1.8

Greetings from Bothell! There is a little path that runs along a creek near my office that is a perfect place to get some air and take a little break from numbers and figures and rates. Can you believe that New Dan has worked with us for over a year and hadn't visited the creek yet? It was a nice, sunny afternoon, so New Dan, Cole and I headed for the creek; two Canon XTis in hand. It actually ended up being a mini-lesson on my camera - I didn't know about the mirror lock-up feature, OR the long exposure noise reduction feature either! (yeah Nikon fans you heard that right... noise reduction... excellent color saturation with less noise, baby). I only took a few pics during the afternoon because, sigh, we had to get back to work! The pic below is a sample of my random "oh pretty - CLICK - keep moving" shots.

The lens is intended for portraits. I saw a few of Cole's pics from a wedding that he attended last weekend and they turned out amazing. After work I looked around my place and didn't see many folks to take pictures of (THIS is when a loving, adorable kitty would come in handy, eh?)... but I figured I base my joy on the ability to capture a great macro shot anyway, so I headed out to my balcony to take pictures of my newly blooming flowers.

Well, the sun had set a bit and my balcony was in the shadows. The pics were horribly boring. I decided to head out somewhere, anywhere, in search of something interesting to shoot. I went downstairs and chatted with my neighbors for a bit, then my little neighbor boy's shiny tricycle caught my eye. The sun was shining so perfectly on it, and the 1.8 lens would be able to blur out the assorted cars in the parking lot. A token of childhood. Just as I pulled my camera out of the bag, the little cutie jumped on the trike and sped away. Sigh.

It is kinda funny - guess where I ended up... back at the creek! I only had about 30 minutes to spare before meeting some friends (movie night!!!) and the creek was on the way. I ended up taking about 50 pictures there in about 20 minutes. The lighting had changed in the few hours that had passed and it took a bit more effort to find the shots I wanted (the lighting was pretty harsh by this point).

The pics below are from the second trip to the creek. While I like these pics, my one big critique for myself is that the subjects are all centered. Such boring composition! But, I just remind myself that I am concentrating on the technical side of actually pushing the right buttons on the stinkin camera... once I get comfortable with the controls I'll be able to concentrate on other areas.... oh man, I hope :)

p.s. the last picture is of a spider... not sure if you can see the details on the small blog pic.

Thanks for reading this and viewing my pics! I hope they made you smile, thinking of a warm, sunny afternoon.