033: #131 Groceries

Better stock up between snowstorms!
You knew this was coming, didn't you :)

032: #084 Empty

I guess I'd better go grocery shopping!

This blog gives me a push to learn more about my camera settings. For this shot I found flash compensation in the menus. No flash left the shadows too dark. Full flash was overexposed. But -1 on the flash compensation was just right. So I ate the eggs all up! (No, I'm not Goldilocks)

031: #107 Footwear

Mom is wearing her nice warm slippers. Kayla favors her high-heeled shoes. And Daddy has NO footwear.

030: #342 Underneath

Kayla likes to hide, but Daddy caught her under the table and gave her a tickle.

029: #096 Feathered or Feathers

Kayla (age 4) loves to play dress-up. She has a feather boa that molts.

028: #105 Follow the Leader

When they were sure the coast was clear they dashed across the road.

027: #068 Cross

Their mothers must have taught them to look both ways before crossing the road.

026: #087 Exercise

Pull harder, Gregory!

He's pulling with both hands! His OT just started working with "rubber bands" and he's doing it!

025: #080 Drive Thru

I treated my salt-covered car to a car wash since the snow has momentarily given way to sunny skies. I was hoping to get photographs of the mechanisms, but I'll take the sudsy water on my windshield.

024: #363 Winter

Here comes the snowplow! The driver races up and down the roads and knocks down a lot of mailboxes as he clears the snow. :( The snow is blowing so high that he probably can't see the mailboxes -- probably just feels the thump as he knocks them down!

023: #026 Big Events

My TV is as close as I was willing to get to this big event. May God bless our new President and keep him and his family safe from harm. And may his dreams and plans for the future of the USA bring us and the rest of the world back out of the pit we have slid into!

First time I ever tried taking photographs of what's showing on TV. I played with the settings and got a couple that didn't look too light or too dark or too blurry or too lined. This was a little overexposed, but ACR dialed it back to what you see here. Hand held, by the way. And if anyone's interested, these were the settiings:

Camera Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
Date: 2009:01:20
Shutter speed: 1/4 sec
Aperture: 5
Exposure mode: Av
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Spot
ISO: 100
Lens: 28 to 135mm
Focal length: 70mm
AF mode: One-shot AF
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Auto
Color space: AdobeRGB

Oops! I did it again! Instead of putting tomorrow's date on this I just hit "publish"!

022: #050 Circle

My breakfast: crunchy circles with holes in the middle and blue circles any way you look at them.

021: #341 Two

OK! So the photograph wasn't clear enough and begged to be turned into a watercolor sketch using the tutorial at luminous-landscape

020: #255 Red

Well, the cardinal didn't make it as "red" but yesterday's sunrise glowed red. And I'm sure there will be prettier sunrises and sunsets later this year -- and warmer mornings when I'm willing to take a walk outside to frame a better shot -- so let's call this one "red".

Wanabe asked about the settings, so here it is.

I stepped out on the porch, but it was toooo frigid for me, so I went back inside and shot through a window trying out lots of settings. I dialed down the exposure compensation on this particular shot because it was getting lighter outside. I started with ISO 800 but the photo was a lovely pastel, so I kept changing settings until I got something I liked better.

Canon XSi
Date/Time: 2009:01:17 08:37:41
Shutter speed: 1/8 sec
Aperture: 16
Exposure mode: Av
Exposure compensation: -2
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Spot
Drive mode: Continuous: frame 1
ISO: 100
Lens: 28 to 135mm
Focal length: 135mm
AF mode: One-shot AF
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Auto
Color space: AdobeRGB

019: #170 Legs

Well, I was shooting for "red" but this goofy looking bird hits my funny bone.

018: #018 Baby It's Cold Outside

The snow is blowing and it's mighty cold out -- down around zero when I took the photo in the blowing snow. 11 below zero at 6 a.m. on Friday -- and even worse with the wind chill factor!

I shot this from my unheated back porch -- not quite as cold there and out of the blowing snow.

017: #free01 Headwaiter

Jay, the headwaiter, serving the diners on the lower level. He's a little impatient, though...

016: #259 Repeating pattern

Back to that Orthodox church again. The front entrance has several repeating patterns: the 3 circles, the arches, the steps, the doors with the crosses...

015: #326 Things with Wings

One of the things I've been trying to capture at my birdfeeder is the birds on the wing.
The white spots are snowflakes. Will it ever stop?

014: #133 Grumpy

I've been taking hundreds of shots of the bird feeder and throwing out most of them -- looking for something a little different.

013: #008 Adolescence

When the snow started letting up and I went outside to shovel snow, the teenager across the street who does yard work for me in the summer was out snowmobiling with a couple of friends. When she saw me shoveling she got off the snowmobile, grabbed a friend and a snowshovel and came over to shovel me out. They took my shovel and proceeded to clear the steps and the walk down to the driveway. Then the third member of the little group (the owner of the snowmobile) got himself stuck and they ran back to help him and started racing around the yard again.

She's a nice girl and always ready to give a hand to the old lady across the street.

{sigh} I remember being young and energetic and loving to play in the snow!

{Oops! I meant to schedule this for tomorrow}

012: #207 On my Table

That's 9 inches of snow on my picnic table! The yardstick doesn't show up very well, but I didn't want to crop it down because the house and the deck and the fence beyond and the house beyond the fence show the perspective better than the yardstick.

011: #082 Eating Establishment

A self-appointed bouncer chasing off a younger would-be diner at my bird feeder.
Deer were not what I was trying to take pictures of, but they are hungry, too.

010: #221 Outdoor Seating

I went back to that Orthodox church today (before the snow started again) and took a few photos. This little angel is sitting in a small garden behind the church.

009: #275 Sense of Motion

Chop! chop!
This was taken with my Panasonic point-and-shoot and needed Noiseware. It was pretty dark in the restaurant, so I suppose I shouldn't be too ready to throw away the Panasonic.

008: #023 Bells and Whistles

An Eastern Orthodox church in the snow. I'll have to go back there on a nice sunny day to get some architectural shots.

007: #365 Yellow

Lunch= BLT with yellow tomatoes, banana, lemon for my tea.

006: #273 Seeds

Somebody gave me a Chia herb garden for Christmas. I planted the seeds the way they said to, but I put them on the windowsill right away instead of finding a warm place to sprout the seeds. I wonder if they'll grow on my windowsill.

I gave up on the point-and-shoot and went back to the XSi. The Panasonic images were too noisy and had a lot of chromatic aberration. I still have my old XT and tried shooting this windowsill garden with all 3 cameras. But I didn't give the XT a fair chance because it had the kit lens on it. A fair chance would have been to use the same lens on both Canons.

005: #060 Communication

I had to do my ICD check this morning. It's nice to be able to do this from home using the telephone lines. The green lights on the right show that it's communicating with its master.

004: #271 Second Hand

Gregory still hasn't figured out that righty can help lefty. He can operate the remote for his car with lefty (keep your shoes on or your feet off the floor, folks!) but he needs a second hand to help hold the remote still.

Taken with my Panasonic point and shoot with flash in a fairly dark room. Not a clear picture, but a little LR2 and some high pass sharpening makes it a tad better.

003: #172 Lines

Japanese lantern has lines and shadowy leaves.

002: #100 Fire or Flame

Hmmm... more food! We went to a Japanese steakhouse tonight -- no leftovers this time! Here's a snap of "the volcano" taken with my Panasonic DMC FZ18 on automatic. I can't see well enough in a darkened restaurant to play with the settings. Brought it into lightroom for cropping and a vignette, then CS3 for frame and text.

001: #357 What's for dinner?

What's for dinner?

There's a big choice of leftovers in the extra fridge downstairs -- Thai, fajitas, chicken parmesan. My son has been visiting since the weekend before Christmas and I don't cook every day, but when we go out there's always too much food for me, so I take home the leftovers. I really had my eye on yesterday's leftover meatballs in spaghetti sauce for a meatball sandwich today, but that was his lunch.