The Learning Continues

I took some maternity pictures for a good friend of mine - I decided to try for aperture priority. I think they turned out fine. I learned a lot, and hopefully can improve in the future. Its hard to think fast about lighting and all the different camera settings, while people are waiting on you and children are getting tired of taking pictures and ready for their target ICEE as promised. But its so fun, and these kids (and mom) handled me well!

 Composition and people interaction are definitely my favorite parts of taking pictures. No to do more learning....

My friend wanted everything in black and white, and has requested that pictures of her not go viral, but has approved me to show you these. ( I would love suggestions for further improvement... i know that their is lots to be had)

Aperture Priority

Well hello there. Now that Charlie is older and I am finally getting around to feeling like myself- I have started taking more pictures again.

I decided to be brave enough to TRY to shoot in aperture priority for the first time and I learned a lot of things.... like...


1.) getting ISO, Shutter speed and Aperture to balance perfectly is hard. Especially while chasing a 1 year old around. It made for some interesting color pallets though.

 i.e; Charlie's hair is not actually this red. And I am pretty sure his cast isn't that dirty looking.

 2.) Too Much Light is great for a colorful background, but not for white skinned toddlers. (maybe his cast is that dirty....)

3.) If you wiggle around too fast near the Halloween decorations, you turn into a ghost. (Who would of  thought?) 

4.) Grasshoppers hold much more still than a child. Unless that child is chasing it.... in this case the child beat him in speed anyway. (infact tanner has claimed himself the bug king. There are tons of grasshoppers and two praying mantis in there... we will see how many hoppers the mantis' eat) 

 5.) Check your settings. In this case of the lunar eclipse I didn't check the ISO, which was unfortunately turned up  to 1600. ( I realized this after I loaded them to the computer and saw the graininess. I had even been warned of this by mike...)  But it was still fun to catch the lunar eclipse.

6.) I am going to have to work and play a lot more to get an image as crisp and clean as I would like.

but...

7.) Its nice to be back in the saddle again.

Mt. Nebo

Mt. Nebo is the highest mountain on the Wasatch Front.

This view is from near the beginning of the trail. As we pulled around and saw the mountain from this angle, draped in white, we all pretty much realized making the summit would be a long shot.

Lot's of cows up there.... on the way down we ran into some old-school cowboys on horseback driving some in.

I now know that what looks like a dusting on the mountain top from down below can actually be a couple feet of deep, icy blown snow on top. We made it to the first (and lowest) of the mountain's several peaks, and it was quite a trudge to get there. We had plenty of warm gear as far as jackets gloves and hats, but we only had low-cut hiking shoes and no winter alpine gear (crampons, axes etc) and even then it would have been pretty sketchy, so we called it good right there.

Really cool how it was still pretty much summer in the low valley, full-color autumn in the high country, and full-on winter on the mountain-top.

It was arctic-cold and windy up there (I think the lowest temp we saw was 26 degrees F, but we didn't even check at the peak). We found a spot just a few feet below the peak where the rocks blocked the wind and had some self brewed coconut curry hot cocoa-- which turned out pretty good and really hit the spot up there.

I think we made the right choice in not trying for the true summit...