Week 51 (December 17th - December 23rd) | Pictures 53 & 54

I got out of the house this past weekend (and spent my first night away from my toddler), to do some shooting with my friends Amy and Melanie. We went to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond to see their Gardenfest of Lights. The display itself was nice. Although I have to say if we hadn't been taking pictures, it wouldn't have been nearly as fun. Lights, trees, COLD.

We were those annoying people with tripods, but it was a ton of fun being out with women who share the same hobby. (If my husband had been with me, he would have been bored 15 minutes into our 3 hour stay.)

I got a lot of awesome pictures with my tripod, like this one:



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 28-75mm f/2.8 (@28mm)
Aperture: f/18
Shutter Speed: 15 seconds
ISO: 400
Flash: Flash: none
Exposure: manual

But my favorite one happened to be one that I shot handheld, before we broke out the tripods:



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 28-75mm f/2.8 (@28mm)
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 3200
Flash: Flash: none
Exposure: manual

I really wish that had been a more thought out shot, or I had gone back to revisit it with the tripod, because I've been wanting to play with HDR all year, and thought that would make an excellent HDR image. I went ahead and used that one image to generate two files of differing exposure to do an HDR composite that was not planned ahead, and despite the noise, I think it's pretty cool. Not my normal style at all, but cool.

Week 50 (December 10th - December 16th) | Picture 52

Merry Christmas to me! I got a new lens. A true dream lens. I was back and forth between two lenses on complete opposite ends of the spectrum, but ultimately decided to go with the 70-200mm.

There is interesting debate I see a lot about whether or not hobbyists *need* lenses like this. And the unequivocal answer is no. But people don't *need* boats or motorcycles or season tickets to the NFL either. I'm not exactly sure why the assumption is that anyone with a lot of nice gear needs to be a pro photographer to justify their purchases . . . but that is a much more controversial topic than I care to explore here.

Anyway, it's a super clear night here, and I still have my old camera, so I thought it would be fun to go out and shoot the moon with a crop sensor, effectively turning my razor sharp 200mm lens into a 300mm lens. Pretty sweet!



Camera: Nikon D300
Lens: 70-200mm f/2.8 (@200mm)
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/1600
ISO: 200
Flash: Flash: none
Exposure: manual

And woohoo! I actually blogged 52 pictures this year!!! I didn't meet my once a week goal, but for the year I've had, I'm happy with just making it to 52. :)

Week 48 (November 26th - December 2nd) | Picture 51

I know this has turned into a barely once a month blog, but I'm not giving up on it. I will get to 52 pictures this year. I will, I will, I will. I dropped the ball way back in August and to say it's been a crazy 5 months around here is an understatement. Photography has taken a back seat to life, and I'm hoping to get to turned that around in the near future.

Anyway, there is a picture I took back in early November for my small OCF group that I never got a chance to blog.



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 28-75mm f/2.8 (@75mm)
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 200
Flash: Flash: SB-800 off camera, manual, 1/64th power
Exposure: manual

It's not even close to technically perfect, and I'll spare you the details of how I was pressing the shutter button AND dropping the blueberries myself. (Would have been much easier with help.) I would love to do more with liquid and splashes - so maybe if I get ambitious there will be something like that coming up.