213 Photo shoot

A bit behind in the editing department.  I keep taking a lot of pics lately, so I need to stop doing that and just edit a little.
This is Miles-  I shot this on an overcast day with my 50mm 1.8 lens...I LOVE that lens!  Very crisp!
I'm pretty sure the aperture I used on these pics was about 2.8 or 3.5 because when taking pics of a kid, it's really hard to get them to sit still long enough to get the focus just right when using 1.8, so I up it a little.  I think the blur in the back is still enough for this to be a pleasing picture.
I'm also very happy that I shoot in RAW.  RAW really lets you have a lot of control over the exposure and different settings on the pic that usually JPEG decides for you.  Here, I wanted to up the shutter speed, but because it was rather overcast, that made the pic darker. I adjusted the exposure and the pic came out nice and bright.  Also, in photoshop cs5, in the raw edit screen, I added a gradient filter on the sky so that when I adjusted the exposure, it didn't blow out the sky and make it white, but kept it blue.  I LOVE CS5 and RAW!!!

Day 131/365 Grandma's garden

So today I was out trying to take a picture of a bird on the bird feeder when I noticed that my Grandma's peonies were blooming down below me!  The beautiful, bright pink caught my eye, so I decided to walk down below the deck and take a picture of them.  This is the same bush that I took a picture of a while back with the ant on the bud.  Gorgeous! I love, love, love these flowers!


EXIF: 1/160 sec, f 5.6, 84mm, ISO 200

Her irises {or flags, as she called them} were also blooming nicely, so I have a mix of pinks and purples in the back yard.


EXIF: 1/160, f 3.5, 18mm, ISO 200
I was NOT shooting in RAW....crap.  I had the camera in jpeg for the soccer game because I didn't want to edit all of those pics.  I accidentally left it in jpeg and did NOT like losing that control that I have when I shoot RAW.  Those irises could have looked much better if I was in RAW...
I got a new lens for Mother's Day- a Tamron 18-200 lens- this one should be great for Costa Rica!  I won't have to constantly change lenses when focusing on monkeys and volcanoes!  I took these pictures with that lens, and I think it's obvious that it's not extremely sharp.  I'll have to practice a little more with it so that I can get some great pictures in Costa Rica.