Counting Down

I have one thing, and one thing only, on my brain right now; it's so hard to concentrate on anything else unless I can relate it back to the fact that I am going to Disneyland in 28 days!!!!

Today a friend of mine (and what a coincidence is it that she'll be my companion to the happiest place on earth) and I decided to have a little fun and make ourselves a countdown calendar because we're just that excited. I made a smart move this time and actually remembered to grab my tripod before leaving my house, otherwise I doubt I would have been able to get any pictures. We got some of the Disney paint chips that you can get from Home Depot that are shaped like Mickey Mouse heads (so cute!) and glued them to a big black poster board. We still need to add a few small touches, but the big things are out of the way.

First day with RAW

So I tried to get a start on our next assignment, quality of light, since Monday, but I made a pretty small (or large) little error - I forgot to shoot in RAW and was still working with JPEGS. Yet another smart move, Jazz! So those images are out the window for this assignment. I just didn't notice until right before I went out to lunch with my sister at Red Robin. So I haven't made much of a start on this assignment, but I did shoot my first few images in RAW. I really love a lot of the lighting and lamps that they have at the restaurant but we had to be out of there pretty fast so I didn't get all the photos I wanted, but at least I tried a few, and then of course there was our wonderful dog, Mackenzie, who is always happy to see us when we come home. The lighting in our house is horrible (we're a bunch of cave people it feels like) so there isn't much light in this image, but I really love it regardless.


I'm really looking to getting some variety in for this assignment, though. I have a hockey game coming up on March 3rd (San Jose Sharks vs. Dallas Stars) and I'm really hoping to get some images at HP Pavillion - yet another source of lighting I get to play around with more. I've been having a little trouble with my exposure at games because that ice just wants to blow out everything. But I'm determined, so it will happen. And I know it'll be too late for this assignment, but I'm going to be at Disneyland in just 30 days! I'm looking forward to going camera crazy there. The last time I went I went a little overboard according to some people, but I go for the atmosphere and taking photos is what I do since I'm too much of a scaredy-cat to go on any rides.

Metering & Bracketing

The third assignment was a big trouble shoot for me - a sore spot and it didn't turn out like I had wanted it to. First I pinch a nerve in my neck, which puts photography out of the picture (haha!) since I could hardly move my neck or my arms and then I get sick leaving me with very little wiggle room to actually shoot the assignment once you factor in all of the rain that we got last weekend. It was a major cause for headache after headache. But I did get it done, which is better than the alternative.


My mom's cat decided she wanted to have a little fun when I was shooting the figurine inside the house. That girl knows how to get in the way of everything and she wouldn't stop playing with the lamp or with the little figurine-dude that my sister was already having fun with trying to create fun poses (it's a set of two and they're usually kicking the crap out of each other in some form or another).

Summer Fun

I've been going through a lot of my photos from the past year or so over the past week (meaning photos since I bought my Nikon), and uploading a lot of images SOOC onto my Flickr account. It's been fun to go over all of the things that I've done in the past year that I've completely forgotten about. Not to mention, they were all "back in the day" when I was still shooting on Auto a majority of the time whenever I went anywhere. Too bad I can't go back and re-shoot the events shooting manually, that would be fun, especially for the WorldFest. I guess it just means I'll have to go back.

Speaking of WorldFest (a world music festival that I went to last summer in Grass Valley), here's probably my favorite photo from the day (again, SOOC, no retouching in photoshop). I wish I had done more to play with the DOF, but oh well.

Final Image(s)

And my extra ...

Tough Decisions

Why is it so hard to pick a final image? There's a good 4 or 5 images from this set (48 in 24) that I can see myself turning in as my final image and only choosing one of them is a toughie. I did manage to make a final selection (or two). I ended up submitting a second image just as an extra because I really couldn't decide between the two. We'll be doing the critique on Monday. Yay! I'm already anxious for the next assignment, not that I'm not taking more photos anyways.

Anyways! These were some of my favorites from the assignment. Take a guess which one I am turning in (and I guess which I'm turning in as a kind of "bonus" for my indecisiveness). I do have them all posted to my Flickr account (which I need to update more) and you can view the entire set here: 48 in 24

48 in 24

I finally shot a completed 48 in 24 over the weekend. I can't 100% say it was a typical day for me, but it was a fun day that ended with my typical Saturday night: we had a birthday party for my dad since his family was in town, and then I got to go to work at Target at the lovely old hour of 10 o'clock at night. Now comes the fun part: picking one image to use as my final image. It's a lot harder than you'd think, I can't ever really settle on just one because as soon as I do, I change my mind again. So I haven't made a whole lot of progress just yet, but it will happen.

But just for pure comedic reasons, I thought I would share the silliness that is my dad:


For about an hour he went around the house with the tin that his gift (a wallet) came in hanging out of his back pocket. We all thought it was pretty funny, but that's just what he does.