A year in pictures...

I've not always been the best blogger this year but I vow to improve - heck, I'll have a brand new subject to take photos of come March!

As a response to a posted challenge on the photography board I frequent, I've assembled my year in review photo set.  It was a bit tricky because there were a few months in there where we had only one folder of photos!

Here goes nothing:

January - Hiking in Shenandoah National Park

February - Baby Shower #1 for my cousin-in-law, Jessica

March -My pasty white feet on their first foray in flip flops after a long winter.  Shot while in Miami, FL.

April - Washington D.C. Cherry Blossom festival

May - My first foray into TTV.  This was the lavender outside in my garden.

June - Trip to Germany and Switzerland.  Two weeks in the most amazing settings!

July - Surprise! We're expecting!

August - Macie, our Vizsla, was having a good time this day.

September - Last backpack trip for a while (18 weeks pg) to Yosemite National Park.  Fletcher Lake in the picture.

October - Jesse and Jessica's wedding (cousin and cousin in law).  Great pic of the family (yes, we're that strange)

November - Nephew B hamming it up for the camera

December - 30 weeks pregnant, home made maternity shots done in our foyer.

Sno-puppy...

Mother nature was very generous the past few days and bestowed a large amt of snow upon us in a very short period of time. She was courteous enough to do it over a weekend even! However, it happened to be the weekend before Christmas when we needed to shop the most. Oh well - at least we got some good shots of Macie playing in the snow!

Approximately 30 hours and 24 inches later, we woke to a winter wonderland where snow was a high as Macies shoulders.  Lucky for us, she loves the white fluffy stuff!

The shots below were out of our Point and shoot camera surprisingly (as I wouldn't let hubs take the big expensive camera across the creek and out to the soccer field in 2 feet of snow...)

The only post processing on this was to lighten her up a bit - in contrast to the white snow she was kind of dark.

Macie...

So, I've not done a post about our little Macie in some time so I figure one is due! She's fully grown now we think and as funny as ever! She'd rather spend the day outside than inside even if it is to just lay in the grass and gather ticks (ick!).

She's turned out to be one amazing dog and we can't image our life without here.

Meet Tucker...

I'm proud to introduce Tom Tucker Ginger Ale (aka Tuck or Tucker)! Tuck is my parents new miniature schnauzer puppy who came home to live with them a few weeks ago.

Tuck is (was) 8 weeks old and just the cutest and cuddliest little critter. He was overwhelmed with Macie at first but begin to assert his dominance by the time we were leaving that weekend.

Mom said he'd doing well and exactly what she was looking for in RC's absence. Her favorite time of day is after she brings him back in after his morning break and he dives into bed with my dad and nuzzles into his neck (often times wet and covered in snow!)

The tradition in my family is to name dogs after soda pop. We've had Pepsi, Faygo, Shasta, Ginger and RC. Mark and I broke that tradition with Macie but my parents carried on.

Tom Tucker Ginger Ale is a staple of my childhood. Any time we were sick my mom would stir a glass of that stuff until it was flat and feed it to us to calm our stomachs. That was perhaps my most favorite part of being sick.

She's growing up so fast...

This past October our pup turned one year old! Then just this past Christmas we celebrated our one year anniversary of bringing her home. It's hard to believe a whole year has passed and she's only been with us that long. She's such an integral part of the family now it's strange to think of our life without her.

These pics are from a quick walk around our house. There's a path about a quarter of a mile away that's deep (deep for us anyway) into the woods where we can let her roam for a bit untethered.

Then Mark found a great log for her to jump. We spent about a hour throwing sticks back and forth over the log while the other took pictures of her having fun.

Mother of all spiders...

So we were visiting relatives in Deleware and Aunt Lee said she wanted to introduce me to someone. She walked me outside and pointed to the large web among her ice plants. She said, "Meet Clementine!" and pointed to a very large spider who was the owner of said web and had taken up residence in her plant.

Where most people would have figured out a way to do away with the spider, Aunt Lee has made friends with it and given it a name. She said it had been there for a few weeks and wasn't hurting anything so why make it move. I love Aunt Lee!

We've been slacking...

I have no excuse:) I've been slacking with both photography and posting. We've taken a few pics here and there but nothing that's really pushed me to post. I did finally start going thru what we've done in the last few months and found some cool stuff. I'll have a few more posts after this one with some of our new stuff!

This guy was hanging out on our pepper plant on the back patio. He was nice enough to hold still until I could find the camera and swap the lens for our prime with two extenders.

It was kind of creepy because he'd turn and look at me every so often. The whole series is pretty cool because you can see his movements (or her movements - i can't tell).

Finally, after about 15 min of being in his face he'd had enough and moved to a place on the plant that I couldn't get to. Darn! I got a few great shots anyways and thought I'd stop annoying him and go about my day.

And there were ponies....

This past weekend Mark and I (Macie too) took a trip down to the southern parts of Virginia to Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area. Mt. Rogers is the tallest peak in Virginia at some 5,729 ft above sea level (none of that 10k stuff now that we're not in Cali!).

I didn't think places like this existed on the East Coast! I could have sworn I was hiking some ridge in the Bay area in Northern California. After about a 5 mile hike up, the tree cover opens to reveal an amazing high meadow.

Complete with wild ponies!!

Had to do it...

I know you're probaby tired of my dog but she's so darn cute! She's a definite comfort seeker. In a room that has basically a computer desk, book shelf, and basket of blankets, she found the softest most comfortable place:)

Pieces of Macie....

So you'll find that I take a lot of pictures of our Vizsla Macie. There are many reasons for this. She's patient (usually), she's pretty (always - but i'm biased), she's good for a laugh (or a frustrated yell), and well, she's here sitting next to me all the time and so is my camera. Like any loving puppy mommy who likes to take pictures you want to capture every emotion and funny pose she does. Well, okay, maybe I'm a little crazy but you have to agree - she's pretty:)

Yesterday she was sunning herself in our bedroom on the floor and I just had to snap a few. I call this set - Pieces of Macie:)


Whaddaya think?

Introducing the Animals!

So I know this is an adventures in photography blog but I thought I'd introduce you to a few of my friends. All the pics were taken by Mark or myself so it's still an adventure in our photography.

These are the various animals in our lives. To the left is our pup Macie - a now 5 month old Vizsla whom I've written about before. That pic was taken when she first came home with us. I'm amazed every day how more and more she starts to look like an adult. I swear, I blink and she grows!!!

The next pup - to the right - is the boxer Buckley. Buckley belongs to my brother and his girlfriend Caty. Buckley is a ball of energy and at 7 months has recently taken up eating shoes as a hobby - much to Caty and J's horror!

Macie and Buckley torment their older and much wiser but also cranker granddaddog - RC! RC belongs to my parents and is my childhood buddy. He's 14 now and still has quite a spark in him despite the terrier tumors that are so common to his breed late in life. You can see the second head growing on his shoulder in the pic.

The kitty below belongs to my in-laws. This is Bandit and she hates everyone but my mother in law. I'm lucky that I got this close without getting bit or swatted at. She has no claws which with her - is a blessing. Yes, I know that declawing is a rather inhumane thing to some folks but seriously, you've never met Bandito and if you did you'd understand why it's such a great thing!

The last picture in this group is our neighbors dog Cody. We had the pleasure of dog sitting Cody last summer (before we had Macie). Cody's a rescue from the local shelter and we think is a mix of lab and cockerspaniel. He's an awesome dog with lots of energy and was intrumental in getting Mark and I used to the 6:30am walks that active dogs need. He and Macie are best buds and play hard anytime we let them outside together.

Aperture Study

There are three basic parts to taking a picture on a manual camera - aperture, shutter, and ISO. I'm going to focus on aperture for this post.

One of the most basic things that a photographer needs to understand is how to control light entering the lens. It affects so many different aspects of the photo and can ultimately make or break the picture. The feature of the camera that is used to control this is the aperture.

The aperture is a variable disk in the lens that opens or closes to allow light to enter the body of the camera. The larger the opening the more light etc. However, that opening also affects the focal length of the shot too. The larger the opening the less in focus you have. You can see in the lamp shot that the lamp is in focus but the paintings on the wall behind it are not. I had to open the aperture the whole way to let in enough light in without compromising my shutter speed.

The picture to the right of the cathedral is another low light situation where I didn't want to augment with flash (because flashes in church are generally frowned upon - especially when folks are praying up at the front). To accomplish this and still get the focus to be what I wanted I had to close up the aperture (to get more focal range) but decrease the shutter speed to still let in enough light. But with the decreased shutter speed (almost 1.5 seconds) I couldn't hand hold this image. Instead I plopped the camera on the guest book pedestal:)


With the pic on the left of me and the dog you can really see the effect of the focal length difference generated by the aperture. This is shot at f4.0 which means the aperture is almost wide open on this lens. This image however was augmented by our speedlight flash because even with the apeture wide open we still didn't have enough light to hand hold the camera (and who's going to set up a tripod in the living room for a casual picutre like that right?)

Like how the dog's head just hangs? That's her favorite position on the couch for some reason. Come to think of it, we find her with her head cocked back like that lot...hmmm....

Lazy blogger

Okay, so I vow time and time again to blog more and post more exciting information and time and time again I fail. I'm just too lazy or perhaps it's that I just dont have much to say so...I'm going to try something different. I'm going to pick a picture or two from the over 2000 images that Mark and I have taken over the last few years and use that as my muse, if you want to call it that.

This post is an ode to my new puppy - Macie! Macie is a 4 month old Vizsla that loves to snuggle just as much as she likes to cause trouble and run around!

This is the pup lounging on the couch. If you're sitting there, she's much more comfortable on your lap than on her own but hey, she'll take what she can get!

This is Macie out on a run in the snow. We took her out to our local park to let her do some off leash romping. I think she was ready to take flight here!! She's not entirely in focus but it's the best we could do with no tripod and low lighting.

Since this blog is supposed to be about our adventures in photography I'll add a tidbit about photoshop and how it helped me on the second phone (the flying doggy) to pull back some of the shadows on a very dark photo. Because we had low lighting the original photo came out really dark (I'll have to add the before later once I find it). Using the "shadows and highlights" tool in the new Photoshop CS I was able to bring out the underlying colors. You have to be really careful not to over do it or the image starts to look a little stereoscopic!