Pumpkins and Apples

Fall is here! I enjoyed the cool, crisp air this weekend by getting out with my family and visiting the farmer's market and the apple orchard. Here are some photos of the day.

Loving my new camera!

The husband and I have been looking into getting an DSLR for awhile. He took photography in college and has a nice Rebel film camera, but we wanted to get a digital to use. I've made my way pretty well in photography class using my Canon A650, which is a glorified point and shoot with manual controls, but I've been itching for something a little better. 

Our plan was to invest in a new camera after he was done working the State Fair this year. In the meantime, we've researched, played around with different models at the store, and had come to the decision that we wanted to start out with a Canon T2i, an intermediate level camera.

On Thursday I got an email from one of my favorite technology stores, NewEgg, saying that they were having a three-day sale. I looked at it on a whim, and saw that the T2i was one of the items on sale! Using some of our hard-earned savings, we went ahead and ordered the camera. Imagine my surprise when, after paying for standard UPS ground shipping, the camera showed up at my house the next day. The guys over at NewEgg are my favorite.

My husband was out of town over the weekend working a rock festival, but I had plans with my family to hang out and enjoy the fall weather. It gave me ample opportunities to practice with the new toy. Can I just say I am in love? 

I'll share more pictures later, but I'm going to go ahead now and upload one of my favorite shots I took over the weekend. When wandering around a college campus getting a couple of portrait shots of my sister, we spotted a bumblebee burrowing energetically in a bed full of bright fall marigolds. Right now I only have the standard kit lens for my camera, but I took a macro with it and was pretty impressed. I love how you can see the reflection of the flower in his big bumblebee eyes.

Class Submissions #4 / Our Weekend

Last week in class, we talked about lenses and how longer lenses allow for more shallow depth of field. The class assignment was to take two photos with the same aperture but different lenses. I only have the one lens for my PowerShot (you actually can buy lenses for that camera but I haven't made the investment since we plan to upgrade to an SLR soon). Since I couldn't experiment with lenses, I took two photos with the same aperture and varied my focal length. 

Close up without zoom (7.4), f/4.5:

Close up with zoom (36.7), f/4.5

The rest of our project was centered around meter reading and exposure. With my camera I'm not able to take a meter reading, but I can change metering modes. I tried and did my best. I wasn't very happy with the results, but I tried! 

My husband was kind enough to let me practice on him. We loaded up our very black dog, Hitch, and took him to the school practice ball field where we knew there would be white walls for maximum contrast. 

Spot-metered on midtones of shorts and skin

I wasn't happy with the exposure but I think this would be way easier using an SLR. Because my husband is handsome, and because he and Hitch are buds, I dragged them around and took some other pictures of them, too. Hitch wasn't real sure what was going on.

Hitch is a good 'ole boy. He lived at my mom's house with us before J.C. and I got married. We got him from a lady who fostered dogs from the Humane Society. J.C. and I would often take him with us on our evening walks when we were dating. When we got married, we took him with us and he became OUR dog. He's part Mastiff and part Lab. When people see us with him, they make comments like, "Whoa, that's a big dog!" or "Nice looking horse you have there!" because he really is HUGE. He makes me feel safe, and it's fun to have a big, bad dog (even though he is actually one of the gentlest dogs you will ever meet). Evening walks with my little family make me very happy.

Saturday evening, we had to take a trip to Little Rock. We had to get to the fairgrounds early, because I had photography submissions that had to be turned in for the State Fair. Solid Rock does the production for the main stage at the State Fair every year, and when I go to see J.C. while he's working it's kind of fun to have something interesting to do, so I submit some photos to Arts and Crafts. 

Since we weren't quite ready for dinner, J.C. suggested that we go walk around by the Rivermarket and maybe walk the bridge. So we did. And I took a few shots for fun. We had a good time. We saw some cool stuff, some weird stuff, and some very interesting people. An evening out with my best friend is always a good time.

This Week's Class Submissions

Last week's lesson focused on shutter speed and depth of field, so we had to submit four photos demonstrating these ideas. My husband was working the fair last week and we had a birthday party to attend over the weekend, so I figured those would give me opportunities to do some shooting. My submissions:

Slow Action - White County Fair Ferris Wheel
[4 second exposure; f/3.5]

Stop Action - Ethan in the Sandbox
[1/500 second; f/4.0]

Shallow DOF - J.C.'s M7
[f/2.8; 3 seconds]

Wide DOF - Little Rock National Cemetery
[f/8; 1/50 second]
Unfortunately, this is one I was less than pleased with. f/8 on my point and shoot is as closed as my aperture gets, so it's still not all in sharp focus. 

Class Submissions

My composition submissions for this week. We'll discuss them tonight in class.

Framing

Thirds; close ups; focusing

Thirds; close-ups; color; focusing

Framing

Portraits

Well, after last week's photography class, we were given an assignment to come up with four pictures illustrating composition. Since I've had virtually no practice with portraits, I asked my sister to let me practice on her and my cute eight-year-old nephew. I came up with a couple that I liked. Later, I'll share my four submissions, but for now I'm just going to share my favorites from those portraits.

Our State Capitol

The Arkansas State Capitol building in Little Rock has been fashioned to look like our nation's capitol building. It provides a great place for practicing photography skills, and since I was in Little Rock last week I made time to go by and see what I could get.

Zinnias are one of my favorite flowers, and they were blooming all around the Capitol building. So pretty!

This butterfly was kind enough to pose for me.

The Little Rock Nine were nine African-Americans who marched up the steps of Central High School to support civil rights in education. These statues have been erected at the Capitol building as a monument. One of the members of the Little Rock Nine passed away just last week.