A Gift

So my birthday is next month. About a week ago, I mentioned to Cliff that I planned on buying myself a new camera lens for my birthday and showed him which one I wanted. Well, he bought it for me! I know my birthday is still a month away, but he gave it to me now so he wouldn't forget what I wanted or get the wrong one. I got out and played with it a bit in the garden. It is a Canon EF 50 mm 1:1.8 II. From all the research I did, this appears to be a great priced, versatile lens. It is supposed to be great for portraits, but I didn't have a human subject handy, just flowers... so I played with bokeh.

I've not used a fixed lens before, so it was definitely a new experience. Here are some of my first attempts:






and



I think I LOVE this lens!

Forgive me...

but I'm going to brag a little. This has been a highly productive week for me and I feel like sharing. On Monday we went on a field trip to Tulip Town as part of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. We went early in the morning to avoid the crowds and had a great time. We even got our picture in the newspaper. I let Ethan use my point and shoot camera and he had a lot of fun taking pictures. Here is my favorite of the ones he took:

Here is my favorite that I took:

You can find more of the photos we took that day on my Tulip Trip Flickr set.

Tuesday we had library day and swim lessons. I took all our garage sale leftovers to the thrift shop.

Wednesday we went to grandma's where Ethan got to see the chickens and plant his very own row of onions in the garden.

Thursday I worked my little tail off and broke my single day production record and produced 1220 lines of transcription. Before 3:00 p.m. Ethan also had swimming again.

Friday I helped my mom load her wares for the local Garden Art Show into her car. While I was at her house, I helped myself to some of the anaerobic digester compost (very rich, dry, not stinky compost) she got for the garden. I turned the dirt in our garden at home and added in the good compost so we have a place for our tomatoes and peppers. I planted potatoes, onions, lettuce, spinach, mesclun, basil, parsley, and cilantro in containers. Cliff built a potato box last week, so that is what were growing our potatoes in this year. He painted it black to help retain heat and protect the wood. Here is a photo of the potato box:


I took more items to the thrift shop to donate and found the *perfect* bookcase I needed for our school room. Well, it wasn't perfect; it was 8 feet tall (I have 8 foot ceilings) and only 8 inches deep, but it was only $20 and everything I'd looked at so far was $80+. I couldn't even make it myself for that. The books can hang off the shelf if necessary, and I had Cliff cut the top 2 feet off for me.

Saturday I sanded, filled, and primed the new book case, mowed the lawn, took the kids for a bike ride to the park, and started lining a knit bag that I've been avoiding for almost a year.

Sunday I sanded the book case again, and painted the first coat in the color Ethan chose (dark red). We took our lunch to the beach and the kids played at the playground. I ran two clothes lines and am looking for a sewing pattern for a clothespin bag. Right now I'm soaking beans to make my white chili later in the week and I still plan to mix a batch of artisan bread dough. oh! I finished lining the cabled bag! Here's a final photo:


All this and I still worked every day, cooked a full dinner from scratch every night, cleaned the house, and did laundry. It must be spring.

oh! Fireplace update. The new mantle is framed in, the pipe has been run in the chimney, the electricity is wired in, and the new stove is sitting in its new spot. Hopefully, the project will get wrapped up this week.


Phew! I think I need a vacation.

Camera Lenses

I’m an amateur photographer at best, but I think I am finally growing beyond my “kit” lenses that came with my camera. I’ve been shooting with a Canon Rebel XTi for just over 2 years now. The camera came with 2 lenses, an EF-S 18-55 mm 1:3.5-5.6 II and an EF 75-300 mm 1:4-5.6 III. Until now, they’ve both served me well and I have no doubt they are great beginner lenses. I’m sure I will continue to get a lot of use out of them as there is still a lot I don’t know about photography and about the camera.

Yesterday, before the rain returned, I was outside attempting to take photos of my flowers and I couldn’t get the photos I was visualizing in my head. Part of the reason was because the blooms were all pointed downward and I was lying on the ground, on my back, having a hard time getting the angle I wanted without manipulating the flowers. The other reason was I couldn’t get the narrow depth of field I wanted. The light was heavy overcast natural outdoor lighting. I opened the aperture as wide as I could, which was only ƒ4.5 or ƒ5, and used as long of an exposure as I could keep still for, which isn’t long (1/125). Here are the photos as they were, straight out of the camera:




The colors are bold, but something about them looks kind of “blah.” I was aiming for a blurrier background (bokeh I think its called), and slightly brighter. Yes, I know I could manipulate them in Photoshop, but I don’t like to do this more than necessary. My thinking is if I need to alter it that much, I should have taken a better photo in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, Photoshop totally has a place, but I want to learn how to take a better photo and not rely on Photoshop too heavily to fix the problems.

I guess what I need to find out is do I invest in a higher quality multipurpose lens with a slightly wider aperture capabilities, a fixed focal length lens with wider aperture, or a true macro lens. I do like macro photography and this is definitely something I would like to do more of, but I need to do a lot more research and maybe find some knowledgeable help.

Photo Studio

I'm an aspiring photographer, a newbie, an amateur at best, particularly when it comes to still life and portraits. I prefer landscapes and nature, as evidenced by my "portfolio."

I enjoy photographing my yarn as well as my finished knits and other craft projects, but my lighting is always bad. I forget to take them when the light is best or just snap the photo to get it over with and always feel like I could have done better.

In an attempt to improve my skills and give myself the tools to learn more about indoor photography, I decided to build myself a mini studio/light box. It is definitely not for portraiture, but smaller objects like skeins of yarn. It still needs some work, but for about $10 worth of materials it is a good start. I built a 2 x 2 x 2 cube with 20 feet of 1/2" PVC, 4 3-way joints, and 4 90-degree elbows.

I opted not to have a complete cube, with pipe on all four sides of the bottom, so I could use poster board or similar materials for the bottom if I wished without the cardboard bowing and with less pipe to worry about being exposed.

For today's purposes, I used a king-sized white bed sheet that I already had, and draped it over the cube, tucking it around the pipe as best I could.

Eventually, I plan to buy heavier cotton fabric and make custom panels that attach with velcro around the pipe. This would help with the problem of the wrinkles you can see all over my sheet and allow me to use different colors if I want.

I borrowed some lighting from my parents, but they are basically just simple shop lights you can buy at Home Depot or Lowe's with daylight spectrum bulbs. The ones I used were 65 watts each, but I'll probably go up to 100 watts when I replace them. The hardest part of this whole process was finding something to attach the lights to that was close enough and stable enough, which is why I want brighter bulbs.

Here are some examples of my first attempts at studio lighting. I did have to adjust the tint on these, as I apparently had my white balance set wrong, but otherwise, they are unedited.
Mickey:

Hand-knit mitten:

"Lavendar Gatherer" Santon from southern France: