Winter beauty

Since winter is beginning to feel really long already I had to push myself into finding beauty in all it's coldness. I took the camera and went for a walk around my gardens to see what struck me as interesting. The lens I was using is a 50mm which is the most like how a human eye sees.

I wanted to practice with aperture. Aperture is the amount of light getting into the camera. The size of the aperture effects the amount of the scene that will have sharp focus known as depth of field. Aperture is indicated by f-stops, which on many cameras (even point and shoots) you can set your f-stop.

If you want to stray away from the automatic setting on your camera read this, otherwise you can skip this next paragraph.

Using a small aperture or large f-stop (f16) brings the entire photo in focus, it's like looking with your eyes wide open. With a large aperture or small f-stop (f4) the main item you are looking at is the only item in focus, like squinting your eyes and then everything behind and in front of the item starts to get blurry. On all cameras there is a dial that lets you choose portrait (usually a side view of a head) with this chosen your f-stop is going to be small so the item the camera hits for focus is clear and the rest is somewhat out of focus, the smaller f-stop is found by choosing the tulip icon, meaning macro. The other setting is landscape (usually a mountain with a sun) with this chosen your f-stop is large so the entire scene is in focus. A mistake many people make is choosing the portrait setting for all people.... If your taking pictures of a group of people at different depths use the landscape setting otherwise the closest person will be in focus and the others will be slightly blurred. To try this line up a bunch of the same items like 5 pairs of shoes, put your camera on the macro setting (or to the manual AV setting) stand on one end of the row and focus the camera on the beginning of the row and then again at the middle of the row. You will be amazed with how interesting this knowledge will help you love your pictures.

This is a grapevine wreath that is weathering on a bench. The only item in focus is the little curl in the branch. The rest of the wreath is slightly out of focus and the back of the bench is so far out of focus that you wouldn't even know it was a bench unless I told you. Too bad at the time I didn't realize I would go here or I could have taken a picture with a large f-stop to show you the difference.

F-stop 1.2

Shutter speed 1/1600 sec

ISO 100

And just because I wanted to see this little curl closer here is a bonus picture. This is the same photo just cropped closer and changed to sepia.

Let me know if you like the challenges, I'll try to give you more. If you try this please post your pictures on your blog I'd love to see them. Speaking of your blogs.... my niece told me a story last night that made me giggle so hard that I have to share. She sees Patti, yes you Patti, in the grocery store and all excited and giddy says "Hi, how are you?".... Patti says "fine" and they part. My niece thinks.... hummm what happened? Oh that's right I don't know her in real life only blog life, she has no idea who I am. So Patti the overly friendly girl in the grocery store is my niece Shawna and she loves your blog.