Day 185

Hey! I passed the halfway point without noticing! I’ve over halfway done with my photo year! Wow!

I got to take a few snaps of Miss Serenity again today. She is just too, too, too cute!

By the way, these were shot with natural light with the black side of  my reflector as a backdrop. These were in-camera crop because I just snapped quickly while Serenity was in the pretty light and being compliant. I had my 50mm on so I didn’t have room to move for a better crop. Oh well…I like these anyway.

Day 340

I snapped this quick shot of Serenity this morning. Why are my favorite shots of her all quick snaps?

Rainbow Pitstop

Rainbow Pitstop, a photo by Elli :-) on Flickr.

As we were coming home from Dale's baseball game we saw this lovely rainbow. We were actually able to see the entire thing, but I didn't have a lens that would capture it (I need a wide-angle!) and I haven't put my panorama together yet. I love the serenity of this photo.

I also love the fact that when we stopped in the roadside pullout to take pictures, my kids hopped out, oohed and aahed, and then started picking up garbage along the side of the pullout and road. Without any prompting from me, they just picked up trash and found a bag in the car to keep it in. Awesomeness! I love those people!

Day 190

I just discovered that I can do High Speed Syncing with my flashes! I didn’t know that’s what the little H and flash symbol meant! (I don’t have manuals for either flash.) So today I went outside and tried some off-camera flash stuff with high speed sync. I watched this great video…

http://www.stansphotos.com/My%20Videos/Lighting_Tutorial.wmv

and he explains that in order to get the darkened background (even in daylight) you must increase your shutter speed. I did so, but I didn’t see any significant difference in my background. Why not? (Eric, that question is probably for you.) What am I doing wrong?

Anyway, I got a few cute shots of my willing models…

(This shot has my new favorite script run on it at about 50% opacity.)

This shot was not done outdoors or with ocf…but this little lady manages to be unbelievably adorable even with rumpled hair and dirty pajamas! How does she do that?

Day 222

I have to show off our grass! Oh yeah…and the cute kids on top of it. Doesn’t our grass look wonderful? After these shots were taken Ken gave our new lawn its first mowing. I love having grass in our front yard!!

(for those of you who notice such things, these shots are soft because I used the Tamron 28-80. Why do I even use that lens?)