I live to serve

My sister called me this morning to tell me I needed to post something on my blog.

I haven’t much felt like blogging lately, but since both she AND my mother asked today, I thought I’d comply.

First up are the pictures from this week’s photography lessons.  It’s about aperture and depth of field.    If you know more about photography than I do, please don’t laugh if I explain this stuff wrong.

I used my new 50mm f/1.7 lens, and mounted the camera on my tripod.  I also had to try to figure out how to shift my focal point so that it actually focused on the doll.

First is with a wide open aperture of f/1.7.    That meant a short depth of field, with only the doll in focus, and you can’t even tell what’s in the background.  Isn’t it cool how blurry it is?  That effect is called BOKEH.  Bizarre word.  Some people pronounce it bo-kay and some people say bo-kuh.

openaperture I live to serve

Of course, all of YOU know what that is in the background because you’ve only seen a million pictures of it already.

The next picture is with a closed aperature of f/22.  This is where the tripod was so important:  to compensate for the low light and the closed aperture, the camera used a much longer shutter speed.  Without the tripod the whole picture was blurry because I couldn’t hold the camera still enough.  In fact, I even used the timer so that after I pushed the button and let go, the camera waited about 2 seconds before it took the picture.

closedaperture I live to serve

Longer depth of field, more of the picture is in focus.  Much less interesting picture, too.

I was taking pictures last night and tried to get one of Mark.

dsc09527a 1 I live to serve

That’s great, dear.  Thanks.

Oh, my sister also told me that I needed to add back in the abillity to add posts to social networking sites, so, I did.  I know you’ve been missing the opportunity to Digg me, so, go forth and Digg.  Or Stumble.  Or Facebook.  Or whatever.

Or not.

Fast and slow

Our first photography lesson is about using different shutter speeds.   For our assignment, we were to post 2 different photos:  one taken with a slow shutter speed, to show movement and one taken with a fast shutter speed, to freeze the movement.

I’ve tried a couple of different times, but have had trouble because of low lighting.  And assistants that didn’t want to go out in the cold in brighter light. Couldn’t really blame them.

Yesterday, I managed to get one I really liked that used a slow shutter speed:

jump1 Fast and slow

I just *love* this one.  With a slow shutter speed, the blades stay open longer, and if something is in motion it’ll show up as a blur.  The contrast of the two boys, one blurry, one not, really makes this a fun shot, I think.  For our assignment, we’re supposed to post the SOOC shot, with no Photoshopping…but…the shot above has had some tweaking in PS.

dsc09413 copy Fast and slow

Here’s the picture I ended up using for my Fast shutter speed shot.  They were ready early this morning, so we bundled up and went outside to snap a few.  They were NOT particularly happy with me, but this one shows the concept pretty well.  The idea here is that with a fast shutter speed you can capture something in motion, freezing it, and having it nicely sharp.

dsc09373 copy Fast and slow

This is one of the pictures taken yesterday with a fast shutter speed.  The SOOC shot was pretty grainy, becasue of the lighting, but with a little touching up in PS, I think it’s a pretty fun picture.  Will was especially impressed, he liked that it looked like he was controlling the ball of yarn with the Force.

Even though the boys weren’t thrilled about having to have their pictures taken, they are actually getting into this whole thing.  I’m explaining things to them (which helps *me* understand it better), and involving them in ideas for how to accomplish the experiments, and I hope it’s turning out to be something fun for all of us.

edited to add:  my sister has her pictures posted, too:  Debra’s Fast and Slow Shutter Pics, and if you have a few seconds and want a smile, scroll back through some of her other rcent posts for some adorable shots of my niece and nephew…

pixel Fast and slow