Sunroom Curtain

Both sets of batteries were almost completely dead tonight, so I only had time to take three quick shots before the camera shut down. Oh well.

Flamingo

Path

Pumpkin Plant

I've fallen into the habit lately of thinking too much about what I'm going to take pictures of before I pick up my camera. Today I just grabbed the camera and went into the backyard. Once I got going I ended up taking lots of pictures. This is a good lesson--don't think too much. Just start shooting.

Wildwood Park

Hibiscus

Tea and Sympathy

Since I've been feeling uninspired lately, I've given myself permission to not try and be artsy with my pictures, but just take pictures. Of whatever. So here is a picture of a cup of tea that I had this evening because I'm sick and tea sounded good.

Iris Leaves

I like the way the sunlight outlines the leaves with a bright line

Sunset

I took this picture out of an upstairs window in my house. I have not felt like taking pictures for a few days. I haven't been spending any time on photographing lately. The colors of tonight's sunset were very spectacular, so I got a couple shots of it, but it's getting difficult to be inspired every day.

Sunroom at Night

This was another day that I forgot about taking pictures, so I just took this one out the back window. 2 second shutter speed, hand-held--kind of an interesting effect.

Windows

Saturday, July 21, 2007







Because of an unexpected overnight stay at the elder Erdmanns' house last night I didn't get to post yesterday. But I did take this picture yesterday--in fact, it was the only picture I took, because I was busy reading a particular book, which I just finished, but I will say no more because I know some of you may not have gotten there yet...

Self-Portrait with Harry

This is where I'll be for the next several hours. A couple of months ago, while others were reserving their copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at B&N or Borders, I reserved my copy at the library. I was number 753 in the queue. I got a call this afternoon saying that I could pick up my reserved copy of the most anticipated book of all time at the Coventry branch of the Cleveland Heights Library at 12:01 tonight. We went to the library with some friends who had reserved their copy at Borders. I got in line at midnight, and about 2 minutes later I had the book. We then went to Borders where my friends had to get an armband to find out they were number 386 in line to buy the book. This was at about 12:25, and they were on number 150.

Well, I've got to go wrestle the book away from Mark so I can pull my first all-nighter since college.

Mark and Sophie/Hazel/Edge

This was a last-minute, it's-11:30-and-I- haven't-taken-a-picture-yet picture. We still haven't settled on names...maybe we'll just go with This One and The Other One.

Blue

Raindrops

It was raining this afternoon and I thought, hmm, that means I'm going to have to find something inside to take a picture of. But as pulled into my driveway and parked I noticed these raindrops beading up on the windshield. I love this picture! Such a nice little surprise.

The dark rings around the drops are the reflection of the surrounding area--our yard and driveway. This picture is taken in the exact same spot as the snowflakes picture I took in April. This one has a much different feel, though.

Conference at the Mound

A friend unexpectedly invited me to an Indians game today. It was a lot of fun! It would have been more fun if they'd won, but they did bring it up from 11-2 in the sixth inning to 11-10 by the ninth.

Museum Visit

Mark and I celebrated our third anniversary by taking a picnic lunch to the Cleveland Museum of Art and looking at the Icons of American Photography exhibit going on there. That was very inspirational.

Picking one picture to post was tough today. At some point maybe I'll get some of the others I liked up on flickr. This one is different from any of the other pictures I've taken. Let me know what you think.

Saturday Night Movie

Clouds

I'm breaking a rule by posting two pictures, but I'm trying to figure something out. Most of my pictures are taken on my camera's "auto" mode, which means I don't decide anything but what to point the camera at and when to press the button. But when I've experimented with setting the aperture or shutter speed myself, I've noticed that not only does it change whether the picture looks washed out or too dark, but also influences what the colors look like. But I haven't figured out yet how to get colors that are exactly like what I see when I'm looking at the real thing.


These two pictures are of some clouds right after sunset. I wanted to see what would happen if I adjusted the shutter speed. The picture on top was taken with a shutter speed of 1/3 second (the camera automatically set the aperture to f/4). The one on the bottom was taken just after the first one, I set the shutter speed to 1.3 seconds and the camera set the aperture to f/4.5. The colors on neither of the pictures look like what I actually saw when I was looking at the sky.

It seems like this is very basic level photo knowledge, but I'm not quite getting it. Can someone explain what's going on? Why does the first picture look almost black and white? Why did longer exposure make the colors become way more vibrant and more blue than what I saw in real life? What would I have needed to do to get the pictures as true to life as possible? Unfortunately I didn't take a picture just on auto mode, but with other pictures in auto it seems that colors are kind of washed out a bit.

Which Came First

I stole the idea for this photo right out of a Freeman Patterson book. He gives his photography students an assignment to shoot an egg. He describes some of the creative ideas they come up with. One is to place the egg on a white sheet of paper to do a "white on white" picture.

It was about 10:00 tonight when I remembered I hadn't taken any pictures, so I had to find something in the house, and I remembered this assignment. I ended up being very frustrated, however, because my camera wouldn't do what I wanted it to. The autofocus couldn't focus on the egg, no matter how hard I tried. I got out the manual to read again how to work the manual focus (something I have never had the patience to try before), and it was completely unsuccessful. Aarrgghh, it was very frustrating. I tried reading over the directions again and again, but they didn't make sense. Then I decided to just try to do exactly what it said without trying to make sense of it, but I couldn't get it to work. I'm a fairly smart person, but I'm not sure if the problem is with me, the camera, or whoever wrote the completely unhelpful manual. This is when I start making Mark nervous by talking about wanting a real SLR! (I currently have a Konica Minolta Dimage 6, which, according to Wikipedia, is a semi-SLR.)

Bubble

Longbrake Swimmers

I'm in the Pittsburgh area visiting some friends from college. K and D swam competitively in high school and college, and are teaching their two year old son to swim also. I enjoyed a hot afternoon with them at the pool today.

Sprinkler

Yellow Lilies

Pink

Today I just wanted to go for color. I took this picture of some kind of geranium (I think) very up close and out of focus, and the only digital manipulation I did was to crop it.

Evil Kitty

This cute little thing is currently called Sophie and is one of two kittens that Mark and I "adopted" from southern Ohio over the fourth of July. I caught her at just the right moment to make her look quite devilish. The other kitten, whose name is currently Sasha, is almost all black, but has some brown sprinkled in. They are both very playful and seem to like people. They had already been named when we got them, but we are thinking we might change their names. Anyone have any suggestions?

Farm

Delaney

Preparing for Launch II

A young Space Shuttle Pilot prepares for take-off.

Eyes

This photograph looks like a painting, but it is truly a photograph. The lighting was bad to begin with, which caused some "noise" in the original picture. I hit the "Auto Correct" button in MS Photo Manager, which kind of highlighted the noise giving it an effect like Pointillism. Finally I cropped the photo to focus on the eyes. The eyes remind me of something out of a Vermeer painting.

Tree Farm

Maple Leaf

June 30, 2007








I realized I posted this one after midnight, so it shows up as July 1, but it is actually my picture from June 30