Where most moms take a picture or two, I click off two or three dozen. Most of my older kids are bored with being my guinea pigs models.  Thankfully my littlest two girls are still happy to ham for the cam.   (Click on the pictures to enlarge them.)
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Recently I came across a $25 gadget called a Lightscoop.   It uses a mirror to bounce your on-camera flash in a way that produces more gently-lit pictures.  Because I hate the look of on-camera flash, I was extremely interested.  I contacted the company and asked if they would send me one of the scoops...
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My photography class on Saturday was fun.  I liked the teacher, and four hours flew by.  After some talk about what makes a good portrait, we divided into pairs to get some shots.  (It felt odd to take pictures of a stranger  — I’m more used to photographing my kids!)  Then we gathered back...
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I’ve been frustrated lately with my picture-taking skills, especially outdoors in changing light. I deleted 3/4 of the 800+ pictures I took on vacation because frankly, they stunk.  Granted, I’m stubbornly insisting on shooting in manual and that is not easy.  But still, I feel like I should be better after a year of...
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The other day I told someone in complete honesty that I love holding my new camera almost as much as I love the pictures that I get with it.  I love the weight of it, the way my fingers curl around the body of it, the ‘snick’ as I rotate a different lens onto...
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Found an interesting challenge at DigitalPhotographySchool.com. The idea is that no matter where you are, chances are that there are at least 10 great pictures within 10 meters of you right now. So find them. Here’s what I shot at midnight when the light was dim and my usual subjects were all asleep. What’s...
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We live out in the country, in an area of Idaho where the annual rainfall is somewhere around 7-10 inches. (That fact still surprises my Missouri-born self–that much water hit the ground in a couple weeks where I grew up.) Irrigation water is essential. Mountain foothills are dotted with reservoirs to store up melted...
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Straight off the FedEx truck today, here’s what I got with my new Canon 28-135 lens. The sweetness. Oh my stars, I am having fun.
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I’ve been having lots of fun experimenting with the settings on my camera in the past few days.  The best pictures still come when I put the thing on ‘auto’ with the flash turned off– I don’t understand shutter speed and aperature and ISO well enough yet.   But I’m getting a few things...
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