Wordless Wednesday

Professional Photographer

We spent our visit in Toronto touring the city on foot. During our walk on our second day, we turned a corner and I spotted a wall of a building painted a beautiful yellow.  Apparently I'm not the only one liking the wall, when we got closer there was a photographer there talking a photograph of a sports car.

I asked the photographer if he would use my camera and take a picture of Mick & I, with instruction to not take our entire bodies but a close up of our heads. The above photo is my cropped version. Below is straight out of the camera. What the heck???

He told me he also had a Canon camera just like mine. Oh boy, I wonder how the car photos turned out?

Palm Trees

Same palm tree photo, four different ways. Compliments of my new IPad!

Morning Hunt

I was up at 3am yesterday morning to go out on a turkey hunt in the Town of Florida. Eric and Andy from Downwind Outdoors and two guest shooters Paul and Kristen were in our group.

 The two below photos were taken at 5:30am.

 It was a beautiful morning. Well, after I could see it was a beautiful morning. Hiking through fields in the pitch dark was quite a different experience.

As soon as we got settled in along a group of trees a scared and I would bet quite surprised skunk came along. The skunk actually came within three feet Kristen & I. I had no idea what was even going on till I looked down and saw a white stripe. We were all very thankful no one got sprayed. The Downwind Outdoors hunting crew heard the turkeys fly off from their overnight roost in the trees behind us, when Eric yelled to scare the skunk away. The decision was then made to move to another area and you know since I was the new "hunter" I took the blame for the skunk incident. A skunk scare-off was a first for the three hunters in our group.

Photo Hike

Jim, Debbie & I went out on a afternoon photo hike.

I love this photo of Jim taking a photo. I never did get to see his shots, hope they came out good.

I did get to see Debbie's. She has a Canon & we were able to upload from my reader. I think I'll ask them to send me a few so I can post on the blog. 

I took about 70 photos that day & very few came out.

I spent an evening reading my manual & I was able to figure out some new settings.

I think I might need a wide angle lens. : )

Photoshoot

 Amie's college friend came for a weekend visit. Thankfully I had two willing photoshoot subjects.

I like the "golden" light of our late afternoon.

Thanks Carrie for being such a willing subject. We loved having you for the weekend. Come again!

Also, happy birthday on Sunday.

May you have a GREAT day and a wonderful year.

DownWind Outdoors

The reason for my "weekend in the country" was to take photos of the DownWind snipers.

Andy is featured in this video. It's one of my favorites. Make sure you have your speakers on.

I like the beginning. The driving in the truck part.

 Also, just so you know, there was an animal killed in the making of the video.

My favorite photo of Andy is the one below.

Th rest of the week I'll show you a few of the 230 photos I took.

I really appreciate the skill photographer's have to capture great photos of children. 

I've been wanting since he was born to do a photoshoot.

 He ran & ran & ran. He chased & chased & chased the football & soccer balls.

 On occassion I was able to get him to stand still.

I wish I had one of me giving a flower to my Mom or Dad at two years old.

 My favorite.

I loved the time I spent with this cute little guy.

Portrait Photography

This was the first of my hopefully, many attempts at portraits with my new Canon T2i. I've also started taking all my photos manually focusing. Manually focusing has been very difficult for me to get right. It does make for much better photographs and I'm getting better at it.

                                                         My son has been busy learning to use my old Canon Rebel XT. He prefers nature shots. He sent me a couple of his first photographs. He seems to have gotten down the manual focusing.

I wouldn't have stayed around long enough to even attempt snake photographs. National Geographic here he comes.

Morning Fog

Yesterday morning, on my drive to work, I pulled over to attempt a photo of the beautiful morning fog.

I took six photos on three different settings. I have so much to learn with this new camera. I had no idea the learning curve would be so large. Also, I started uploading the photos onto the blog in smaller files, the original photo file is very large. Hope the quality is not diminished.

"Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else." Mr. Rogers

My birthday, Thanksgiving -even thou we don't exchange gifts- and Christmas present all wrapped into one new camera. Letting the learning curve begin and hopefully better photos. : )

Cowgirl

Beginning of the week was my "Guitar Girl" photo shoot post. Today is my "Cowgirl" photo shoot post.

This one is Amie's favorite. The straw in her hand was not my idea. Amie gets the credit for that. Taking a photo when someone has a hat on is very difficult. The hat shades the eyes & gives a shadow on the face. There is always something to learn with photography.
I loved our afternoon in the country. I'm ready to go again, again & again! Anyone want their picture taken?

Portrait Photography Class

I had my last portrait photography class last week. While a few of my classmates, well everyone besides Mike & I, were interested in doing the below, I went outside behind the school & took nature shots. It was during sunset.
Photos that I guess can be used at Halloween.

Maybe I'm just to old for this colorization.

Portrait Photography Class

This week our assignment was to take portraits while we were on the ground looking up at our model,

looking down

and a full body shot.
We also had to do group portratis. Unfortunally, I only had my 50mm 1.4 lens. I can't get more than one person in focus with the lens.

Our teacher is in the photo, she has a scarf on.

One thing I did learn was to take the camera off auto focus when taking a self portrait. I've never tried that, next time.

Portrait Photography Class

Tonight is the fourth of my six portrait photography classes. The class is entirely about using lights to take portraits. Unfortunately, I'm not interested in using lights. In fact, I try to take photos never having to use artificial light.

Three of my classmates are using a white board as a reflector.

An example of a "back lite" photo.

A "side lite."

This one has a light behind and then another at 3 o'clock.

It's been an interesting experience. I just for once, wish that my class had homework.

Here Kitty, Kitty.

Would be a PURRRfect cat photo, if I could have gotten the end of those bottom whiskers - moving objects. I'm a quarter way thru a Portrait Photography class. So far the teacher hasn't brought up anything about pet portraits. Maybe I'll bring it up next week.

Over the Christmas holidays I had lots of willing photo subjects around.

Just a few that I've yet to get onto the blog.

Maggie & Emily gave this photo to their parents & brothers for Christmas.

The daughter of my number one blog stalker. Good morning Kay!
Although this is not a portrait, Amie wanted to get a photo to show all her Southern California friends the snow in NY. This was taken in a parking lot near the airport.
Taking two months to get photos onto the blog you would think I have a lot of blogging material. So NOT.