Capture Your 365 in 2016

January 6, 2016

Three years ago, I embarked on a new adventure. I set a goal to pick up my DSLR camera everyday for a year. I followed a daily prompt and did my darndest to post those photos once a week here on my blog.

Since acquiring an iPhone, my Nikon has been a little neglected. This year, I am hoping to change that. So I have decided to again participate in the Capture Your 365 photography challenge!

I am a little behind already for the month, but I have two photos to share with you this week:

f/2.0, 1/100 sec, ISO 400 with 50 mm lens

Day 4 - Need This: Winter is not my favorite season. When I saw these yellow roses at the grocery store, I knew they were just what I needed to brighten up these cold, rainy winter days.

f/1.8, 1/125 sec, ISO 100 with 50 mm lens

Day 5 - Makes Me Happy: Now I know I just said winter is not my favorite season, but we live in California. Thankfully, today, I did not need to go anywhere. So I could stay home and enjoy the much needed rain for our area from the comfort of my warm cozy home.

Want to follow along with the daily prompts? You can find the January list on the Capture Your 365 blog.

Next week, I will have a new collection of photos to share.

Practicing Photography

November 2, 2015

Many years ago, when I was in elementary school, I took a Kodak Brownie camera with me to camp and took some pictures. When my parents developed the film, they liked them so much that they mounted them on mat boards and hung them in our house.

That initial introduction to picture taking began my love of photography.

Fast forward many years and I have moved beyond a small film camera to using my iPhone and my Nikon for all of my photography.

As much as I love the convenience of using my iPhone (and it takes better pictures than my first digital camera!), I love the versatility of using my DSLR and learning how to take better pictures.

Two years ago, I participated in a 365 project and worked on using my DSLR to take a picture every single day for a whole year. Phew! That was quite a project.

What I loved about that project was it helped me to practice using my camera every day. Capturing different subjects, using different settings, and being creative.

Recently, I have been wanting to use my DSLR more, so I was happy to see a Practice Ebook available from Katrina Kennedy. I love that this book is self-paced and I can work through it when my schedule permits.

So far, I have worked through the first two exercises. Let me show you what I captured (these are all straight out of the camera):

It was fun to use my old Brownie camera as the subject for each of these photos. One thing I learned about this exercise is that there is a minimum focal length for each of my lenses (hmm, no wonder I can't focus when I try to get too close!)

Are you wanting to improve your DSLR photography? I encourage to take a peek at Katrina's Practice Ebook. It is very reasonably priced and goes through a lot of fundamentals. I am looking forward to working through more exercises and hope to share more of what I am capturing along the way.

Day Trip and a New App

April 10, 2015

We haven't had much rain around here this season. So when we had a storm move through here earlier this week, I was a bit excited that one of my favorite day trip locations might actually have received a bit of snow. I was hoping there was enough snow to be able to take my iPhone and my DSLR along to capture some incredible photos.

So with a couple of friends and their children, we made the drive to Yosemite yesterday. We took along layers of clothing, expecting it to be a bit on the chilly side and possibly see some snow on the valley floor.

Unfortunately, the snow that fell on Tuesday had no chance of lasting with our warm spring temperatures. Even though we didn't see any snow in Yosemite Valley, the tops of the towering granite mountains had enough snow to add just a bit of a reminder that it really is still early spring.

On our way out of the park, we did stop at one of my favorite spots to take a photo:

Before photo, straight from my iPhone with no edits and no filters

Once I arrived back home, I took a bit of time to edit this photo with a new photo editing app:

What app did I use? I have been experimenting with Enlight. Not sure how I found out about this app, but I am loving all of the features of this app. Now, I am not usually one to pay for an app, but because I love photography, I decided the price was worth it.

On the Enlight blog and their Facebook page, they are starting to share some tutorials on how to use some of the features contained in the app to help you create some incredible images.

If you give Enlight a shot, be sure to tag me in one of your photos on Instagram. I would love to see what you create!

Books + Photography = Instagram Fun

November 19, 2014

Last month, I decided to join in an Instagram photo challenge put on by Fat Mum Slim. For October, the prompts were each letter of the alphabet, one letter per day. Rather than just randomly try to find something each day that began with that letter to photograph, I decided to do a book theme. Some letters were very easy to find books for, others, well...I am sure you can imagine how interesting it would be to find book titles that begin with Q or X. And because this was a photography challenge, I wanted to take photos of books we have in our home, some of them in very creative ways.

So what were some of my favorites?