Shooting in Manual Mode

I'm taking the plunge! Today I operated my camera completely by myself - well, I cheated with some help from the light meter, but that's it. That's an exciting accomplishment for me (usually I shoot in aperture priority mode). It was a perfectly cloudy morning. And here are some of the shots that I got

Smiles: all directed at Big Brother, of course. Thank goodness he was close.

My new favorite

I mean the photo. But also, Rob surprised me with a new lens. It came on Monday and I started snapping away. Good thing that last week I deleted about 10 gig of photos off our computer. Need more room. This new lens is a portrait lens and it was pretty inexpensive. I'm really enjoy benefiting from all the research that Rob does on camera equipment (especially from this surprise buy). Isn't he great? :)

Some of the latest

Last week I snapped away at my family reunion. Here are some of my favorites:

Bubbles

My mom just got a bubble machine for the grandkids. Next week the whole family gets together for the week, so this should provide some great entertainment. Every new toy needs a trial run before a big audience, right? Last night we gave it a go. The 3 grandkids around old enough to appreciate it surely did just that. And I enjoyed snapping away. Here are my favorites.

This machine looks like a winner--it's Gazzillion Bubbles brand, and came from amazon.com.

New Photos

Tuesday I started a kind of insane two-day project that left me working until midnight last night. I really wanted to get this project done because of an online sale. More on that later. On Monday (a very cloudy day), I took some photos outside with my camera and new flash that Rob got me for Mother's Day--the flash is SO cool--I had no idea a flash could zoom--Rob's such an amazing researcher/shopper/gift giver for my little photography passion. Again, back to Monday, I was excited to download some of the photos from Monday, but told myself I couldn't until the project was done, or I'd be too tempted. With adrenalin pumping at midnight, I momentarily wasn't tired, so I downloaded the new photos. At one a.m. I forced myself to sleep, but had a really difficult time doing it because I was so excited for the little I had already done with them. For a while I've loved photography, last night I really think I newly recognized my passion. That may sound weird to most, but maybe some of you understand. Here are a couple of the seemingly millions I took. The first one he was walking towards me--hence the little more than 1/2 face.