Archive for the ‘Outdoors’ Category

Snow Dayz In Texas

On Thursday (Feb 11th) it started snowing in North Texas. It’s rare, so I made sure to enjoy it with the boys. For the first time we were actually able to build a real snowman and have snowball fights with the neighbors. I was able to get some nice photos over the last couple of days.

The biggest thing I had to remember was to decrease the aperture because my first set of pictures came out all white. I thought my camera was on the fritz, but realized I had it set to 2.8 for some indoor shots I was taking earlier. I lowered it to 8 and everything was all good. I also threw in some black and white shots.

Late Practice Christmas Photos

Since most people still have their Christmas decorations up, I guess I’m not too late with the pictures. I thought I’d share a couple of pictures I took over my Christmas vacation. I just recently got a used Tamron 17-50mm 2.8 lens at a really good price and wanted to test it out in some low light situations. I would have like to have gotten the Nikon equivalent, but I really couldn’t justify the cost. All in all, I’d have to say it’s a good lens. I’ve been wanting a decent zoom lens for a while and this one definitely lives up to its reviews.

All of these pictures were hand held because I knew the camera would do well with a tripod. The first set of pictures are in Downtown Dallas. I hadn’t been there in a while and didn’t know they completed the park, so I decided to stop and get a couple of shots. They had so many other nighttime shots I wanted to get, but finding a place to park for a few minutes was tough.

The second set of photos were taken in San Antonio. I’ve finally started taking the white balance off Auto and think I may start doing it more often. The camera does a good job of choosing the best setting, but sometimes manual is the way to go.

The third set of photos were taken New Year’s Eve. My wife and I got a chance to go out without the kids for dinner and a movie. After having dinner in Plano, we took a little stroll around the Shops at Legacy. I had my camera and decided to get some shots of the area. It was cold, but nice that night.

For those photo enthusiasts, if you click the view on flickr link, you’ll be able to see the camera settings I used.

Christmas Card Fun

A couple of weeks ago, I took the boys outside to take some pictures for our annual Christmas card. It was definitely very trying for me because they were all over the place. I’d read in a Flickr forum that following toddlers around and catching them in a pose was a good way to get a picture of them. I decided to try that along with some posed shots to see what I could get.

I don’t know how photographers did it back in the days of film because I took around 130 pictures. Most were unusable, but there were some that I was able to keep. I thought I’d share some of those along with the final poses I used for the card. The last picture is the card that I created at ritzpix.com. I probably should review their service, but I’ll save that for another post.

Nikon D80 Challenge #92 – Orange

This photo was taken for the Nikon D80 Challenge #92. The assignment for this challenge was as follows:

“The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space.

This challenge couldn’t be more simple…find an item or object that is orange in colour and create something interesting enough to impress your fellow photographers.

Any new photo where the colour Orange is featured in the composition is welcome. The manner in which you create your photo and the post processing is entirely up to the individual.”

It usually takes me a week to come up with an idea for these challenges. Sometimes I just come up blank and it’s those times when I’m not thinking about it that I see something I like. On the day I took the picture, it was a nice sunny day with very little cloud cover. While the sign was warning drivers of the work ahead, I looked at it from another angle.

Romans 7:14-25 in the Bible that reads “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”.

This verse talks about the constant struggle we have when it comes to sin. I like this verse because it acknowledges the constant evil and tempations that are all around us. But it also reminds us that there is victory in Christ and that we do have the power to through Him to win the battle. One of the goals in life of a Christian is to live a life pleasing to God. It’s not easy, but it is possible. People may think you’re weird and call you names, but that’s all a part of being “set apart”.

Now, I’m sure the million dollar question is how did I get this from a picture? I don’t know, but that was my intention when taking the photo. I even created a motivational poster out of it. Enjoy.

Playgrounds & Punkins

The weather this weekend was amazing, so I decided to take the kids on an afternoon outing to the park. Earlier that week, their daycare gave them some pumpkins and we weren’t able to go to the pumpkin patch this year, so I figured why not bring them along. My boys are my practice models and I hoped to get some shots in while they were playing.

Here’s what I learned:

• Don’t go to a crowded park if you want them to focus on you. The playground was packed and my youngest was all over the place.
• Make sure you have plenty of daylight and a fast shutter to prevent blur. I couldn’t set my shutter speed too high as the sun went down, which caused some of the pics to come out dark.
• Make sure the camera focuses accurately on the subject. Moving targets can be hard to get in focus.
• Take plenty of pictures. With digital you can always delete the ones you don’t like.

BTW: For those wondering, I know pumpkins is spelled wrong in the title. That’s how the boys say it.

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