Some of my Favourite New Photos

I love tulips!  I'm from Ottawa, it's what we do.  So last weekend I was in Ottawa for my dad's concert and it was also the Tulip Festival and these are some of my favourite photos from the weekend.  Oh and my dad has a website where you can listen to his album at www.markevenchick.com if you want to check it out.

I played around with the shutter speed and lighting for the pink tulips and it was a really bright day also.

 I know that there are things in the way for this picture but I love how the light is coming off the tulips.

 I had set this one to a higher shutter speed and because it was so bright it cast a really cool shadow.

Most of  other flower shots I took with the little flower symbol on the camera.

These were take the night of the concert (obviously since there are instruments and stuff).  My dad's friend is a photographer and set all the settings for me

I like to call the first one "Ode to the Spirit of a Musician" because yo can see the shadows of someones legs.

 That's my dad's guitar.  Just thought I would take a pic of it

 My dad just got Facebook (his friend set it up for him and he has no clue how to use it) and he added this pic because he liked it.

I think two blog posts is enough for me for now!

Shutter Speed and Aperture

I have been having a lot of fun, and a little stress, about my new camera and have taken TONS of photos...so many that I have to combine two blogs into one.

So I started off learning about shutter speed.  Shutter speed is basically how long the shutter stays open while you take the picture.  The slower the shutter speed the more light that gets in ( I think) and is usually written in a fraction 1/1000 or whatever you have it set to.

This is usually what happens if you have a slow shutter speed (1/2) and it's sunny

You can barely see the picture because it lets in too much light

If you have a super fast shutter (1/4000) speed on a cloudy day you get this.

So it's important to learn to set the settings to the light.

I also learned a really cool trick with shutter speed too

So yeah you're probably wondering why I have a picture of my faucet.  I took this photo at probably a 1/100 shutter speed and it looks like well, a faucet, but check this out

Pretty cool, eh?  I set my shutter speed to 1/2000 and turned on the flash (which was the only way to make this work and TADA you can see the actual bubbles in the faucet!  I don't when I'll ever need or want a photo of a faucet but it;s still pretty cool.

The other cool thing I learned on my weekend trip to Ottawa was aperture.  Basically I think aperture is how wide the lens opens when you take a photo.  You can usually find it on your DSLR because it starts with an F, for example f/2, f/4.  I know that F stands for f-stop but I don't really know why.  In every day words if you have a smaller f-stop only one thing in particular will be in focus, if you have a larger f-stop everything you want to see will be in focus.  It's kind of cool because you can isolate something in particular and make it prominent.

Anyways in this case you need to pay attention to how the background branches are going in and out of focus.  I can't for the life of me remember the f-stop numbers though.

I also did a great example of how the apertures change effects pictures with these tulips.  Again you have to look at the background to really understand how the depth of field changes.

I also did a great example of how the apertures change effects pictures with these tulips

NEW TOY!!!

Okay so I have some really exciting news, I got a NEW camera.  A Cannon Rebel DSLR to be exact.  I got it last weekend from the Henry's outlet out in Mississauga last weekend, which by the way is a great store to get stuff.  They have an open box warranty which means if you buy an open box camera you get a free 3 year warranty on the camera and the case was half off as well.


So this is a picture of the old camera...which by the way is still an awesome camera

And this a picture of the new camera.

With lots of dials and knobs

And LOTS of buttons to play with

I'm actually a little scared of it to tell you the truth.  When I bought it I took it out of the box when I got home, looked at it, and then went out for a run.  I think my husband must think that I'm nuts because he just wants to start playing around with it right away, but I would rather take my time and learn about each feature for a but.

Next week...Shutter speed!

Cherry Blossoms!

So I know I haven't updated this in a long time but I got kept getting caught up with things and was out of town for a while.  However I did finally manage to take some pictures last week.  Every year my father-in-law wants to see the cherry blossoms in High Park and every year he misses them.  So this year I decided that since I live very close to there I would take him.  At first I thought that I forgot my camera but I went through my son's diaper bag and it turns out that my husband had put it in there weeks ago.  Waahoooo!!!!!!.

Basically my goal behind this was not only to take some pics of cherry blossoms but to also try to liven them up by experimenting with different angles.  I find that my pics always look a little flat and I was hoping if I experimented with the where focal point of the pic was I could take some better pics.

Anyways here they are (sorry for the crappy writing but I have a really bad cold and am half asleep):

 For the picture above I became really interested in watching other people interact with the trees and this woman seemed so amazed by them and if you look you will notice that she doesn't have a camera or anything with her but she seems find the tree almost magical.  Then I felt guilty for taking her picture.

 Of the two above I really prefer the second one just because of the way that the flowers snake around the tree.

 My husbands favourite pic.  I was actually inspired by someone else who took a picture of her chandelier at this angle and it turned out pretty cool.  However, they don't look so interesting in black and white.

 That I really like about this pic is the effect that the wind has on the cherry blossoms.  You can tell it was a windy day out.

 My photo buddy!  He's a really smiley kid just but usually not for the camera so this was kind of sweet.

 Again, a picture on someone taking a picture...I have the same thing in colour too.

 This first of these two pics was on a normal setting, but the second one was on the foliage setting so you can see how the aperature changes (the corners are a tad blurry to make this effect).

This final pic was taken on my vibrant setting.  The picture itself is not so great but I was getting really dull photos before I used this effect.



Now for my worst photo:

I tried the colour swap technique, it didn't work so well (as you can see).  I also think having one part of the tree and sticking it  right in the middle of the photo didn't help either.

If you have a chance check out the cherry blossoms this week (if you're in Toronto).  Go soon though, they only last a few weeks.

Pictures of Boredom

So I was a small concert recently and the band was late getting on stage.  After checking my facebook for the eleventh time, I desperately needed something to entertain me.  That was when I remembered that I had my camera with me and still hadn't really played around with the settings at all. My favourite setting by far is colour accent (psst...those are the pics with just one colour in them)  Anyways here are some of the pictures that actually turned out (it was dark in there).

Okay, some of these are obviously not from the concert, but the lanterns are and the stage is as well.  The sad truth is that I took about 15 pics and these were the only ones that came out.  That goodness for digital cameras or I would have been really disappointed if I had gotten the prints and film back from this.  I have to admit I don't miss film at all and I'm a pretty nostalgic person when it comes to digital things taking over.  How about you?  Do you miss film at all?