FOCUS on Photography

Okay kids, so tons to post about what's been going on in our world lately, but to be honest- there's just so much that it's overwhelming to even begin!

If you know me, you know that I have a "minor" obsession with photographs. My MacBook is non-functional at the moment because I have too many photos on there... last I counted, I had 7500 photos from Mid-2006 through January 2008! While that includes many of my friend's weddings, it doesn't even cover all of the photos from mine! I've been storing photos on my work computer to overcomensate for lack of hard drive space at home - and yes, I bought an axternal harddrive - and no, I do not trust it.

SO... I'm thinking if putting everything on an online site... Flikr? PhotoBucket? Smugmug? Any input?!

Anyway - last week was my birthday! Hooray! As Joe reminded me- 28 is only 2 years from 30... and it doesn't bother me one bit! Have you seen my life?! Does it get better than this?!

I've decided that my birthday celebration for my little family should be something special - and since I'm downtown everyday and only one block away from our nation's treasure trove of art and culture - we should actually have a "DC" experience for my day! Two years ago we had lunch with Tai Shan at the Zoo (He's now in China) and this year we went to the living butterfly exhibit at the Natural History Museum! You literally walk into a room that's full of hundreds of butterflies - how cool is that!?

Among the many cute photos we got...

I wanted to hightlight this one as it pertains to this week's Blogography Challenge: Focus!

I used Lolli's tips on focus and...

Voila!

On another front - I ran into the lovely Lolli at Earth Day a few weeks ago (it helps that she goes to church with my in laws and her kiddos enjoy hanging out at our little summer camp) and after chatting a bit, I've decided to do a photowalk with her! I'm all registered and can't wait until June 5th for the I Heart Faces Photowalk!

Oh; and I just ordered a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens to play with, too! Bottom Line: I'm totally excited to learn more about photography and make sure I'm able to capture the good stuff as Little Miss Dagny grows up! Next step: Camera Bag - what kind should I get!? What works best when trying to carry the right lenses and your camera in one hand and an 8 month old in the other!?

Finally, let's not forget Mr. Joe (I giggle when I say that because that's what all of the kids at Dagny's day care call him!)... as I explore taking the photos, my talented hubby is hard at work learning how to enhance them! He's quite addicted to Lynda.com and is getting really good at photo editing... he's also starting to kick my butt at taking the photos too, which is part of the reason I need to beef up my photography skills (I have to bring something to the table!)

Last week was also Nancy's 50th Birthday and we decided to make her a gift! Here's a link to the photos of the gift we made her:

CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS
(Yes, I'm too lazy to re-post here! ;) )

My job was to supervise Dagny's artistic endeavours while Joe took photos of our process and then he created the photo for the center of the frame:

Isn't it fab!? It looked PERFECT in the frame with the painting! If you didn't click the link above to see the rest of the album, I suggest you do so because you're seriously missing out if you don't!

Okay, I actually have to do some work today... Ciao!

Blogography

So there's this amazing woman/mother/photographer I know, let's just call her Lolli, who decided to take her amazing blog one step further than documenting her life (which, don't get me wrong - I LOVE reading about!) and introduced BLOGOGRAPHY!

If you've been to my little blog before, you know that I love taking photos! The best present I've received from my husband (other than my engagement ring and sweet daughter) was my Canon Digital Rebel that he got me for my 25th birthday... I remember taking a photo of the camera (well I didn't know it was the camera at the time!) with my Sony Cyber Shot, thinking that it's 3 inch touchscreen was the cat's meow! Boy, was I in for a treat! Over the past three years I've played with the camera and experimented with different settings and have gotten lucky with a few great photos of my hubby, family, friends, camp, puppies and (most recently) baby girl! This is where Lolli comes in... we happened to be at the same dinner a few months ago and got to talking about everything under the sun, including photography!

Lolli was the photographer who captured my growing baby bump...

...and I've been a secret (and not so secret) admirer since! As we were talking, she told me about a new "project" that she was working on- Blogography! As an "experimental" photographer (I wouldn't even consider myself amateur yet), I got very excited and couldn't wait for the first tutorial/challenge to come up! Well, the first challenge came and went during my first week back to work, so I missed that one, but I got my act together (even if it's a week-ish late!) for her continuation of her ISO challenge!

I was under the impression that the higher the ISO, the better... I was the person walking around with her DSLR set at 800 all the time because it produced the best results! Boy was I wrong!! I'm so happy that Lolli addressed this first as it came just in time for my trip to Florida. Here's two photos of Dagny on the ferry to Universal; the first is at 800 (where I had previously kept my ISO setting at ALL the time):

And the second at 200:

If you can't tell the difference, zoom on in and see how the one at 200 has so much less noise in the detail!

Anyway, I'm so excited to get this up there and to get cracking on her Shutter Speed challenge this week!!

Thanks, Lolli!