Outside My Box

Just look what happens when I decide to venture out of my safe little "editing-box" and try something creative :)

My first Christmas present!!!

Without fully knowing why, we took a slight detour off the beaten path and each opened a present last night on Christmas Eve Eve.

The rest of my family got really neat things....new mountain bike, new bling purse, super bright flashlight, coffee mug with family picture on it......but mine was the best!!! (in my opinion)

My wonderful parents bought me the Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens!!!!!!!!!!! (for those of you non-photographers this isn't going to mean anything...just think of the thing you would want the very most)

I am so crazy excited to start shooting with it!!! Look forward to lots of beautiful pictures with deliciously shallow depth of field and yummy bokeh!!

A different type of photography!

When I got last week's assignment for the photography class I'm doing, I about died. "Anything But People." What?!?! How in the world are you supposed to photograph random things laying around your house?

It was with a very skeptical outlook that I started ransacking the house for little picture ideas, but...you know what? I actually had a lot of fun with it! Last week totally made me "Push Past My Comfort Zone"; ironically the name of the photo class!

So, here are a few little things around our house that aren't people :)

This is a beautiful key chain that a very very dear friend sent me from Germany. I have it on my bookshelf along with a picture of her, and I loved the way the color on this one came out!

Schoolwork!

After mentally debating with myself whether it was worth it or not to venture out into the heat (thermometer was reading 114), I decided to take the plunge. Lighting outside is just incomparable!

But as I walked out our front door, these little fried roses were the first things I saw...seemed appropriate! (and the light and bokeh are just heavenly!!)

This looks so tropical or Hawaiian to me! But, believe it or not, it was our little country dirt road with a glorious sunset and a blooming Bird-Of-Paradise! So fun.

This week's assignment was super fun, too...concentrating on slow versus fast shutter speed. These two pictures were in our irrigation canal. First one had a fast shutter speed (the water looks frozen) and the second one had a slow shutter speed (water is flowing). For those fellow photographers, the settings are on the pictures.

I will hopefully be posting some more shutter speed pictures later on. This class is teaching me so much!!!