Fall Photo Challenge

My daughter recently purchased her first DSLR.

She has quite a good eye for photography and is already using her camera on manual mode, which took me quite a while to learn.

The first day she had her camera, we drove around our town looking for a couple of good spots to attempt to capture sunset.

Since I have done a terrible job of keeping up with the Capture Your 365 photo challenge this year, I decided today would be a good day to start taking pictures every day for this month. I might not post them every day, but I will commit to pick up my DSLR and take pictures with it every day this month.

Since today is the first day of October, I found a couple of orange things around my home to photograph.

I really want to practice portrait photography. But in the meantime, I can practice with objects around my home.

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something in an ordinary place...I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them." - Elliott Erwitt

I love a good list!

Not sure if it is due to my somewhat Type A personality or being the first born, but I certainly love a good list.

And I love summer.

So imagine how excited I was when I found not one, not two, but three lists for this summer!

Today, I discovered a new website called Sacred Holidays.

Their tagline is "Less holiday chaos. A lot more Jesus."

I love the idea of less chaos and more Jesus.

But what really caught my eye was the three lists they are sharing for this summer.

A 90 day plan to read the Bible, a women's summer bucket list, and a summer photography challenge. All three lists are free on their website, you just need to share your email address with them.

It has been quite a few years since I have read through the whole Bible. This is going to take some dedication on my part. But even if I get up a half an hour earlier each day (and cut out a little social media time), I believe I can make this work. Even if I get to the end of August and still have some reading to do, it will be better than if I had never started the challenge. Plus, spending time reading God's Word is always a good thing.

Speaking of reading, I have been working on my Goodreads challenge to read 30 books this year and I am making good progress. This year I am really trying to focus on reading books that have been living on my Kindle for too long. I printed up a list, but recently I learned about Bullet Journals. Have you heard about them?

You can get lost on the internet reading about Bullet Journals (go ahead, do a 'Google' search for them. Just be sure to come back here to read the rest of the post!). Anyway, I like the idea of having paper to do a 'brain dump'...things that take up space in my brain that I want/need to remember, but they really don't make sense to put on a calendar.

So in my simple journal, I have written out the books I hope to read in the upcoming months. Like I said, I love a good list!

Do you have any plans for this summer? What is on your list?

Fifteen Foot Circle

Assignment number two for this most recent photography challenge I am participating in was to only photography things within a fifteen foot circle. This area also had to be one that you are in often. Part of this exercise was for us to see things and work to compose interesting images.

I added one more challenge for myself with this one, I only used my 55-200mm lens. So armed with my camera, I headed off to our front room and started looking for things to photograph.

1/160 sec at f/5.6, ISO 6400

1/40 sec at f/4.8, ISO 6400

1/60 sec at f/4.5, ISO 6400

1/50 sec at f/5.6, ISO 6400

Did you notice a theme here? Every photo has books in it! Yes, even the photo with the chess pieces, the books are out of focus on this one. Just like baking and photography, books are one thing that I love, and we have quite a few books around our home.

I ended up submitting the last photo for the challenge since it combines two things I love, books and photography. That little Kodak Brownie was the first camera I shot pictures with back in elementary school. Pretty incredible how far photography has come since then!

Our next assignment is to include motion in our photography. I have already been looking up ideas and am thinking of ways to be a bit more creative with this next assignment!

What have you been photographing this past week?

Self portrait assignment

If you have been following my blog for a while and/or you know me in real life, you know that I love photography. Recently, one of the photography Facebook groups I belong to gave an assignment to do a self portrait. Now, I am usually the photographer and not the person being photographed. But I decided to accept the challenge and try to be a bit creative.

I took pictures of my hands on my piano. I took pictures of me reading in my backyard. I even enlisted the help of my daughter to try to capture myself riding my bike. I was trying to capture myself doing things that I enjoy doing.

Once I loaded all the photos on my computer, the one photo that I ended up keeping was this one:

1/100 sec at f/2, ISO 400

Baking is something I really enjoy doing. And the kitchen is one place in my home I spend a lot of time in. So it only seemed natural to take a self portrait of myself in the kitchen baking.

Rather than leave the photo in color, I opted for black and white. I felt there were too many competing textures, colors, and patterns to leave it as a color photo.

I failed to post the photo before the assignment was due in the Facebook group, so I wasn't able to receive any constructive criticism on it. I think if I try this again, I may put the camera up higher on the tripod and angle the camera down a bit so the photo is not straight on.

Our next assignment is to capture images within a 15 foot circle from where you are standing. I am sure I can find a few things in my kitchen to capture.

What photo challenges are you participating in?

My Week of Photos - One Subject, Three Ways

When life gets real busy around here, my goal of taking a photo each day with my DSLR ends up way down at the bottom of my list of things to do. But I do love photography and I still want to get better at this hobby that I love!

So this week, I captured one subject, three different ways.

ISO 3200, f/7.1, 1/60 sec with 50mm lens

This first photo was taken outside at about 7:30pm. One of my favorite places at home to take photos is out along our fence. We get a lot of great light out there in the evening and the fence makes a good backdrop.

ISO 3200, f/3.5, 1/60 sec with 50mm lens

This photo was taken in my second favorite place at my home. Our dining room window faces to the east and gets some great natural light in the morning. To mix things up a bit, I took this photo looking down on the roses. I did crop this one in a bit from the original capture. What I find interesting, is the ISO and shutter speed are the same for this photo as the previous photo. Evening versus morning definitely had an effect on what aperture was appropriate for each of these photos.

ISO 100, f/1.8, 1/160 sec with 50mm lens

This one, of the three, is my favorite! This was taken out in my front yard, mid-afternoon. We have a huge shade tree in our front yard. I placed the vase of roses on a bench in the shade and really focused on the one rose.

Overall, I shot about 16 photos, about five in each location/time of day. Of the 16 photos, these three were my favorites. I find it interesting that each one is a different aperture. By focusing on a different view of the roses, I was able to capture a different look with each photo. This was a great little experiment and one I will probably try again.

Have you ever tried something like this? I would love to do this same thing but with a person so I can practice some portrait photography.