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Little guy, SIT STILL.

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Hummingbirds are lovely. But, man oh man, can you say ADHD?

I’ve been trying to get a decent picture of these little humming buggers for days now.

A few nights ago, I put my digital camera on continuous shooting mode and shot away at the hummingbird feasting on our $.74 cent plastic feeder.

I held down the snap-a-picture button (that’s it’s technical name) and it snapped away at like 3 pictures per second for twenty seconds or so. SweetGuy complained about how much film I was wasting.

And, these were the best of the bunch.

I’ll keep trying. We absolutely adore these little guys. And, I’m already getting depressed at the fact we soon won’t be able to sit out in the gazebo and watch them flit about like ping pong balls.

Posted in Animals, Photography | 5 Comments »

How to take pictures of the snow in the dark

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m amused that someone somewhere will want to figure out a great way to photograph snow falling at night, so like any respectable human, they’ll google it. And, someone somewhere will light on this post. You there, if this is you, you might just want to click the back button now. But, wait, first let me tell you I relate to your desire to take pictures of falling snow at night, because the look of snow illuminated by a single lamp is gorgeous.

Anyhow, you’ll want to move along because this post won’t help you.

SweetGuy bought me a kick-butt camera tri-pod for Christmas. I haven’t played with it yet, so last night when the blizzard kicked in I decided it would be the perfect time to mess around with the tri-pod, and hopefully capture some beautiful nighttime snowfall shots as well.

Rather than this being a tutorial on how to take said shots, you’ll note by the finished product that this is actually a lesson on what not to do. So here goes:

Do NOT go outside to take pictures of the outdoors. Because, dang, it’s cold!
Instead, take pictures through a window.
Do NOT look up expert’s suggestions of the best camera settings for these conditions.
Do NOT bother trying to really understand what those pesky things like ISO and aperture do. They are just window dressing.
Instead, fiddle with all the settings in the dark. If you fiddle enough, and just keep snapping away, one of them will turn out perfect. That’s the way the pros do it.

If you follow the above instructions, behold:

LOOK, it’s a too bright, fuzzy lamp surrounded by what appears to be rain. AND the glowing green eyes of the Abominable Snowman, I’m sure. That’s one quality picture, let me tell you.

And if you follow my lead and continue adjusting random settings randomly (and at random) having no idea what you are doing, you will also end up with these gems:

Hey look, Abominable is levitating now. That never ends well.

I don’t even know.

Now, there’s a keeper. I must remember the settings I used for this one. At least Abominable has come back to earth.

So, here’s the thing. I actually did learn how to take a good nighttime falling snow picture. Gather in and pay attention.

Move the camera outside.
Switch the camera mode to AUTO.
Set the camera self timer for ten hours.
Snap.
Go to bed. Check out the results ten hours later:

I’ll be holding a clinic next Thursday. Seats are filling fast.

Oh, and as long as I’m showing pictures I took this morning, here’s a few that make me very happy, despite the fact I stayed up til 2:30 AM believing I would have a snow day. And, I don’t. Oh, ALSO, upon announcing at 2:30 AM that I was definitely, absolutely going to bed, Magoo incredulously exclaimed, “Are you seriously going to bed?” As if I was crazy for even considering the notion.

Where’s that empty nest? And, here are the pictures, I’ll stop talking now.

And, lastly, soak in this pure joy:

Posted in Photography | 9 Comments »

Autumn Walk

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

After 47 straight days of cold and no sunshine, we finally managed a sunny day last weekend when Magoo was home. We took a walk, and much to her disappointment, I insisted on bringing the camera.

Much like the farmers trying to get the harvest in around here, I was worried it might be my only window of opportunity for a few good Autumn pictures.

Magoo explicitly told me not to take pictures of her. So, what do I do? I take pictures of her backside. Isn’t that breaking some sort of golden rule? Oh well, she’s skinny, she shouldn’t mind.

At the end of almost every walk we take, after Berzerker has relieved himself every 6 seconds, we always take a shortcut thru our own land back to our house. This is Berzerker’s favorite of all favorites. Number one, we let him off the leash. Number two, he can race to that one spot he cornered that one raccoon that one time forever ago. It’s his job to make sure that coon does not return. And, he’s good at it.

Number three, this time of year he gets as much fruit as he wants. We toss him pear after pear. He catches it, gnaws for a half second, and then is ready for the next piece to be tossed. Catch. Gnaw. Repeat.

Some people think animals don’t go to Heaven. I’m not worried about it personally, because this guy is already in Heaven.

Posted in Animals, Photography | No Comments »

Tennessee Pictures

Monday, October 12th, 2009

We vacationed in Tennessee in August. We rented a home at the TOP OF THE WORLD — or so the rental agency claimed.

The home did not disappoint. After climbing, climbing, climbing in our good old van we finally emerged at the top of the rental house driveway and the view made us believe in the statement “take my breath away.”

It was an extraordinary view and we had an extraordinary time. I’ll put a few pictures up of people sometime, but the star of our vacation was this view.

Yeah, that’s the sun in the picture above. One of the cool things about this view was that even though we were looking in the same direction, the light and the colors were constantly changing dramatically.

Here’s a shot of what it looked like in the morning:

And a few of in the evening:

It’s hard to get perspective of height in pictures, but if you look real close in the middle of this picture (click on any of the pictures to enlarge them), you will see a helicopter flying BELOW us:

Every afternoon, the hawks would come out and start swirling around us.

And, if we ever tired of looking at the view from the back of the house, we could always look out the front:

The top of the world was pretty amazing. I’ll put something up one of these days with people in it. But, with a view like this, people are overrated.

Posted in Photography, Travel | 3 Comments »

Boys will be Boys – hypothetically

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Hypothetically speaking, we had a pretty sunny, almost-felt-like-Spring day. Which, naturally, hypothetically, caused all us girls to want to nap. And we did.

This, hypothetically, left the boys to their own devices.

They, hypothetically, must have been quite bored.

I woke from my slumber to, hypothetically, see them doing this in the front yard:

OK, so they were hypothetically shooting arrows. Not a big deal, right? It’s a nice activity to do in central Illinois on a spring like day. But I had to question their choice of targets, hypothetically, of course. They were shooting sort of, kind of, somewhat towards each other. But, they were aiming wide, so no harm, right?

But then, well, I started to wonder if they had gone a bit too far. I’ve posted some quick shots I took in succession below. And I’ve altered the pictures somewhat so as to not, hypothetically, incriminate anyone in particular based on an easily identifiable feature.

I give them credit.

For ingenuity.

For getting outside.

For bonding.

For bravery?

Rest assured, that hypothetically, the arrows were not sharp. And, fortunately these guys can’t catch.

Posted in Photography, Sports | 9 Comments »

My favorite (people) pics of 2008, Part Uno

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

The reason these are my favorite pictures may make sense to only me. I went through all of my 2008 pictures really quickly. I am sure I have A.D.D. and, on top of that, it hurts my brain to agonize over decisions, so I scanned through the pictures at 100 MPH and tried to pick out just a few that struck me. I didn’t want to analyze whether everyone I loved was included in one of the pictures. I didn’t want to analyze why they struck me. I just picked them out. No over-analysis required. So here you go:

It was around noon on Father’s Day. Bud and Magoo had not yet gotten a gift for their most amazing dad. So they cleaned up, and we did a little photo shoot in the backyard. Next, we uploaded the pictures to Walgreen’s. The kids then drove down, picked up a frame and the pictures, and presented their dad with (what appeared to be) a planned far in advance, thoughtful gift. Score.

During the photo shoot, we snapped a few mess-around pictures. That’s one of them to the left. Bud was holding Magoo, and then promptly pretended to drop her. Double score.

I love the pictures. But even more than that, they make me smile because this whole picture taking scheme was not only done at the last minute, but SweetGuy was HOME the entire time this was happening. The kids were doing their hair, getting dressed up, and going out back to get many, many pictures taken. He never noticed, or suspected a thing.

SweetGuy has many lovely traits. Acute observation is not one of them.

One day last fall, a friend of the family took some pictures of Emmy and Magoo in their prom dresses out in the back of our land. I will show you some others of those pics sometime because they were pretty cool. And weird. Like the one where they both had apples in their mouths.

Anyhoo, I know this is very braggy and all but I just love this picture. I think Magoo looks incredibly gorgeous.

Also, I’m digging my Photoshop skills. Because, for some reason there was part of Emmy’s leg behind Magoo in this picture. I edited it out. Bet you couldn’t tell, could you?

And, did I mention that Magoo is gorgeous?

Magoo, Emily and her Mom, Singing Sally, were able to take a long weekend to visit with Dad a few months before he died. As we were making the decisions of whether to try to get the grand-kids down to Florida to visit him or not, we were pretty torn. We all had conflicting thoughts about what was the best thing to do. On the one hand, we didn’t want to play out some sort of death parade thing where we marched each kid in front of him one by one to say goodbye. That’s not the way any of us roll (particularly Dad!), and besides, Dad wasn’t ready to give up the fight. And if he wasn’t done fighting, then we sure weren’t going to be done either. But, on the flip-side, we certainly knew the situation was dire, and we wanted the kids to be able to see him again, and of course, vice verse.

So, with great hesitation, we tried to get each one of the grandchildren down there if possible. Hence, Emmy and Magoo’s visit. And, that death march thingy? Their visit was most certainly not about death. It was about life. You can read a bit of what Emmy and Magoo wrote HERE. The picture above makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. And it is so apropos. Making light and fun out of an oxygen tube, and a guy whose very life is dependent on said tube. And, best of all, instead of contemplating death, Dad was living and loving and laughing. This is my favorite picture of all of 2008.

Part II tomorrow. Or the next day. Or sometime.

Posted in Family, Photography | No Comments »

My favorite (animal) Pics

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

I had an idea that I’d like to post my top ten favorite pictures from 2008.

I saddled up to the Mac and had fun quickly going through the 3000 (!) or so pictures I’ve taken over the past year. I didn’t spend a whole lot of brain power picking out my favorite photos. If something struck me, then I moved it to a “favorites” folder. My intention was then to peruse said folder and pare it down to my 10 favorite 2008 photos.

I couldn’t cut it down to 10. I managed to cut it down to 50 pictures or so.

I did realize, though, that the pictures I chose fell into roughly three different categories. Some of them were what I might refer to as artsy. Next, a surprising number of the pictures involved animals. And, finally, there were those pictures that involved people, and for one reason or another struck a significant emotional chord for me.

So, instead of posting just 10 photos, I’ve decided to do three different posts highlighting the variety of photos that I seem to care about. We’ll start with the animals:

This is OffspringHater. In case you hadn’t guessed, she has no love for her son and daughter, who also reside with us. She is a people lover and a fabulous feline.

You’ve seen this one before. It’s Berzerker with his boy, Bud. I love how much this boy loves his dog. It is sooo as it should be.

Meet Saje, the cutest puppy who ever lived. This dog gets more love than a cornflake shaped like Illinois. Bud tries to kidnap Saje, the world’s cutest dog, every chance he gets.

Do you know who this kitty is? Probably not. Cause he’s the one who cowers from all social interaction. Despite the fact he’s been treated like royalty from every human he has ever encountered, he scurries away from us. But I still kinda like him.

You’ve seen this one before, too. I never get tired of watching deer on our land.

Oh, Berzerker… and his boy. I love these guys like no other.

This regal feline is Shirley, who is the master of belongs to FavoriteChild. I took this picture just a few weeks ago. Emmy was busy ticking Shirley off as she was sitting on the table. But, Shirley, not wanting to admit she was perturbed by Emmy, gave the camera this “I do not care what the humans do” look.

Saje, puppy extraordinaire, is not exactly Chuck Norris. Saje is a chicken. And, she was particularly worried about the two massive dogs of FavoriteChild. Above, is the massive dog of FavoriteChild named Bosco, who wanted nothing more than to let Saje know she was loved. Look at Saje’s face. She is totally, purposefully, not making eye contact with Bosco, in hopes he will cease to exist.

BlindDog is not cool. She is not sweet. She is not loving. She is not cute. She is not talented. She does not listen. She can not see.

She is BlindDog, and she has been the source of more smiles in this family than anything, ever. We love her.

… it surprises me, more than anyone, how many pictures I have of animals. And there are a lot more where these came from. If this trend keeps up, I may have to admit that I like them.

Nah. I like buttons. And lights.

Posted in Animals, Photography | 3 Comments »

Smokin’ Youth Group

Monday, October 20th, 2008

We had a bonfire with youth group last night. Aren’t fall bonfires awesome? Last night was a great evening for a fire except the smoke kept swirling and it was impossible to escape. Oh well, I think everyone still had a good time. Our friend, and fellow youth group leader Josh took these pictures. He’s a professional photographer. I started out the night asking him how I could get some good pictures on my own. He was being really nice and started talking about lenses and aperture, and I was like appe-what? And he said “You know…. I’ve got my equipment, how about I take some pictures?” I high fived him, kissed his feet, and said “Yeah, sure, I guess if you insist.”

Here’s SweetGuy – the A.D.D. smoke’s latest victim:

Can’t have a bonfire without singing. Emmy, the reluctant singer, was coaxed into joining these two a few moments later because Steve was sick and his voice wasn’t holding up. I had just told someone a few minutes before this that Emmy was an awesome singer but she’d never let on to the fact. She’s been outed now. Take that Em!

This is Daniel, a cool freshman, who is probably 5′8″ or so and weighs all of 120 lbs. He must have eaten 5 hot dogs and umpteen smores. Oh, to have that metabolism…

So, we’ve been making an effort to provide slightly healthier food to youth group this year. What can I say, Little Debbie snacks may not be healthy, but they are cheap! So please ignore this particular evidence contradicting our healthy initiative – Da Kaff consuming chocolate WHILE roasting a dog.

Things I like about this next picture: The green light that isn’t really green in the real world. Grace, just because she’s Grace. And SweetGuy looks downright depressed. I’m pretty sure it’s because the evil smoke and sparks are stalking him.

Things I like about this picture. Teenagers are random, but well, helpful I guess? And I love that you can see the stars in the sky. I’m sure I could have taken a similar picture myself, but I didn’t want to show up Josh. He’s a pro after all and I might have made him feel inferior.

If you are interested in additional awesomeness by Josh (and his loverly wife Amy) check this out: http://photoblog98.com/

Posted in Photography, Youth Group | 3 Comments »

DustMeister Creations

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

I was kind of musing about the difference between Grace staying with us and DustMeister. Grace is just a tiny bit more low key than DustMeister. And, as an added bonus, after she left, we still had milk and chocolate syrup in our house.

But, DustMeister, we would gladly supply you with infinite amounts of chocolate milk if you’d come back!! Seriously though, even though you are missed, I think you made a really intelligent move finishing up at Singapore American School. It’s an impressive place to graduate from to be sure.

Speaking of impressive, DustMeister supplied me with these absolute gems and I totally have to pass them along. They are priceless and hilarious! Thanks Dust!! (By the way, if you are interested, he made them here: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/motivator.php)

Posted in Photography, Techie | 3 Comments »

Talent

Monday, September 1st, 2008

My niece, Emmy, is an aspiring photographer. I think she has a really excellent eye for it, and am excited that she has a love for it. Here’s a picture she took last night of the sun setting over Peoria. It was an incredible sunset. And it was kind of the sunset of summer too, wasn’t it? I know it’s not officially fall for a few weeks, but it’s getting cooler at night and I’ve even seen a few leaves changing color. I hope this fall lasts right on through to next spring.

Emmy, keep up the good work. Now, if you can only figure out how to get a picture of your aunt that makes her look like she’s 28 years old and is a dead ringer for Angelina Jolie, I’d be quite grateful!! Get on that.

Posted in Photography | 5 Comments »