The truth

The truth is that I'm not very consistent at any of my hobbies.  Photography happens to be one of those hobbies.  Honestly, I haven't even touched my camera in over a month, and I don't feel terrible about that.  I tend to cycle through my hobbies, and when I'm involved in one, I have little interest in doing any of the others.  That goes for sewing and knitting, and sometimes even reading.  I feel like photography has run its course for the time being.  That doesn't mean that I won't take any more pictures ever again.  Quite the opposite.  After a while, how ever long that turns out to be, I'll pick up my camera and go take several hundred pictures a week.  It's just not happening right now.  At present, I'm on a self-imposed sewing kick.  I'm sewing my first wedding dress ever for my friend/coworker.  Once that's done, I've already picked my next knitting project (as soon as I finish the last one I started).  The yarn is already in the mail.  I don't know how often I'll post on the blog, but I might show off my other hobbies from time to time.  I'm just going to play it by ear.

People: July, Week 1

So it turns out that whatever the heck I wanted for June was a month off.  But I'm back now.

In my own opinion, I'm not very good at taking people pictures.  I get lucky from time to time, and those are the pictures you'll see this month.  My mom may very well regret having me take the family pictures last month.  We'll find out soon enough.  What I did happen to capture is the chaos that is family picture time.  So at least there's that.  Props to all of those people photographers out there.  I can't do what you do.

So here's the first "lucky" shot that I'm posting.  At my family reunion about a month ago, I was the official photographer, I guess.  Or at least I took it upon myself to be such.  I was just snapping random candids while everyone did their thing.  This is one of my brother-in-law Kasey and my nephew Liam.  I don't know what I like so much about this one, but it is one of my favorites from the whole trip.

Kasey & Liam
f/4.5
1/160
ISO 250
(portrait mode)
6/7/13
Grand Canyon North Rim, AZ

Whatever the heck I want, gosh!: June, Week 1

This month is a month of random pics that I just feel like posting.  It might be a follow up on a skill that I'm working on or just something old and out of the blue.  This week's picture could be considered a continuation of May's theme since I took this picture on my hike yesterday.  I went hiking up Big Cottonwood Canyon in the Mill B North Fork area.  There is a little waterfall back there called Hidden Falls (which I didn't take the time to actually find), thus a little creek feeding the waterfall.  My hike took me up along the side of the creek for about a half mile, so I took some rests to take some pics.

A few weeks ago when I went to Lisa Falls, I was experimenting with long exposures on the water because I really love the effect.  I was tripod-less this trip, so I was worried that these wouldn't turn out well, or that they'd have a lot of shake in them because of the longer exposure.  But I got lucky.  I just found a nice rock, had a seat, and held my camera on my knee.  And what do you know, it worked!  This was one of those times when I was not frustrated by my camera's limitations.  Either that or I'm just learning how to work with what I've got.  Either way, progress.

Hidden Falls creek detail
f/8
1/6
ISO 100
6/1/13, 1:08pm
Big Cottonwood Canyon, UT

Saturday Hikes: May, Week 4

Yes, yes, I'm late again, but you were warned.  It's been a crazy week and I'm just getting around to posting again.  but the good news is that June week 1 is right on time.

For the holiday weekend, I went to Moab, which is a fun little adventureland.  I went on 6 hikes, and these two pictures are from none of them.  But I did walk from the parking lot to the viewpoint, so that counts, right?  These are actually from Dead Horse Point State Park, which is close to the north end of Canyonlands National Park.  It was my first time there, and I was a little late to get the really good light.  But it was good enough for some decent pics.

Dead Horse Point rim
f/8
1/60
ISO 100
5/25/13, 8:15 pm
Dead Horse Point State Park, UT





















Dead Horse Point canyon view
f/8
1/50
ISO 100
5/25/13, 8:12pm
Dead Horse Point State Park, UT

Saturday Hikes: May, week 3

Confession: it was rainy yesterday, so I didn't go on a hike.  But next weekend I'm headed to Moab, so much hiking will be done to make up for it.

Just now, I went out onto my patio to take some pictures of the allium plants that I have growing in the little garden there.  I use the term garden very loosely in this case.  It's a patch of ground that has some plants growing in it.  Someday I will turn it into an actual garden.  It will require a fair amount of work and some replanting of bulbs, so I think I'll leave that until the fall.  Anywho, I took some pictures.  Here is one of them.

f/2.7
1/1600
ISO 100
5/19/13, 12:46pm
My patio

Photoshop is a wonderful thing.  It's even better when you start playing around with more than just the quick settings like I usually do.  This looks soooo much better than it did straight out of camera.  I like the little raindrops on the bud, especially the way you can see the background upside-down and backwards in the one on the left.  I'm glad it came out as clear as it did.  I think that maybe if you click on the image to enlarge it, you'll be able to see it a little better.  I can't wait until these all bloom.  This little 2" bud will explode into a 6" ball of color.  These flowers are the best!  I'm so glad I have so many of them. :)

Saturday Hikes: May, Week 2

Last Saturday on my way home from my hike, I stopped at the 7-eleven at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon.  It claims to be the busiest 7-eleven in the world, and I guess I can believe that.  There were certainly a lot of people there when I was.  There was a group of kids that wanted to go hiking to Donut Falls, a popular hike in Big Cottonwood Canyon.  One guy in the store was nice enough to let them know that there is still 10 feet of snow at Donut Falls, so hiking there wasn't really an option in their shorts and flip flops.  But he did tell them about Lisa Falls, an easily accessible, though unmarked, hike a few miles up Little Cottonwood Canyon.  I filed away that little tidbit of information and decided to go there this weekend.

My intent was to get up to the falls early enough that it would still be shaded from the direct sunlight.  I wanted to try out a longer exposure to get a nice blur on the water.  It's one of my favorite photo effects, but with my camera, it's a hard one to do.  The key is to let in as little light as possible (small aperture, low ISO) so that the image isn't completely washed out with the light coming in with the slow shutter speed.  It definitely doesn't work on a fully-lighted waterfall.  Which is what I found.  But luckily, the trail was shaded up until the waterfall, so I tried out that effect on the runoff.  The trail doesn't follow the main stream up, but closer to the falls, there is still some runoff coming down along the trail.  Here's one of my attempts.

f/5.6
ISO 100
1/6
5/11/13
Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah

There's not a lot of water coming down at this point in the stream, but it was a good practice.  I got the effect I was hoping to get, although it would look much better if there were more water.  Oh well.  The lesson learned here is that with a little bit of water, a faster shutter works a little better.  On some of the other pictures where I tried catching the blur of the water, the water is almost completely invisible because of the longer exposure.  But with a lot of water running this slowly, the effect would be more pronounced with the slower shutter speed.

f/8
1/100
ISO 100
5/11/13
below Lisa Falls, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah

This is directly below Lisa Falls, in fact, in the top right corner of the picture, you can see the falls running down the rocks.  The water was moving so fast that it was blurred to the naked eye.  The joys of the spring runoff.  If I had realized at the time how close I was to capturing the effect that I wanted in this picture, I would have been even more frustrated at the limitations of my camera.  Here, I was using the smallest aperture and slowest ISO speed that my camera allowed, and I still had to use a pretty fast shutter speed to make the exposure come out okay.  The number one least favorite thing about my camera is how small the aperture range is.  I've felt this way for some time now.  It makes me wish that I had just waited a while longer, saved my money, and purchased a DSLR. *sigh*  And since my camera is only a year old (and I just bought a new dishwasher), it will be a while before that upgrade actually happens.  The good thing is that it forces me to work on other, more basic skills.  So maybe by the time I do upgrade, I'll be able to take good photos right off the bat instead of having to struggle with a completely foreign camera.

An just as a bonus, here is a picture of Lisa Falls itself.  It's a lot taller than it looks, maybe 20 or more feet tall.  I'll probably be visiting again once it's warmer outside and the water isn't so icy cold.

Saturday Hikes: May, week 1

It should be a surprise to no one that I'm a week behind.  Again.  Since the weather is starting to get nicer, I've decided to start going on little hikes every Saturday.  Lots of trails are still snowed in, but there are plenty of little trails near the mouths of the canyons that are already accessible.  Last Saturday, I went to the Temple Quarry trail at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon.  It's all paved, although I definitely spent most of my time off the trail.  There was a lot to see, and I was able to get some cool shots of the dry creek bed.  There were also some mountain goats way up the side of the canyon that some fellow hikers pointed out to me.  Too far away for any decent shots, but it is not requisite to take photos of absolutely everything you see.

I've had my camera for a year now, but I'm still learning how to use a lot of the different features.  I'm trying them out one at a time and trying to get the hang of them so that I can add to what I already know and become a better photographer.  I like a lot of my pictures, but I also look at them with a critical eye (too critical, depending on who you ask).  I know I can do better once I get the skills.  On this particular day, I was playing around with the spot metering feature.  I wish I had known about this a long time ago!  I really liked seeing how different the pictures turned out, just by changing what I was metering off of.  Since this was my first time really using this feature, I took a lot of over exposed pictures.  A lot.  It'll definitely take a lot more work to get really good at spot metering, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Here are two unedited pictures that I took last weekend.  The thing that I find most interesting is that the only thing that was different between these two shots is what I was metering off of.

(for both images)
f/3.5
1/125
ISO 100
5/4/13
Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah

What a difference the metering makes!  I personally prefer the second one.  Everything looks more green and warm and alive.  So, lesson learned.  Metering matters.

The Dog Park: April, Week 4

"I Got It!"
Canon SX40 HS
f/4
1/1250
ISO 200
4/27/13
Salt Lake City, UT

Hey, it's only Saturday and I'm posting already!  yay me!  So today I took another trip to the dog park.  These pictures turned out way better, I think.  I tried things out on the sports preset mode on my camera, and I got the results I was looking for.  The camera uses a 1/1250 shutter speed or faster and automatically adjusts the rest of the settings to get a good clean image.  It was so much easier than trying to make all of the adjustments myself.  Lesson learned.  Pili and I were having a good old time playing fetch with this nice stick that we found at the park.  Here she's just coming back for another toss, even though it means splashing down these rocks.  My number one favorite part of this picture is the sheet of water arcing off of her tail. It's a little hard to see because water is, after all, a clear liquid, but it's something I probably would have missed on any of my other camera settings.  I'm feeling good about the progress I made this month on my action shots.  There's still room for improvement, but I feel like I've figured out a thing or two, thanks to this little exercise.

The Dog Park: April, Week 3

"Oh, So Close" (to being awesome)
Canon SX40 HS
f/4
1/500
ISO 400
4/13/13
Salt Lake City, UT

This picture was so close to being really great.  The trouble with photographing dogs is that they move so much faster than I do.  Yes, I realize that this dog's head is missing.  But there are so many other things that I love about this picture that I decided to make it this week's picture anyway.  This dog was playing catch with its owner.  You can see the red toy in its mouth.  It was just so happy getting in and out of the water; they played for maybe 30 minutes, just doing the same thing over and over.

What I like about this photo is how the action is nicely frozen, even though it is not nicely framed.  The splashing water is just so perfect.  If only I had anticipated how quick that dog was.  Sigh!

For this trip to the dog park, I decided to use a different setting than the last trip.  For the photos from weeks 1 and 2, I was on manual mode; for this photo, I used the Aperture Priority setting.  That way I could still play around with the depth of field but not have to fiddle with the other settings.  Since it was a cloudy day, I bumped up the ISO in order to get a faster shutter speed. I think that overall the pictures turned out better than the first trip to the dog park.  As is obvious from this picture, I still have some work to do, but I'm feeling better about my action shots.  I feel good about my picture-taking ability; I just need to anticipate the action better. Next time I take my camera to the dog park, I think I'm going to try using my camera's preset mode for kids and pets.  I think that will free me up even more to try to keep up with the dogs.  I'm excited to see what the next trip brings.

The Dog Park: April, Weeks 1 and 2

So, the point of this whole photo of the week practice is to actually get better at photography.  I definitely have my preference as to the types of photos that I take, so this month, I'm branching out with the help of some friends.

This month I'm trying my hand at action shots, and trust me, there is lots of action at the dog park.  I've gone a couple of times with my friend Courtney and her dog Pili.  Pili is a very energetic 6-year-old chocolate lab.  She is my favorite dog ever.  She loves the water, and the dog park very conveniently has a creek running through it.  It is the perfect opportunity for some water shots.

"Fetch!"
Canon SX40 HS
f/5
1/400
ISO 100
3/16/2013
Salt Lake City, UT

"Shake It Out"
Canon SX40 HS
f/3.5
1/500
ISO 100
3/16/13
Salt Lake City, UT
This is a fun shot, but I think it would have turned out better with a faster shutter speed.  Dogs just shake the water off so quickly that even 1/500 of a second is too slow to stop their motion altogether.  At the same time, I kinda like that she's a little blurred.  It does give a sense of motion, not that the action itself doesn't, but you  know what I mean.

I took both of these pictures using a manual setting, which I decided is a little difficult when you need to make quick adjustments.  Lesson number 1 from this: full manual mode is not always the best.  On my trip to the dog park last weekend (pictures from that trip for weeks 3 and 4), I tried a different mode, but even with that, I think that the preset mode for action shots is going to be my best bet for the dog park.  I'll probably go again in the next few weeks.  I'll try it out again and see what happens.

just in case

on the off chance that anyone checks for new pictures mid-week, I'm working on it.  April is really getting away from me, and with the semester winding up, I've been a little preoccupied.  But here's a teaser for what's coming: action shots.

The Back Lot: March, Week 5

"Wood and Webs"
Canon Powershot A4000
f/3
1/60
ISO 250
1/18/2013, 4:25 pm
Provo, Utah

The Back Lot: March, Week 4

Distressed inn sign
Canon Powershot A4000
f/3
1/60
ISO100
1/18/13, 4:31 pm
Provo, UT

The Back Lot: March, Weeks 1, 2, and 3

So I'm playing catch up.  How in the world did it get to be the 3rd Sunday in March?!  I had a hard time deciding what my theme for the month would be, thus the lack of posts the past 2 weeks.  But after looking through my pictures, I decided on one.  What I have to say about one of the pictures, I have to say about them all.  These are all from a single 30 minute outing one day after work.  And I'd like to add that it was a very cold day, probably only in the teens.  I work at a film studio, and like any good film studio, we have a back lot.  The back lot is a portion of the property that has permanent buildings that can be cleaned up and dressed up whenever needed.  There are so many great little details on all of the buildings.  They all have a lot of character, so it's fun to go look back there, and even more fun to take pictures.  I can't wait until it's warm and the trees aren't so dead looking.  The place has a whole different feel in the spring and summer.

detail from a barn
Canon Powershot A4000
f/3
1/60
ISO400
1/15/13, 4:26 pm
Provo, Utah

"Hanging On"
Canon Powershot A4000
f/3.5
1/100
ISO100
1/15/13, 4:16 pm
Provo, Utah

fancy doorknob detail

Canon Powershot A4000
f/3
1/60
ISO160
1/15/13, 4:32 pm
Provo, Utah

The Tropics: February, Week 4

It's the last week of February already!  I can't believe it.  So, here is one last picture from my cruise.  Port 4 was on Grand Cayman.  It was pretty spectacular.  I didn't take a lot of picture that I loved, but this one will suffice for this week.

"Beachfront Property"
Canon SX40 HS
f/4
1/1250
ISO100
1/25/13
George Town, Grand Cayman, BWI

I took this picture from the patio of the restaurant where I ate that afternoon.  The restaurant is named Rackam's, and I'm still drooling over the fish and chips that I ate there.  I would go back just to eat that again.  Anyhow, there is some lucky person that owns the house just out of frame on the right, and they have a pretty good view if you ask me.

Confession: This picture represents a first for me.  It's the first time that I had to remove unwanted elements using Photoshop.  I generally avoid doing that, but the beer ads just didn't do much for this picture.  For a first time, I don't think it looks too bad.

The Tropics: February, Week 3

The next stop on the cruise was Roatan, an island of the coast of Honduras.  It rained for about 95% of the day.  We were lucky enough to be on the ziplines during the only non-rainy minutes of the day.  After arriving back at Mahogany Bay, I whipped out the big camera and started taking pictures.  One thing I love about the tropics is the amazing variety of flowers that I obviously don't get to see at home.  So here's one of the shots I captured on that rainy day on Roatan.

"Raindrops on Ginger"
Canon SX40 HS
f/4
1/320
ISO400
1/24/2013
Mahogany Bay, Roatan, Honduras

Get it? Raindrops on ginger?  Like "Raindrops on roses"?  Yep, the flowers were definitely one of my favorite things about Roatan.  The rain, eh, I could do without, although it really did make for some cool pictures of the flowers.

I did a little research and found that this flower is Alpinia Zerumbet, more commonly known as the shell ginger.  I overheard a lady saying that it is a type of ginger, otherwise I never would have figured it out.  I think it's much prettier before it blooms, but that's just me.  What do you think?

Some thoughts about photography

So here's a thought that I want to share.  I'm not really using my blog now as a means to share my thoughts, but this one is particularly pertinent to my little adventure in photography.  I follow Pictureline on that one social media site that we all know about, and from time to time, they share guest posts from their regular website.  I don't read all of them, just the ones that catch my attention.  I saw one today that did.  You can read the whole article here, but here below is the part that struck me.

 I remembered a conversation I had with my grandmother. We were talking about her and my grandfather’s love for photography and how I was just starting to really get interested in it as well. We were walking on the beach one winter morning near her house in Door County, WI. It was a chilly morning, but the air was so still it didn’t feel very cold. While talking about nature and life, she told me that once she started taking pictures, she looked at everything she experienced in the world differently. She took time to notice the light and beauty of things more than she had before and that she really enjoyed that feeling.

I feel exactly the same as this guy's grandmother!  Since I've started really taking a lot of pictures, I notice the world around me a lot more.  I notice the clouds and lighting and landscapes and people and little details of things.  I notice angles of buildings and shadows cast by street lights and reflections of the sky in little puddles on the sidewalk.  I look for the character in the streets I'm driving on, thinking how I could attempt to capture it if I only had my camera on me.  I want to take my camera everywhere, just to capture the little things that strike me throughout the day.

I just now decided that my foray into photography can be likened to Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.  At the very end, he and Elizabeth are talking, and she asks him when he first started to love her.  This is what he says.

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation.  It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I HAD begun."

That's how I feel about photography.  I don't know when I started to love it or when it started to change the way I view the world around me.  I was in the middle before I realized that it was changing me.  That's all I really wanted to say, I guess.  I know that at least one person feels the same way, even if it's some random grandma in Wisconsin, and it's nice to know I'm not alone.

The Tropics: February, Week 2

This week's photos come to you from Costa Maya.  I've been there twice now, and it has poured rain both times.  I don't have the best impression of the place because of that, but that wasn't going to stop me from taking pictures!  In fact, the rain kinda helped keep random people out of my pics, which always makes me happy.  Everyone was ducking for cover from the rain while I was out snapping away to my heart's content.

Untitled

Canon SX40 HS

f/4.5

1/640

ISO200

1/23/13

Costa Maya, Mexico

This one is hands-down my favorite picture from Costa Maya.  I got a lot of really good ones, but I just love how this lady is just peeking out from between these bright pink columns.  I think she might have been a shop  owner looking out for customers.  As I mentioned, it was really rainy that day, otherwise, there would have been a lot more people milling about, and I never would have captured this shot.  I love how all of the colors in these ports were so vibrant!  It just makes the places seem so exotic and foreign to anything that I get to see here at home.  Here at home, you would never see this color of pink as anything other than an accent color.  Or the shoes of about half of the girls getting married these days (P.S. that's not original any more, hon).  But that is neither here nor there.  The point is that I love the bright colors adorning the exteriors of all of the shops in these ports.

"On Duty"

Canon SX40 HS

f/4.5

1/25

ISO100

1/23/13

Costa Maya, Mexico

And for good measure, here's a bonus picture.  I saw this soldier standing guard with his dog and just loved the look of them.  Not knowing how he would react to me taking pictures of him, I had to wait until he was turned away from me, although I liked the look of his profile or a straight-on shot better.  But I didn't want to be thrown into Mexican army prison or something horrible like that on vacation, so I had to settle for this.  I'm kinda surprised at how sharp this picture turned out, considering what a slow shutter speed I had.  Sometimes I amaze even myself.  Again, you can see here what bright paint they use to paint everything down there.  It makes even the rainiest of days seem a little less dreary.

The Tropics: February, Week 1

Yeah, so sorry about January week 4.  That's just not going to happen.  Sorry if you were looking forward to that.  To make it up to you (my supposed readers), I'm posting two photos today.  Lucky you.  As many of you know, I just got back from a cruise.  I've saved my favorite pics from the trip for posting on the blog this month.  I  didn't even post these ones on FB, so you, dear reader, are special, because not all of my FB friends are my blog friends.  My blog friends are an elite group, or so I like to think.  Now, without further ado, here are this week's pics, both from Cozumel, the first stop on the cruise.

"El Diablo Beach"
Canon SX40HS
f/8
1/800
ISO100
1/22/2013
Cozumel, Mexico

This beach was gorgeous!!  The sand was so soft, and the water was relatively warm.  I didn't get in and swim, although I did wade in a bit.  How could I swim with pictures like this to be taken?!  I added the Orton effect to this one (thanks for the tutorial, dad!), and I think it turned out quite nicely.  I felt like this picture really deserved the dreamy effect of Orton.  It was definitely a dream to be on Cozumel!

"Mayan Sunstone"
Canon SX40HS
f/7.1
1/500
ISO100
1/22/2013
Cozumel, Mexico

This picture is the back side of a replica of an artifact called the Tortuguero de Macuspana Tabasco.  I don't know the significance of this particular artifact, but I liked the colors and the general look of the thing.  It was in the middle of the road  between El Diablo restaurant and the beach seen above. In fact, I took these two pictures consecutively.  You'll notice in the upper right of the picture, the stone has the Mayan, Spanish, and English words for sun.  I loved how the sun was in just the right position for me to catch some rays and flares of the actual sun on this stone depicting the sun.  The parallelism just warms the artistic corner of my logical and orderly little heart.

Home: January, week 3

"Subzero Sunrise"
Canon PowerShot A4000
f/3.2
1/80
ISO100
1/3/13, 7:45 am
West Valley City

Here's another shot right outside my front door.  I was just leaving the house on my way to work, and the sunrise was so amazing that I had to stop and take a picture.  The temperature may or may not have actually been subzero (in Farenheit, anyway).  All I know is that it was really freaking cold.  I'm glad I captured it, though.  Totally worth freezing my fingers to get the shot.  I only wish that the picture actually did it justice.

I'm cold just thinking about that morning.  Lucky for me, I'm heading to the tropics tomorrow.  Of course I have one more week of the "Home" theme, but after that, I think you know what you can expect to see for the month of February.  Some pictures of slightly warmer climes.