Yolo Wildlife Area
Went out this morning and took pictures of the sunrise and the birds at the Yolo Wildlife Area about 10 miles from my house. I’m nowhere near being done going through everything, but when they come off my camera looking like this, I know it’s going to be a good day.
Click on the picture and take a look at the full-size shot. Wow. Just wow.
(OK, so I cropped this, but not by much.)
Annie’s baptism pics
I hate to say it, but overall I’m really not thrilled with how these turned out – a lack of forethought as to how to set the shots up really came back to bite me in the butt. The main problem was that when I set up the shot beforehand (before church started) all the sanctuary lights were on, and the spotlights over the baptismal font were off… In fact, I didn’t even realize those spots were there. Whoops. So I put it on, ummm… I think ISO400, set the aperture wide open at f1.4, and stopped down by one, figuring I’d get a bit faster of a shot that way and could just push it up in post-processing (it had been metering at about 1/30.) This is more or less what I do for kickball, and those pics come out fairly well.
Well, when it came time for the baptism, the church lights were dimmed and the spots turned on over the font. Since I’d handed off the camera to Colin’s dad Roger to take the pics so that I could play godmom, I didn’t get a chance to adjust, and frankly, it didn’t occur to me to make adjustments. If I’d been taking the pics, I would have looked at the first one and known immediately what the problem was. However, even if I had, I don’t know that I would have been able to fix it. The shots during the baptism really needed a flash, and I don’t know if I would have wanted to use one at such a solemn moment. So… eh.
I took down the contrast on these as much as I could without graying them out (I also had to bump down the saturation quite a bit!) but they still are really shadowy and contrasty. All I can say is thank goodness for RAW, or these would have… Well, I can’t say for sure, but I have a hard time seeing how they would have been anything but a total loss.
After the service was over and we took more pictures, I still wasn’t thinking, and I didn’t use the flash until the very end, when it dawned on me that that would help. Go easy on me here, I’m still learning this stuff – aside from kickball, I rarely ever shoot indoors, and with kickball, not only is the lighting better, but I can’t use the flash anyway because of factors like distance and speed.
Anyway, enough berating myself for blowing the pictures – here are a few.
Sleeping girl
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I baptize you in the name of the Father...
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Time for bed again
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Click here for a link to the Flickr gallery.
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New editing toy!
After muddling along with an old and slow (and small – 12″ screen!) Dell laptop, I broke down and used part of my bonus from work to get myself a desktop. The computer is a quad core running Windows Vista on 3GB RAM, and compared to my old laptop, it’s a speed demon. I shoot entirely in RAW and use Canon’s Digital Photo Pro for my post-processing, and in the past, I’ve actually fallen asleep while waiting for pictures to render. It’d go something like this: Click to next picture –> rendering….rendering….rendering….rendering…rendering… It’d take about 10 seconds for each picture to render, which may not sound like a long time, but when you shoot 150-300 pictures on a single outing (which is probably what I average, regardless of what I’m shooting) even when you’re deleting nine out of every ten pictures, it still takes a very long time.
Oh, and I also upgraded Digital Photo Pro (free with purchase of any Canon DSLR) to the newest version (3.5, I believe.) OMGSOAWESOME. There are some nice little things like a thumbnail viewer underneath the tools panel, but by far the best part is the noise reduction. They did some sort of technological wizardry with their noise reduction algorithm, and WOW what a difference it makes. With my old version, there were only three spots on each of two slider bars (luminance and chromiance) to set noise reduction (and one of the three spots was “none”, so I don’t really count that) and I really didn’t notice much in the way of difference between the settings. On this one, the degree of NR goes from 0-20 on each of the two bars, and the difference even between, say, a 0 and a 2 is definitely noticeable. It’s good stuff, I tell ya!
So yeah. The new computer is awesome. The new monitor, however… I have mixed feelings. It’s a 21.5″ Acer widescreen, 1920×1080, and while I love the wide screen, the color needs some serious adjustment. I’ve tried QuickGamma and the Lagom display tests, but I still feel like the color is off. What can I say–I’m picky. One of these days I’ll probably break down and get something like the Spyder2 Express, but for now I’ll just correct as best as I can. I, er, kind of spent my discretionary income on the computer.
Side note – WTF is it with Vista not having any PowerToys? Seriously?? Whose bright idea was that??? I miss my Image Resizer, dang it!! I’m using VSO Image Resizer now, and while it works well, I’m still hoping MS decides to bring back the PowerToys. Weak.
In any case, this computer really flies, and if I can get my color issues worked out, I’ll be a happy camper. :-)
Annie in a Basket
Annie-in-a-basket 002, originally uploaded by Kari_Marie.
I am an evil, evil person. I stuck my niece in a laundry basket and took pictures… Click here for a few more. :-D
Kickball pictures from last night
On Thursday nights, I play kickball through Xoso Sports, a rec sports league here in Sacramento. Last night I came early and stuck around after my game so that I could get some pictures.
The awesome thing about digital is that it really doesn’t matter how many pictures I take (I’m limited only by my memory card) so I keep the camera on continuous burst mode and just go for it. I only ever keep about one out of every ten pictures I take, and if I manage to get one fun action shot like this one, I’m stoked. :-)
Clicking on the above picture will take you to more kickball pictures. :-)
Old Town Sacramento
Last Sunday I went down to Old Town Sacramento with some friends. First we went to the Crocker Art Museum for the last day of their Warner Bros exhibit, and then we wandered around Old Town a bit.
My favorite picture of the day is probably this one, just because of its sheer randomness:
Dock and Tower Bridge.
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This is the dock in front of the Tower Bridge on the Sacramento River. I used TiltShiftMaker.com for the effects on the picture–it’s supposed to make it look like a model. The original of this picture is here.
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We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the Warner Bros exhibit inside the Crocker, so I don’t have anything to show of that, but suffice to say, it was really neat. They had, of course, tons of old sketches and animation cels, but what I found the neatest was looking at some of the old backgrounds done in the 40s and 50s. They were true works of art, actually quite rich in color and techique, and it’s kind of sad to think how little (if any) attention they got in the cartoons.
My other two favorite pictures of the day:
What can I say--I like trains!
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This cat was hanging out under one of the trains and watching the world go by. Not a bad place to hang out.
Click here for a link to the entire gallery from the day.
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A Life In A Lot of Pictures And Some Accompanying Words
My brain moves too quickly sometimes. It hurdles headlong from one thing to another, often faster than my mouth can keep up with it, changing focus whether I want it to or not. This blog is an attempt to slow down and preserve moments of my life in pictures and thoughts. If something catches your attention, please comment – each comment you leave gives me an opportunity to revisit a moment and see it through your eyes.
Life is a journey – thanks for stopping in on mine.
