Feb 20: Try on clothes weekend

Owen was in the mood to try on clothes this weekend. Today he went through all of the pajama tops and pants in his drawer and wanted to put them on, then off right away (something like 10-12 of each). Good thing I am a patient person. I looked at it as a learning experience for him, although I'm not sure I am looking forward to the day when he can take off his own clothes. :-)

I didn't get any pictures of that today, but yesterday I got some pics of him trying on Daddy's shirts.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/1.8, 1/100s, ISO 800, cropped a little

• I deliberately angled the camera a little, which I think turned out good.
• I changed the custom functions a few days ago to move the auto focus from the shutter button to a button on the back of the camera. That works well if you're taking repeated pictures of a non-moving subject, but no so well when the subject is moving toward or away from you (as was this case). I think in this case I caught him standing still for a second.

Just wanted to note that Owen doesn't actually use the "paci" very much, and not as a consolation. He occasionally finds it and sucks or chews on it as a toy. I'm ok with that since I know he's not hooked on it. It may become a problem when he sees his little brother or sister using it, but we'll see.

Feb 16: Crock Pot

Today we brought out the crock pot for the first time in a long time. I'm not sure why we don't use it more often. We made a turkey breast with vegetables.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/1.8, 1/50s, ISO 640, warmed the color temperature in Picasa

• I couldn't get a perspective that I thought was all that great, but I thought this had good detail. I wanted to show the pot in some way, since the way we cooked it is significant.

Feb 14: Happy V-Day Nana!

This is a few days late, as I have been incredibly tired lately. For those of you that havn't heard, I'm pregnant! I'm still in my first trimester, so I'm tired and queasy almost all day long. My blog will probably be spotty until I feel better (and probably after that too!). But I promise I'll make up the misses come September. ;-)

Nana came over on Sunday to take Owen home with her, and she brought him a balloon.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/1.8, 1/125s, ISO640, no post-processing

• I probably could have cropped this to get rid of some distracting elements, but I like it this way.

Feb 13: Will U be Mine?

It's been a while since I've taken a bunch of photos of Owen, so today I pulled out the camera while Owen was being playful. He knows the camera well, so sometimes he just sits there posing for me:

From Runners Up

50mm, f1.8, 1/60s, ISO 200, no post-processing

• I can't decide if this would have looked better if his entire face was in focus or if having only one eye in focus draws your attention better.
• The focus is probably not the best, but I was working at close quarters (this is not cropped), so I thought this came out pretty good. Although I wish Owen's nose was a little cleaner! :-)

I'm including a bonus picture today because I want to document what Owen did next. He pulled me upstairs to his bedroom (it was getting close to his nap time), and then did something similar to what he did last night at bedtime. He wanted to get in his crib, and demanded that I give him pretty much everything in sight, which he just threw into his crib saying "my book" or "my fishie". It was pretty funny! I used it as an opportunity to make him tell me what he wanted, instead of just pointing. After his crib was pretty full I told him it was time to put everything away, so I took him out of the crib, and I put everything away. Then we read a book and he fell happily asleep for his nap.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/1.8, 1/125s, ISO 640, no post-processing

• I stood up on a chair to try and get the effect of everything in the crib, but 50mm wasn't wide enough to get more in the picture.

I have posted other photos from today on Keith's picasa site.

Feb 12: Valentine's and the globe

I was very lazy yesterday. Thursday night is the one night we watch tv (The Office and 30 Rock), and all I felt like was sitting in front of the tv and relaxing. So two photos today.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/1.8, 1/60s, ISO 1000, no post-processing

• Perhaps a couple of days early, but I was excited that Owen exchanged Valentine's cards at school, so I took a picture of the extras. I love celebrating the holidays, even (or maybe especially) in perhaps kiddish ways.
• Not much to say photographic-wise. I like that the Grover card is out of focus, but still readable.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/1.8, 1/60s, ISO 1000, no post-processing

• I took most of my globe picture horizontally, but I like how this one came out.
• I put down the blinds on the window next to the globe to reduce the glare, but it's still pretty strong in this picture.

The globe reminded me today was the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, which I am watching right now. I love the Olympics!

Feb 10: The Storm is Coming

Today was a bit of a rainy day, although we really only got short periods of light rain, probably not measurable. I think I've mentioned this before, but I love the weather. So I decided to see how the clouds would look through my zoom lens.

From Runners Up

100mm, f/8.0, 1/160s, ISO 100, no post-processing

• This turned out a bit darker than reality (I think I underexposed it a touch), which is kind of the effect I was looking for.
• I was using my 70-200mm lens, so it's interesting to note that the picture I ended up using was not actually zoomed that much. This gives you more to look at. I took a few pics with some trees in it, and although they were probably more interesting, I decided that was not the effect I was going for.
• I was a little worried how the focus would come out, as it was hard to tell when the clouds were in focus (using manual). That's when I realized that I should close the aperture (from f4.0 to f8.0) so that I would have more wiggle room for the focus.
  

Feb 9: Bougainvillea and other backyard things

I must apologize to all you loyal readers out there, I've been missing a couple of days. Sunday was the Super Bowl, and since we had some friends over, I was too distracted to take a photo (I thought about taking a picture of them for the day's post, but I'm not sure what they would've thought about that. :-) ). Monday I wasn't feeling good, and actually went to bed before 8:30pm. So I'll post a few pictures from today's jaunt into the backyard after work.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/2.8, 1/1600s, ISO 100, no post-processing

• I played around in manual mode again, and tried some spot metering versus matrix metering. For photos where the main subject is different from the rest of the picture, the spot metering seems to be helpful, but I still tried under and overexposing to what the meter said. I guess you just eventually learn what you want out of a picture and learn how to expose it correctly.
• I started off taking pictures into the sun so I could practice exposing for the subject and overexposing the background. That didn't work with this shot, I'm guessing because the background was actually dark. But I do like the rays of sunshine coming in from the top right corner.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/2.5, 1/160s, ISO 100, no post-processing

• I'm not sure why this has a blue tint to it, but I like it.
• I probably should have cropped this so that the diagonal wood in the middle of the frame doesn't go directly into the corner (a big no-no according to my photography teacher).
• I think I took this photo horizontally, and the camera automatically made it vertical. I like it better vertical.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/2.8, 1/100s, ISO 100, no post-processing

• Not sure why I like this, it's just a bunch of rocks, right? I guess it could make an interesting background for something.

Feb 6: Happy Birthday Emma!

Today was the birthday of our good friends Matt & Melissa's daughter, Emma. It was held at Gymboree. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it ended up being a room full of play equipment and toys for babies/toddlers. The party itself was actually run by an empoyee of Gymboree. She led games and songs and the general play, which was really neat. Owen enjoyed himself, although he didn't always get into the group activities. It was also pretty funny to see/hear the amount of cameras in the room, most of them actually DSLRs. I brought the 50mm, so I'll be doing a lot of cropping when I post the other pictures. We got a few cute photos, as I'm sure the other parents did, so it probably ended up being a very well documented party!

Of course my picture of the day has to be the birthday girl herself, and what better picture than the cake! It's funny - everyone expects the kid to gobble up the cake and make a mess, but that doesn't always happen!

From Runners Up

50mm, f/3.2, 1/250s, ISO 800, cropped

• I once again wimped out and used aperture priority mode and auto focus instead of manual. I knew I'd be taking a lot of photos and didn't want to miss some shots, but I should've tried manual for at least a few minutes.
• The stuff at the top is a bit distracting, but I left it in because I wanted to show Daddy's hand so that we can see what Emma is looking at.

I'll post the other pictures from the party once I get around to doing all the cropping.

Feb 5: Shrimp with bok choy and peaches

I didn't have any plans for my photo today until I saw dinner. Keith bought some bok choy, something we have only had once or twice before, so we looked online for a recipe. It tasted okay; the various elements didn't seem to go together. Keith didn't really like it at all. But, to be fair, we did saute it instead of grill it and had to make some ingredient substitutions.

From Runners Up

50mm, f/2.2, 1/60s, ISO 640, no post processing

• I've paid a lot more attention to pictures I see in print media since I've been more into photography. I really enjoy looking for new recipes (more than actually making them), so I pay close attention to food pictures. Most of them seem to be fairly shallow depth of field with only part of the food in focus. They also tend to include some of the background (out of focus) and/or some kind of prop.
• I increased this from f1.8 to f2.2 to get a little more of the food in focus. I also made an effort to include the fork in the picture.
• I'm pretty happy with how the picture came out, although I'm disappointed in myself for changing it to aperture priority mode instead of playing around in manual (I was half being lazy and half hungry).

Feb 4: Cherry tomatoes

I took more pictures of the cilantro flowers, but thought they only came out slightly better than yesterdays, so I didn't think they were worth reposting. I saw the various colors of the cherry tomatoes, so I snapped a few shots of them before Owen and I ate all the red ones up.

From Runners Up

50mm, f2.8, 1/125s, ISO 640, cropped in Picasa

• I'm not a big fan of the composition of this one. I like it better as a vertical, but I wanted to include some of the other tomatoes in the background to show more variety in color.
• Used manual mode & focus again this time. I tried the spot metering mode, which did show me the variations between lighter and darker spots on the photo, so it did help me decide on the settings.

Feb 3: Cilantro Flower

I decided to keep with the garden theme, and thought the cilantro flowers looked nice:

From Runners Up

(I'm trying something different again today; I'm embedding the image from the Picasa Website. Hopefully this will make it bigger in the blog.)
200mm, f/5.0, 1/160s, ISO 640, cropped and made darker in Picasa

• I want to go back and try this shot again (maybe tomorrow). I did this completely manual again (mode and focus). I underexposed this from what the meter told me, and yet I still felt like I needed to darken it. I think it's the effect of having white flowers on a dark green background.
• The focus is also off on this. Some of the leaves look good, but only some of the flowers look good. Although I can't really tell the difference between being out of focus and washed out. Tomorrow I'll try uber-underexposing this to see how it comes out.
• I probably also had the wrong lens on the camera for this. Tomorrow I'll try the 50mm and get up close. I don't have a macro lens, so no matter what I use it probably won't look that great. But I'm doing this to learn lessons, so perfection is not the goal! Yet! :-)
  

Feb 2: Tomato

I wondered around the backyard after work before it got dark to take a picture. I was checking out the garden:

(I'm trying something a little different today: I think if you click on the image you can see a bigger version.)

192mm, 1/80s, f/5.0, ISO 640, no post-processing

• I took this using both manual focus and manual mode. I took several of the same thing: regular exposure per the camera, under exposed and overexposed. This is underexposed, which to me looks much better than the regular exposure.
• The leaves on the right are a bit distracting, but other than that, I like the picture.

Jan 31: New Year Fest Day 2

I am posting this a day late because I had technical difficulties yesterday - Picasa wouldn't let me save changes to my photos because the hard drive was full. I can't imagine why it's so full - it's not like I've been taking a ton of pictures lately. Oh, wait. I guess I need to do more deleting of pictures that I don't end up using.


So Sunday was the second day of the tourney. I actually only was at the fields for the finals - Phoenix (our home team) vs. San Diego. The bad guys ended up winning, but it was a great game, and I am so proud of Sprawl:


116mm, 1/1250s, f/5.6, ISO 400, some cropping

• I was up on the hill a good distance away when I saw they were taking team pictures. I didn't feel like moving, so I took it from where I was. I kind of like the different angle and not having everyone looking right at my camera (I cropped out the actual photographers).
• I had already put away my camera, so I pulled it quickly out of my bag and started shooting (this was not the only pic I took). Apparently I kept it in sports mode. Not sure I needed the 1/1250sec, but everyone is in focus, which is key!
• What are the chances that everyone was smiling at once??!! Must have been a happy group! Congrats, Sprawl!

No picture for Feb 1 - I was too busy uploading pics from this weekend on FB, and now am too tired. I can't believe I've made it through a whole month already!!