has more detail with a deeper Depth of Field

f 4.2 at 1/4000
Oops, I forgot to mark what ISO setting I was using...AND I can see that the camera sensors need to be cleaned because there are telltale blotches on each shot. I tried cleaning with a bulb thing-y but didn't do much other than move stuff around...Brooke, can you advise me?

f 5/6 at 1/2000
This was supposed to be f8 or f11...what was I thinking?!