Sunday, April 30, 2006

Rainy Sunday

Rain, rain, rain. Pete's off doing the Minnesota Ironman Bike Ride; he'd intended to do the 100 mile route (aka the century) but was feeling doubtful when he left this morning. 100% chance of rain today and the wind's been howling...That was around 6:30; it's almost 4 now and I haven't heard anything, so I'm guessing he's toughing it out and doing the century. Yikes.

Me, I've been writing all day, dodged some raindrops in the backyard earlier, as you can see below, and am contemplating a nap now. Life is rough. ;-)

Rainy Sunday
April 30 2006, RAW, 50mm, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT


Edit: Whoops, technical difficulties. I meant to post individual thumbnails of the images that went into the mosaic, but they ended up as great giant images....All fixed now. Here are the thumbnails (click to see a larger size):



1. Spring rain 2.Apple blossoms
3. Untitled 4.Violets and rain

Friday, April 28, 2006

Birds and husbands and things

My husband is making me do something I don't do when I post piccies. Consider this an unhappy test by an unhappy me.

Edit. It didn't work. I'm doing it my way.

Erm. Back to the original intent of this...What I was going to write was that 1) I'm back to chasing birds again and 2) a pair of wood ducks seems to be contemplating take up residence in our backyard, which would make for potentially more interesting (or at least bigger) bird stalking activities than my little song birds. I did get some shots of the ducks today, but they're not very good (I was trying to stalk waddling ducks in the rain while simultaneously taking pictures; any two of the three would have been fine, but the three--waddle, rain, shoot--didn't work so well for me). The pair came back at sunset and hung out for a bit, so I'm hoping they return tomorrow so I can try get another (read: better) photo op.

But for now the sparrows will do quite nicely.

Tweet
Tweet II
April 2006, backyard, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Getting wild and crazy over here!

Got brave and started shooting in RAW a few weeks ago. So far, I like. I don't really know what the frell I'm doing with the post-processing stuff, but hee, I like!

I have also decided that I am in love with the lens, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II that I moaned about a few posts back. Mmmm. She's sweet. So sweet that when I put the old lens on the other day, after just a few shots I went back inside and took it off and put the 50mm back on.

Experiment
Experiment
April 16 2006, shooting in RAW, 50mm, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Blah blah, orchids, blah blah blah

Sly
Sly
March 2006, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Friday, April 21, 2006

And more orchids

Told you there'd be more of these. Maybe I should just call this "Orchid Week."


Homage to O'Keeffe
Homage to O'Keefe
March 2006, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Orchids

I just realized that I never finished posting the rest of the orchid set! So, guess what you'll be seeing for the next few days...

Shadow and Light
My mother's orchids
March 2006, kit lens, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Kid shot

I like this one a lot. :)

Windy Day
Windy day
April 2006, Emma, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

It

Been pressed for time, so posting's gone by the wayside.

But here's one from Easter (Carol, I'll get the rest of what shots I got uploaded sometime this week).

Morgan and Emma were playing hide-and-seek, and Morgan was "it."

7...8...9...10...
7...8...9...10...
April 2006, shooting in B&W, 50mm, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Singing in the bathtub, woooh oooh

Singing in the bathtub, woooh oooh
January 2006, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

I’m singing in the bathtub
Happy once again
Watching all my troubles
Go swimming down the drain

Singing through the soap suds
Life is full of hope
You can sing with feeling
While feeling for the soap

Oh! A ring around the bathtub
It isn’t so nice to see
But a ring around the bathtub
Is a rainbow to me

Reaching for a towel
Ready for a rub
Everybody’s happy
While singing in the tub
~ Ned Washington

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Comparison, first set

I got a new lens--Canon's EF 50mm f/1.8 II.

Up until now I've been keeping it simple and shooting with the kit lens that came with the camera (Canon's EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens), which is a perfectly respectable lens for an amateur like me. But the more comfortable I get with this camera, the more I'd like to start investing in some equipment to give myself some more options.

This lens gets solid reviews, especially for low light conditions--and portraiture, which I'd like to start playing around with. And...it's dirt cheap, at least as far as lenses go. It gets a lot of comparisons to Canon's 50mm f/1.4 lens--but at roughly a third of the f/1.4's price, my wallet decided it liked this one much more than its more expensive cousin.

I'm not sold on it quite yet, though. Part of it is me getting used to a fixed-length lens (I hadn't realized how much I like zoom until it wasn't there). I'm also not quite impressed with how it performs in low-light conditions (but then, I also haven't dug through my folders and done any actual side-by-side comparisons of pics shot with the kit lens in similar low-light conditions). The reduced macro range is hard for me to swallow because I do love close-ups--but then again, this lens isn't billed as a macro lens, and I wasn't expecting it to be a macro lens. (And I can always swap it back to the kit lens if I want/need to for closer shots.) It's just more difficult for me to adjust to that lack than I thought it would be.

On the pro side the depth of field is fabulous. It's really outstanding compared to the kit lens. That was apparent on the first set of shots. And the overall clarity/sharpness...well, take a look. # 1 (previously posted) was taken with the old lens, # 2 with the new, and both under reasonably similar conditions:

1.Halo
2.Silhouette of birch and cottonwoods


To my eye there is a difference in clarity/sharpness between the two shots. But maybe that's just me?

Regardless, I need to keep playing with this--and I need to dig through my folders and find similar shots to compare to--so there will be more of these kinds of sets coming.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Spring sunset

The sun is again setting in the west.

I know, that sounds weird. "Well, Nancy, the sun usually does set in the west," you say, and you are right. But in the winter the sun seems to set more in the southwest. Rationally, I know it's not actually setting anywhere in the south, that it just seems that way because we're tilted so far from the sun. But it's a strange moment when I look out the window in late fall and the sun isn't setting where it usually does, but instead has wandered off several degrees to the left of the river. And of course rationally I know this hasn't happened overnight, that it's happened bit by slow bit and I'm only just noticing at that moment, but it's still strange, and rather unsettling, and it remains strange to me all winter.

(I never used to be this aware of sunsets until we moved here. Now I'm hypersensitive to them.)

But now the sun is setting back where it's supposed to be--smack dab over the river.

It's spring!

Day is Done
Day is done
April 2006, Minnesota River, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Monday, April 03, 2006

Orchids!

I am so hungry for spring, I could scream.

But this helped a lot. :)

Backlit
Backlit
March 2006, my mother's orchids, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT