Doggy playdate

The doggy playdates between Kirby and Maddie are ramping back up, now that it's usually cool enough for them to play more than two minutes without risk of heat exhaustion. I'm still in the figuring-it-out stage with my new camera, so you might get some more of these in a week (except better! I hope). Anyway, here are the dogs having at it:

Time for a panting break.

And we're back in the game!

Kirby with her crazy face on.

Happy dog.

Today it is sixty six degrees

Let's talk about how amazing 66 degrees is. I'm wearing long pants, a shirt, AND a sweater. My toes are chilly. The sun is out. It's fucking spectacular.

Yesterday was the first day of fall. Colin called me from his run with his dog and told me I might want to step outside with my camera. It was sunset and a storm was blowing through north of us.

I'm still figuring out how to make the best use of my new camera to create the effects I want or capture an image the most accurately. Colin has been teaching me how to use Photoshop and Camera Raw, so I played around with some of these. Photoshop is still way beyond my comfort level, but Camera Raw is a lot easier to use for the simpler stuff that I'm more likely to want to do.

I got a Minolta-Canon adapter so I can use my manual Minolta lenses on my Canon camera. The picture above was taken with one of my Minolta lenses, but it came out terribly. I have a lot of learning to do to figure out how to take good pictures on this new camera with those lenses. Anyway, I tweaked this one a lot in Raw and turned a terrible, overexposed, undefined picture into something kind of cool.

I like that you can see the storm and the reflection of the sunset in this one.

This picture used to have a light pole in it. Can you tell where? (Photoshop is kind of neat.)

These are my housemates

Don't let these pictures fool you. The dogs are not more dignified than the people.

New camera! New camera!

I started saving for a DSLR camera last fall because I've been wanting one for a long time. I was at a job that didn't make me very happy, but paid well. If you can't use that sort of situation to buy something nice for yourself, what the hell is the point?

Starting in late spring I began agonizing over which camera to get. The process was made easier when I found an excellent Canon lens that I wanted. I finally took the plunge about a week ago. Here are some shots taken with my new Canon T3i and the 50mm f/1.4 lens that I got. All of these shots (except the second from the top) are taken indoors in dim evening light. They've been corrected a tiny tiny bit for white balance, but that's it.

I'm thinking this new plaything will probably bring me back to blogging. Oh yeah, I'll write about the kiddos soon.