The planning of summer projects is in full swing around here. Jesse has sketched out ideas for the pergola that we plan to add to our new patio and fire-pit area that we put in last year. By drawing it out to scale on grid paper, we can better judge the proportions of the structure and how it relates to the rest of that space.
Planning for our spring projects helps to ease the misery of this long Minnesota winter. Spring must be around the corner, right???
Lynell
Filed under Daily life, Gardens, Photography
I am a self-confessed picture-taking junkie and have been for years. My kids were conditioned at a young age to stop and look at the camera when I asked, and over the years they have put up with being photographed an awful lot.
Not only do I take pictures of them, I also take pictures of anything that catches my attention or strikes me as a good shot to capture. Seeing their mom out in the yard, in the garden, or down by the river taking pictures has always been a common sight. None of them have demonstrated any similar interest or passion for photography however…that is, until recently.
You see, our daughter got an iPhone in November, her first smart phone. The combination of having a fairly decent camera in her phone and her discovery of the Instagram app has sparked an interest in photography. For those unfamiliar with Instagram, it is a smart phone application that allows you to snap a picture, choose a filter to transform the picture, and then share it with friends through the Instagram site or various other social medias.
I have enjoyed watching her interest in photography via Instagram unfold. I am no longer the only one looking around for or noticing what might be a good shot. If I see something that is potentially an interesting photo, I’ll say to her, “you should Instagram that.”
Take, for example, just yesterday as we were pulling into our yard after church and we noticed all the icicles hanging off our buildings. I suggested that she should Instagram a picture of them. So, we changed out of our church clothes, put on our boots, and headed outside to photograph the icicles – her with an iPhone and I with my camera.
Of course, it is not always easy to get a good shot. Although the icicles looked cool hanging precariously off the shed in person, just snapping a shot of them from a distance was a little too boring.
Standing on the ground below the icicles and taking a photo was also blah.
We discussed composition and how to get a more creative shot from a different perspective. She got a step-ladder out of the garage, which allowed us to shoot some pictures from a higher angle.
Finally, a more interesting photo of the icicles melting and sliding off the pole shed.
So, after our photo shoot of icicles together, what picture does she decide to apply a filter to and share via Instagram???
Of course, the somewhat unflattering one of me that she took, unbeknownst to me, while I was on the step-ladder taking my own pictures of the icicles. :-)
I did appreciate her caption however, as it holds so true:
“The things we do for a good shot.”
Here are just a few of the other shots she has taken around the farm over the past months and shared via Instagram.
If I do say so myself, I think I have a budding photographer in the house. And I couldn’t be more excited!!
-Lynell
Filed under Kids, Photography
It was -4F outside this morning, with wind chills around -25F. Even colder temperatures are forecasted for this evening and into tomorrow morning. Brrrrrrr!!!!
Our robin continues to visit the crabapple tree every day for a snack and to just hang out. Poor fellow must be cold, don’t you think?
Wherever you are today, I hope you can stay warm!
-Lynell
Filed under Daily life, Photography
I bought a new lens (Tamron 70-200mm/ 2.8) a few weeks ago to try to capture some better pictures of my kiddos at their sporting events. Over these past weeks, I have taken hundreds of pictures trying to get the feel for the new lens. I’m not convinced yet. The return policy is within 30 days and I am facing that deadline in about 10 days.
I called to talk to the technical people at the store yesterday to ask about some of my problems with the lens. The kind gentleman was very honest and told me it was most likely a combination of my “older” Nikon D40 (It’s only 3 years old!!!) and what he called, “the operator.” I managed to stay calm, mostly because I knew he was right. I’m still learning all this photography stuff and this fancy schmancy lens might just be too much for my “outdated” camera and my fledgling ability.
Nonetheless, I took the lens outside today to try a few more shots. I tried shooting in a variety of modes, settings, etc.
The Rudbeckia is blooming in the garden and I thought these two shots turned out nice.
The low aperture setting allows some nice depth of field effects. I did a little editing to them in Photoshop Elements: cropping and running Pioneer Woman’s soft and faded action.
The final test for the lens will be over the next two evenings at an indoor swim meet and a Friday night football game. If I still can’t manage to capture some good shots after talking to my friend at the camera store, I might return the lens and try something else. Any suggestions?
This photography stuff is fun, but frustrating.
-Lynell
Filed under Flower, Gardens, Photography
I purchased my first digital camera in 2001. It was a very basic digital camera and I felt like it took decent pictures. I was still too nervous about the technology though to completely abandon my 35mm camera. What if I hit the wrong button on the camera and accidentally deleted all of my images? Or my computer crashed and I lost all the images? Besides, I had invested money in some nice lenses for my 35mm and it took much nicer pictures.
Over the years, however, my comfort level with digital photos and technology in general increased and eventually I came around and went completely digital. Since my complete conversion to digital photography in 2007, I have taken thousands and thousands of digital photos. I have developed a system of organizing and editing them. I have even abandoned the scrap-booking thing (gasp!) and have started to create our family albums on-line and order them all printed up in a nice hard-cover album.
The problem is that I have so many pictures from the precious years of my children’s young lives that are not in a digital format. I have scanned some of them along the way for various occasions, but I recently decided that what I really wanted was to convert all those photos to digital for preservation.
Although I had copies of some of the pictures, many of the best ones were in my photo albums. To create a digital copy, I would need to take the negatives into a photo lab and either pay them to convert it to digital from the negative or have a copy made from the negative and then scan it. I quickly realized that these were not very economical options. You see, my obsession with photos is not new. I have taken a LOT of pictures through the years. Consequently, I have a LOT of negatives.
After doing some research, I decided that a better option was to buy a film scanner and scan the negatives myself. Based on my needs, I decided that this Canon 8800F film scanner was a practical choice.
Inside the scanner is a frame, that holds up to 12 of the 35mm negatives for scanning. I started with my negatives from 1992, the year my oldest was born, and began the daunting project of scanning all my negatives.
Overall, I am very pleased with the image quality from the scanned negative. Here are just a few of my favorites that I have come across so far:
Summer of ’93 – our oldest at around 6 months.
’94 – Discovering his shadow. How precious is this?
Summer ’93 – Playing with Dad in the back yard.
Scanning negatives is a very tedious project, as each set of 12 can take as long as 10-15 minutes. I have managed to get through an entire box of negatives already by just setting it up nearby the kitchen where I can get it started and work on something else. Seems as though I’m always in the kitchen anyhow! I have made it all the way through the year 1995!
The other issue I run into is that the negatives are often dirty and the dust shows up in the scanned photo. For example, the shadow picture above looked like this when I first scanned it:
Notice the white specs of dust on the scanned image. This is not a big deal, as it can easily be edited out in Photoshop. Nonetheless, it does add to the time that I am investing in this project. So far, I only touch up the really special photos that I come across. I have also read that this problem can be reduced by spraying bursts of air on the negative from those cans of air you can buy at office supply stores to clean keyboards.
The biggest problem with this new picture project of mine…
Is that every once in a while…
I come across a picture….
That stops me dead in my tracks…
That takes my breath away…
And makes me feel like someone is squeezing my heart…
’95 – Our oldest holding his newborn sister.
And as I take a deep breath…
And wipe away the tears…
I feel grateful that I have taken so many pictures…
Because in the process, I have captured precious snapshots of our blessed lives.
So, I will press on with this new picture project in an attempt to preserve all of my images. Only 3 more boxes and 12 more years worth of negatives to go!
Filed under Photography
I have never used any photo-editing software, other than doing some basic cropping or red-eye removal. As part of my quest to improve my photography skills, and after being inspired by seeing the photos of other bloggers, I decided to take the leap into photo-editing. I purchased Photoshop Elements (PSE) 8.0 for my new Mac laptop as a Christmas present for myself.
It was immediately clear to me that one can get completely sucked into this photo-editing stuff and spend several hours playing with photos. I happen to have a lot of time to experiment with photos as I wait for kids at lessons, rehearsals and practices. I have experimented a lot with PSE and have found that while fun, it can also be completely overwhelming.
Luckily, out on the web, there are many generous bloggers who have developed “actions” for PSE that they share with others at no cost. Once downloaded (which can sometimes be a challenge in itself), these actions allow you to quickly apply the photo effects of the action by simply clicking on the icon in the Effects area of PSE.
My two favorite sites for free actions that I have found so far are from Pioneer Woman and the Coffeeshop Blog.
Last week, I took this straight-out-of-the-camera shot of a bee pollinating our crabapple tree.
I loved the picture, but wanted to see the bee a little closer, so I first cropped it down. I also boosted the color a little by using the “soft light” effect and then sharpened the image with the “unsharp mask.”
Filed under Bees, Photography
The Prairie Fire crabapple tree right outside my kitchen window is in full bloom . It is quite a sight and smells delightful.
Apparently, we are not the only ones that are enjoying the tree. After two days of rain, snow and freezing temperatures, we were outside Sunday enjoying the sunshine when we noticed a distinct humming sound coming from the tree. A closer examination revealed that the tree was loaded with honeybees and a few random bumblebees. Continue reading
Filed under Bees, Flower, Gardens, Photography
I am definitely not a fan of winter, especially in Minnesota. It seems to go on forever. By the time February rolls around I am completely ready for it to be over. My impatience with winter grows each year that passes and I dream of living somewhere much warmer and milder some day. There are those moments, however, that the beauty of winter catches me by surprise and my negative view of winter softens…at least a little. Yesterday was one of those days. We had a light fluffy snow fall over night and the sun was shining bright in the morning. It was sparkly and magical looking outside with the snow glistening on the ground and in the trees. I decided to take my camera out and take some random shots of this winter wonderland. Soaking in the winter sunshine also does wonders for the spirit! Happy Valentine’s Day!!
A view of our hayfield behind the house.
Lonely Liatrus plant standing in the garden.
Undergrowth in the woods.
Oak leaves hanging on until spring.
A view towards the river.
Coneflower seed heads ready to burst.
Standing on the back deck.
Crabapples.
Snowy branches.
Filed under Daily life, Photography
I have always loved to take pictures. Just ask my children. When they were small, I had them so conditioned to being the subject of photographs that when they would see me with the camera and I called out their name they would stop and smile. If the three of them were together, they would form a nice little line. No arguments. Although their willingness to co-operate has become less reliable through the years, my love of taking pictures has not waned.
Before taking a big trip in December 2007 to visit some friends in Japan, I bought my first digital SLR, a Nikon D40. For the past two years I have shot with this camera in Auto mode and for the most part, I have been happy with the pictures. Before the holidays, however, I started wondering about all the untapped potential of my camera…all those buttons, modes, and settings that I didn’t understand and had never dared to try. So I signed myself up for a beginner class on digital SLR’s at a camera store in the big city.
The first class left me both inspired and overwhelmed. Aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance….my head was spinning. Although I was intimidated, I was also amazed by the creative options opened up by moving the dial from auto to the different priority modes (aperture, shutter speed, manual, etc.).
A week after my first class, I looked out the window in the morning and saw a beautiful hoar frost blanketing the trees. I wanted to throw on my boots, grab my camera and head outdoors to do some experimenting taking pictures. Reality set in, however, and I turned my attention to getting the kids out the door for school and driving to work. On my drive home later that day, I noticed that remnants of the hoar frost still clung to the trees. If I hurried, I could maybe try out a few shots in between picking the kids up from school, running them home for a snack, and getting back in the car to drive them to piano lessons.
While the kids were getting their piano books together and eating, I had about 10 minutes to go outside with my camera. I put the camera in aperture priority mode and shot the pictures below. The first shot is of seeds on an Amur Maple tree along our driveway at a focal length of 135mm (my lens is an 18mm – 135mm, so that means I had the lens zoomed in all the way).
I took the next series of shots of a Prairie Fire Crab Apple tree outside of my kitchen window. The first one was taken at a focal length of 52 mm. I didn’t really know what I was doing, other than trying out the aperture priority mode, so for each picture I tried to dial down the aperture setting as far as I could….just to see what would happen. The aperture setting or “f-stop” for this picture was f/8.0. To be honest, even after my first class, I really had no idea what this meant, except that I knew changing the aperture affected the “depth of field” in a picture. The depth of field is basically how much of the picture is in focus.
I zoomed in a little closer in the next shot to 58 mm and tried turning the aperture down again, but the f-stop remained f/8.0 for this shot.
In the next photo, I once again zoomed in closer to 70 mm. The f-stop setting is f/5.5. The lower the aperture number, the less the depth of field is in a picture. You can see the berries are in focus (sort of) and the background is getting blurry.
Finally, I zoomed in all the way to 135 mm and took the last shot. The aperture setting was f/5.6.
Although these pictures are far from perfect or even particularly interesting, I was proud of myself for finally turning that dial from auto mode and making my first attempt at shooting in aperture priority mode. I have a LOT to learn and even since shooting these first pictures, I believe that I have a better understanding of some of these photography concepts. I will continue to experiment, learn, hopefully improve, and most importantly, aggravate my children by taking lots and lots of pictures.
Filed under Gardens, Photography
