F-Stop Challenge

August 10, 2018

Do you know what an f-stop is?

If you are a photographer, I am sure you know what an f-stop does.

For those of you who don't know, basically, f-stop is the aperture setting which controls what is in focus when you capture a photo.

A small number like 1.8 means that only a small area of your photo will be in focus. Smaller numbers are great for shooting portraits and details. This is when you can achieve some cool bokeh1

A large number like 8 and above give you more areas of focus in your photo and work well in landscapes or portraits of large groups of people.

You can find better explanations of f-stop and aperture in many books, photography classes, and online articles. Just google f-stop or aperture if you are curious.

One of my goals earlier this year was to pick up my DSLR on a regular basis and shoot photos.

Well, I have done a terrible job of keeping up with that goal!

This week, I stumbled across a Facebook Live event on the B&H page about 'What to Shoot When There's Nothing to Shoot'.

You see, the thing is, I am not a professional photographer. I am not even sure I want to be a professional photographer.

It is something I enjoy doing and would love to do it enough to get paid to do it!

So I thought, in order to push myself to pick up my camera on a regular basis, I should give myself some challenges.

This morning, I had my 35mm 1.8 lens on my Nikon and went in my backyard to see what I could shoot.

Here is what I found using f/1.8 only as my aperture setting:

Ok, so I didn't just 'find' my 50mm lens in the backyard, but I thought it would make the best first photo for this challenge.

As I walked around my backyard, the only setting I had to change to capture all of these images was the shutter speed. At f/1.8, this setting lets in the most light available because the lens is open at its widest.

So what do you think? Which image is your favorite?

If you are a photographer, have you ever done an f-stop challenge?

I am thinking I should challenge myself each week with a different f-stop. What f-stop should I shoot at next week?

My Week of Photos

January 13, 2016

One of my goals this year is to pick up my DSLR and use it every single day. To help me along the way, I will mainly be using the daily photo prompts from Capture Your 365. But every now and then, I might use another photo challenge list or get a little creative on my own.

This week, I pretty much stuck with the list from Capture Your 365 except for one (and I will let you know which one that was). So here is my week of photos to share with you:

Day 6 - Pushing Myself: I fell out of my routine of walking at least three times a week during the holidays, but our January winter weather is not cooperating. Well, to be honest, we really do need the rain here in California. So I guess I will just keep a better eye on the weather and schedule my walks on days when I know it shouldn't rain.

Day 7 - Good For Me: I have been using the MapMyWalk app for some time now to record my weekly walking activity. I love being able to see the progress I have made.

f/2.0, 1/160 sec, ISO 800 with 50mm lens

Day 8 - Where I Stand: On these cold winter afternoons, I like to treat myself to a hot homemade drink, with whipped cream of course. After all, those calories that I burn on my walks have to be made up somewhere.

f/2.5, 1/125 sec, ISO 800 with 50mm lens

Day 9 - A Relationship: I am getting ready to work on two big quilting projects, so I needed to do some calculations and some test blocks. A quilting ruler and a rotary cutter are the perfect match for a quilting project.

Day 10 - Monochrome: a monochrome photo is one that can either be black and white or one in varying tones of one color. Since we had homemade waffles for breakfast on Sunday morning, I thought they would be the perfect subject for this prompt.

f/2.5, 1/1600 sec, ISO 100 with 50mm lens

Day 11 - Complimentary: since it wasn't raining on this day, I found a couple of complimentary colors in my home and took them in the backyard to use the natural daylight. Looks like I didn't quite focus on my subject very well. That is why we practice, right?

f/5.6, 1/50 sec, ISO 100 with a x2 macro lens

Day 12: the prompt for today was draw. Since I couldn't think of anything to capture using this prompt, I decided to try out one of my new macro lenses. These lenses screw into my existing 18-55mm lens. I am looking forward to experimenting with these more this year.

So that is my first full week of photos using the Capture Your 365 photo prompts!

Are you participating in the photo challenge? Be sure to share a link to where you are posting your photos. I would love to see how you capture these same daily prompts!

Capture Your 365 in 2016

January 6, 2016

Three years ago, I embarked on a new adventure. I set a goal to pick up my DSLR camera everyday for a year. I followed a daily prompt and did my darndest to post those photos once a week here on my blog.

Since acquiring an iPhone, my Nikon has been a little neglected. This year, I am hoping to change that. So I have decided to again participate in the Capture Your 365 photography challenge!

I am a little behind already for the month, but I have two photos to share with you this week:

f/2.0, 1/100 sec, ISO 400 with 50 mm lens

Day 4 - Need This: Winter is not my favorite season. When I saw these yellow roses at the grocery store, I knew they were just what I needed to brighten up these cold, rainy winter days.

f/1.8, 1/125 sec, ISO 100 with 50 mm lens

Day 5 - Makes Me Happy: Now I know I just said winter is not my favorite season, but we live in California. Thankfully, today, I did not need to go anywhere. So I could stay home and enjoy the much needed rain for our area from the comfort of my warm cozy home.

Want to follow along with the daily prompts? You can find the January list on the Capture Your 365 blog.

Next week, I will have a new collection of photos to share.

Practicing Photography

November 2, 2015

Many years ago, when I was in elementary school, I took a Kodak Brownie camera with me to camp and took some pictures. When my parents developed the film, they liked them so much that they mounted them on mat boards and hung them in our house.

That initial introduction to picture taking began my love of photography.

Fast forward many years and I have moved beyond a small film camera to using my iPhone and my Nikon for all of my photography.

As much as I love the convenience of using my iPhone (and it takes better pictures than my first digital camera!), I love the versatility of using my DSLR and learning how to take better pictures.

Two years ago, I participated in a 365 project and worked on using my DSLR to take a picture every single day for a whole year. Phew! That was quite a project.

What I loved about that project was it helped me to practice using my camera every day. Capturing different subjects, using different settings, and being creative.

Recently, I have been wanting to use my DSLR more, so I was happy to see a Practice Ebook available from Katrina Kennedy. I love that this book is self-paced and I can work through it when my schedule permits.

So far, I have worked through the first two exercises. Let me show you what I captured (these are all straight out of the camera):

It was fun to use my old Brownie camera as the subject for each of these photos. One thing I learned about this exercise is that there is a minimum focal length for each of my lenses (hmm, no wonder I can't focus when I try to get too close!)

Are you wanting to improve your DSLR photography? I encourage to take a peek at Katrina's Practice Ebook. It is very reasonably priced and goes through a lot of fundamentals. I am looking forward to working through more exercises and hope to share more of what I am capturing along the way.

Books + Photography = Instagram Fun

November 19, 2014

Last month, I decided to join in an Instagram photo challenge put on by Fat Mum Slim. For October, the prompts were each letter of the alphabet, one letter per day. Rather than just randomly try to find something each day that began with that letter to photograph, I decided to do a book theme. Some letters were very easy to find books for, others, well...I am sure you can imagine how interesting it would be to find book titles that begin with Q or X. And because this was a photography challenge, I wanted to take photos of books we have in our home, some of them in very creative ways.

So what were some of my favorites?