July 5

Today we drove to Michigan for our vacation. We spent a week in the UP. Here are pictures from the drive.

July 4

I SO wanted to take fireworks pictures today, but it was not meant to be. As we were heading to the park to watch the display, I noticed that the mount for my tripod was missing - I had no way to attach my camera to the tripod. Unfortunately, I barely took any pictures during the party - this was all I got. Above it a picture of Billy eating crackers and trying to smile at the same time. He doesn't do well at big parties and gets irritated pretty easily. Below is a picture of my brother-in-law splitting a log in the middle of his driveway to use as firewood later that evening. I thought it was funny that all the guys took turns trying to split the log. Men...

Vacation

We're on vacation until next weekend. I'll upload pictures once we are home and settled in. I've already taken some that I am excited to see =)

July 3

Not the best picture I've ever taken, but the only picture I took yesterday. This is Milo making good use of the DOG house Bill built for Samson - LOL!

July 2

Our daylillies are blooming left and right. Bill's mom is a daylily aficianado and gave us a ton of them - in a variety of colors - when we moved into our house. These rosy pink ones are my favorite along with the dark purple ones (they haven't bloomed yet, but you will see them soon - LOL!). I took the picture above of the pink one when it opened. I wanted to use it as my wallpaper on my laptop. When I did, I had to center it rather than stretch it so that it wasn't distorted. The below picture is what happened when I did that. I LOVE this picture! (click it to open on your fully screen - it's awesome!) I love all the detail - the pollen on the stamens, the veins in the petals in the sunlight, the gradual bleeding of the colors...

July 1

My happy dog after a round of Frisbee (yes, it is over-exposed. I don't care =P)

I was also playing with stop-action today - fun!

June 30

This is Caty and her best friend, Lindsey. They didn't know it until they got together, but they do, indeed, have matching bathing suits. =)


I'm finding, with my camera, that when I am in manual mode, I really don't have as much freedom as that would suggest. On bright sunny days like this one, I'm adjusting the white balance to daylight, and then I'm finding that I have to shoot with a narrow aperture (8.0) and a really high shutter speed (1000) in order for the pictures to come out properly exposed. I'll have to play around some more in the other modes, I guess.