Cousin

Steve's cousin and her husband are visiting for the weekend so I finally got a chance to practice people photography. Usually I don't get to do it - my husband refuses to pose for them. The ones I take from Stephen are very candid and show what he is into at the moment, but he is still too young to tell him how I would like him in the picture.
Are you resizing your photos before posting them online? Most times I do it so not to waste space on blogger. I noticed though that once the RAW files are saved as a JPG file, they loose LOTS of MP They go like from 12 MP to about 3. When resizing it to 20% then (what I usually do) they turn out extremely grainy. How do you all do that?Pin It

JPG vs RAW

Ok, after reading from a few of you over the past few weeks about shooting in RAW, I thought I give it a try, so I switched the camera to the JPG + RAW option. And nothing happened. I usually use picasa for basic editing - I couldn't find the RAW files..so I just thought I need photoshop or something like this to get to them. Now suddenly, when uploading today's pictures, it uploaded all the RAW files as well from the past week.. I guess there was some kind of issues before.. I'm not sure yet which one I like better.. I guess I'll test it out more over the next few weeks... for comparison:
 Here is the JPG version - darker colors, but in generally not too bad. I wouldn't really change anything on here.

 This is the original RAW file - very dull colors and lighter.

That's my edited RAW version. I tried to saturate the colors - hopefully not too much and keep the tone less orangy  - compared to the JPG version..

Is it normal to have the blue frame around the picture with the RAW version? I didn't crop it, because I wanted to ask you all about it..Pin It

Contest

Like many of you, I decided to participate in the photo contest from I clicked it up a notch. Although simple, this is by far my favorite photo from April.

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Lily of the Valley

Those lily-of-the-valleys are special to me. They came from my husband's grandmother's garden. Every year they are spreading out more and more around the bird bath.Pin It

Weigela

After trying to enhance this one a little bit, I decided I liked it better SOOC. The weigela just started blooming the other day. Spring flowers continue :)Pin It

Sun rays

Not a good picture taking day. We had the most beautiful clouds all day long, but first I didn't have any chance to take a picture and the few I took later on didn't turn out like I wanted them to. So I'm showing sunrays. It's an o.k. photo, but I feel like I have already so many of them from earlier this year..Pin It

Tiger Swallowtail

When hanging out at my in-laws today, I got a chance to sneak up on this butterfly. It's SOOC and was taken with the kit lens. The only thing to top this one would have to get it on a flower.Pin It

Happy Easter!

Look, what the Easter bunny brought!

The last couple days I wasn't very happy with my picture taking. I was probably still exhausted from the zoo pictures. I am happy with how today's picture turned out. I love all those dandelions in our yard.Pin It

Milestone

Stephen hit another milestone yesterday: he used his potty for the first time and he even announced it beforehand. Yeah:) I know, not the greatest picture, but I didn't get anything better. My plan was actually to show a picture of our new windows that we got today. But now it's dark and I didn't like any of the reflections in them.

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Easter preparations

I can't believe how fast this week went by. I am trying to get everything ready for Easter. The cookies got finished a couple days ago and I colored some eggs today. My eyes are soo tired from sitting in front of the computer for hours. I didn't feel like experimenting a whole lot with this set-up.

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Zoo

We spent a great day at the zoo yesterday. I went a little overboard with the quantity of my pictures. I really need to learn to just take a couple from each animal instead of dozens. I mean how many photos of the giraffe's mouth hair does one really need? Shifting through 100s of them is not so much fun now. The picture of the day is definitely this one here - SOOC:

Emu egg hatching

The zoo's stars are the giraffes. There's a ramp for the visitors so you can be eye to eye with them when feeding them. Definitely a cool experience, even though Stephen wasn't very fond of it.

In general, Stephen did very well all day. He missed out on his nap and only had an occasional frown - no meltdowns:)

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Wednesday Me

All your monday-me posts inspired me to get in front of the camera myself. Looking at the picture, I realize that I didn't have to turn my head that much. I didn't have my tripod with me and put the camera on top of the bench next to us. I didn't think I would be completely on there. It actually worked out pretty well.Pin It

Future soccer player?

When going to the park yesterday, Stephen just took off and ran to the soccer goal. He loved playing with the net.
Most times I'm using picasa for editing. When looking at a picture there it tells me right underneath how large it is. Does anyone know why each picture has a different size? They range from like 5 MB to 8 MB and anything in between - that's without any editing. Shoulddn't they all be the same size?Pin It

Along the canal

My old friend, the heron.

Can you see all four turtles?

Red-winged blackbird

What an exciting morning! We went for a long walk along the canal and saw all kinds of interesting stuff. I definitely don't like my zoom lens. It doesn't go far enough for something that's actually distant enough away from me to use one. All those pictures here are cropped. Basically, that's how far I would like to be able to zoom in. And then there are moments in between when I'd need a lens for close-ups. Stephen 'caught' a butterfly - and that photo turned out soo blurry it's useless..Pin It

Bumblebee

What a gorgeous day! I spent lots of time outside and tried my luck with getting any insects in front of the camera. This bumblebee was the most patient one. The tiny blooms of the holly are attracting tons of insects at the moment.Pin It

Baking

I think my old camera definitely needs to retire and be used for emergency only. I didn't want to get the new one dirty with my messy baking, so the old one came out. It was way too dark to get decent photos without a flash. They are all very noisy. Oh well.. I still could capture the fun Stephen had with the cookie cutters. He kept saying "hop hop" when using the bunny shaped one.Pin It

Tulips

O.k., I promise to take some other pictures than flowers in the future as well. It's just so easy to do right now:)Pin It

Spring Feeling

Almost done. One more day and I'll be on spring break!!:) It feels like forever that I had a day off and I'm ready to enjoy some time outside. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and it won't rain almost every day like it did in the last couple weeks. It was gorgeous today with the temps in the high 60s. Just like I like it:)
Thank you for the tons of comments I got the last couple days. I will return your visits in the next few days.Pin It

Dogwood

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Bleeding Heart

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Simple

I happened to get this photo by accident today - after I noticed that my settings were not correct, I adjusted them. The consequent photos didn't turn out that nicely though. I like how the over-exposure adds to this picture.Pin It

Belmont

One of our local tourist attractions had an open house today. I few weeks ago I joined a photography group and we had a meet-up there. It was rather informal, as everyone walked through the area on their own pace. It's really interesting seeing now some photos from other people who were there at exactly the same time. What a great learning opportunity!Pin It

Azalea

1/320s, f/5.6, ISO 800

I realize that I'm showing lots of flowers.. but it's spring and that's the time I actually have a lot of different ones to show.. once summer hits, I don't have too many blooming plants in my garden anymore..

When taking the pictures today I was a little bit confused.. I used my new camera for the first time in a couple days again (it was actually weird using the old one.. I am so used to the new one now). The meter showed that it's way overexposed, however it turned out extremely dark on the LCD screen. This is actually a little bit brightened up. It took me a while to figure it out.. I must have accidently changed the exposure comp. and it was down to -4.33.. when comparing all the exif info from previous photos, I noticed that I usually have it to -0.33. No idea how that happened...Pin It

Rain

We've been having some typical April weather around here. One day it feels like summer with 90 degrees, the next one back to cold and rainy... this up and down drives me crazy..
So I'm posting two photos from today - the annoying and the nice side of the rain. I hate that traffic becomes a nightmare with the first drizzle. But it makes the flowers so beautiful:)Pin It

Blocks

I'm backdating this post - I actually took my camera (the old one) to work and tried to find something to take a picture of. Not very exciting, but this blocks must do. And then I left the bag with camera there, not thinking that the camera is actually in there...

I had some time and played around with it a little bit and here are a few abstract versions from it. I don't remember exactly what I did though, just kept pressing buttons ;)Pin It

Cheat Day

It seems I'm having lots of cheat days lately. But I rather show a picture every day, even though it wasn't always taken that day than getting stressed out about it. So I'm making my own rules and try not to post something older than a week...
Today is another long day and I won't be home before 9 - I better take my camera with me and hope to see something interesting on the way to work..Pin It

Strawberry milk?

1/60s, f/5.6, ISO 400

We went out today to eat and I actually stopped at home to pick up the camera - only to find out later that I forgot the memory card in the computer and the camera doesn't have an internal memory. What a bummer! With my old bridge camera I could take about 15 photos without a card... oh well..
So I played around with dropping strawberries in milk - and got strawberry milk - even if it's only on the screen... I used piknik to get my strawberry colored milk..
It's not perfect, but not bad for a first attempt..Pin It

Two on Monday

I'm not too happy with today's pictures. I still had the zoom lens on and didn't feel like changing it. I find it very difficult to get very crisp photos with it - probably because I'm standing too close to what I tried to take pictures of. This is the only very sharp one, but it's just not that interesting composition wise - nor does it tell a story.

1/800s, f/4.8, ISO 200

But I like this one from yesterday - I find it beautiful with its complimenting colors. So, note to myself: take zoom lens when taking pictures of trees, LOL - and not quick moving objects that run towards you.

1/200s,f/7.1, ISO 100

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Virginia Bluebells

1/125s, f/7.1, ISO 100
Finally a nice spring like day again! I used this and enjoyed this morning at Chatham and the playground. I had some difficulties with metering today - when I actually paid attention to it. The difference sun/shade was too abrupt and both of them are in most pictures.. I guess I need ot know before hand what my main subject should be and meter off that...Pin It

Goose

Portfolio turned in, and my inspiration is back:)
I still need to post for yesterday - it might be a cheat day, because the few pictures I took turned out horribly.
I went to a pond today and had some stale bread with us. The ducks and geese really enjoyed it. Great photo opportunities:)
I'll try to visit you all latest by tomorrow..Pin It

Cheat Day

Did you know that geese have those claw looking things?Pin It