Worship and Praise Sunday ~ I'd Need A Savior

***(don't forget to pause my music player in the right sidebar, before playing the video)

Today I am sharing I'd Need A Savior by Among the Thirsty!

I hope that you will listen to this song all the way through because it is awesome! I will be singing it in church in the morning for the first time and I'm excited! However I do have a bit of a sore throat and feel as if I'm getting sick, so I'm just praying that my voice will hold out, until after I'm finished singing because I don't want anything to hinder the message of the song.

Please hop on over to my friend Brittany's blog at SweetNothings, where she is hosting Worship and Praise Sunday and you can listen to more great songs. There you will also find instructions, if you would like to link up, to add your song/video.

If you would like to listen to all of the Worship and Praise videos I have shared thus far......scroll down to LABELS in my right sidebar and simply click on Worship and Praise Sunday.

Stump Plant

Manual mode
Aperture 2.8
Shutter Speed 1/320
ISO 800
Focal Length 50.0 mm
Canon Rebel XSi

This was taken at 5:31 pm in a shaded area, so I had to choose an open aperture, plus increase the ISO to let in enough light in order to get the correct exposure. This little plant growing out of the old stump caught my eye!

At Sunset!

This is one of my favorite pictures....I just love it! Andy and I were driving home and decided to stop at one of my favorite little spots, so I could take some pictures. It was so peaceful and relaxing. I'm finally remembering to bring my camera along most of the time now.
Manual mode, f/22, shutter speed 1/12, ISO 200
Do you see that weird little glare in the clouds? I asked my teacher about it and this was her reply... It's sunflare. That is when light come directly into your camera...it happens a lot with sunsets and sunrises because your are pointing your camera to the sun. It's a reflection of light on the glass in your lens.

If you use a lens hood, or even hold your hand slightly above the camera in the direction of the light you can block it.

Everything else in the image looks great! Do you have elements or photoshop? You can clone it out!
Manual mode, f/22 + 1/100 + ISO 400
The clouds were so cool!
Manual mode, f/22 + 1/12 + ISO 200
I love the clouds in this picture also and the sun setting behind the clouds was gorgeous! One thing I should mention to those of you who are learning as I am.....I should have had a shutter speed of at least 1/60 to prevent camera shake, since I was hand holding. I was sitting indian style and propping my elbows on my knees to keep my camera steady and I just got lucky. It's best to use a tripod if you're going to use a shutter speed less than 1/60. What I should have done was increased my ISO to 400, so I could have increased my shutter speed like I did in the photo above this one. Another note: If you increase your ISO that lets more light in and your picture will be lighter, so you will need to underexpose a bit to get it true to color and not lose those beautiful colors of the sunset. When you are metering....just play around with the exposure and try -1 or somewhere between -1 and -2 and you will see what I mean.

Lesson 6 : Composition ~ Hannah!

Lesson 6: Composition

Canon Rebel XSi, Focal Length 50.0 mm, Manual mode, f/4.0, Shutter Speed 1/320, ISO 400, Composition- Leading Lines.
The leading lines of the Pigeon steps lead you directly to my subject, while the line of the cement wall also creates a straight line to my subject. (I think I could have tilted my camera a little more.) I also tried to place her eye line across the top third line of the photograph!

*** Here are mine and my teacher's comments...
deje34 [Oct 19, 2009 at 03:47 AM]
This wasn't the best time of day to take this photo (4:00 PM), while the sun was still out, but I waited several days for a break from the rain and was lucky enough to get an hour where the sun came out. By the time I picked up my friend's daughter I had about 20 minutes to get some shots of her. This was a shady spot, but I'm not happy with how bright the right side of her face is. When I tried lowering the ISO, it created shadow on the left side of her face.....what could I have done about this?

candice*stringham [Nov 03, 2009 at 11:42 PM]
Debra- I think the lighting on her face is wonderful. She has great catchlights in her eyes, and the shadows fall softly on the right side. I don't think the left side is too bright at all- the shadows add depth so that she doesn't end up looking like a cardboard cutout. The overall composition shows a great use of leading lines, from the curving wall on the left to the tracks on the right. Very nice portrait.

deje34 [Nov 04, 2009 at 07:08 AM]
Candice thank you again for your comment! I'm still learning what a good portrait is supposed to look like and what lighting is good or bad. I still have a lot more to learn, but I'm getting there. I'm so glad that I got the composition right and I'm glad I captured a good portrait. Yay!!!

Lesson 5 ~ Owen Hillard....isn't he a cutie pie?

Lesson 5: Indoor Lighting

Canon Rebel XSi, Manual, Aperture 1.8, Shutter Speed 1/50, ISO 400, AWB, Focal Length 50.0 mm
(I'm finally getting this picture uploaded....I had to swipe it off of the class gallery because my computer died with all of my pictures on it. I hated having to do it this way because every time you save a picture, you lose some of the quality, but I didn't have a choice and it still looks pretty good.)
***Here are mine and my teacher's comments:
deje34
Ok, well this isn't as sharp as I wanted it to be...for some reason now I'm thinking I remember someone saying to use f 5.6 for portraits, but not sure. I had trouble holding the camera still, so most of the shots were a little blurry. I took this at church this morning and had to use Auto White Balance because Tungsten turned the photo blue.

Candice, as you can see by my settings, I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to taking portraits, hence why I will be taking your portrait class! I locked the focal point on his right eye and I'm very disappointed that his whole face wasn't more in focus. What was I thinkin' choosing f/1.8? Ugh! Should I have chosen f/2.8 or even 4.0 ? I tend to choose a low aperture because I love the look of a blurred background, plus I wanted to let in more light, so I could lower the ISO for this photo. I do LOVE how I'm drawn right to his gorgeous eyes though! Is it ever ok to choose f/1.8 for closeups and is this pic still good?

candice*stringham [Oct 25, 2009 at 08:59 PM]
You are definitely on the right track Debra! You have beautiful catchlights in his eyes which adds "sparkle" to this photo. The settings you used are fine for portraits, but this also depends on what you are trying to accomplish. When you focus on an area you have a certain amount in front of and behind that point, known as the focal plane. The focal plane runs from side to side, so anything in that same plane will be in focus. When you use an open aperture, the depth of field (the area in front and behind the focal plane) is VERY small, sometimes less than an inch.

It looks like the sharpest area is on his sleeve and his eyes are slightly behind this area of focus. With the open aperture the depth of field is very small so the eyes are a tad less sharp than the sleeve. Notice how his forearm and ears are blurred- this is because they are either too far in front or behind that focal plane. When you use a more narrow aperture such as 4.0-5.6 you have a greater depth of field, meaning you have more room in front and in back of the focal plane. Next time try increasing the ISO indoors so that you can increase the exposure some without sacrificing the shutter speed, but remember you will need to use an open aperture since there is not much light in most rooms.

deje34
Candice, thank you for answering my question and continuing to teach me! I love that you explain things in a way that I totally understand and I GET IT! Thank you so much, for taking the time to help me!

Free Jessica Sprague Class! YAY!

***(Click to enlarge!)
If you have Photoshop or Elements 7......I would highly recommend signing up for this free class. I will be signing up for it, even though my computer isn't fixed yet. Jessica's classes are usually self paced, and once you register you will have the lessons and videos forever, so if you're too busy at the moment you can still do the projects. Registration begins November 2nd, so Check it out....you won't be sorry! JessicaSprague.com

MIA because my computer died!

Just thought I should mention why I have been MIA lately....it's because my computer died. Still don't know if it can be fixed yet! I'm just hoping that I haven't lost all of my pictures. Somehow I had a feeling this was going to happen and I even mentioned to my husband, that I needed to back up my photos, but just didn't get it done in time. *sob sob* Ok, I'm not really crying....well at least not yet! Now if I lose all of my pictures....trust me I will be crying for real!!!

Hopefully, my computer will be fixed soon and I will be online and uploading pics to my blog again. This is driving me crazy!

Until then...

What Do You See?

AV mode, f/5.6, Shutter Speed 1/25, ISO 200, Focal Length 250.0 mm

When you look at this photo, what do you see? I see an Olympic Swimmer getting ready to push off the wall and begin a race! Seriously, doesn't that look like a stick figure to you? This is a cool tree that I look at, every time I'm in my hot tub. The top was destroyed by hurricane winds a couple of years ago and I'm impressed that it's still standing, since about 50 other trees around it were either snapped off at the trunk or uprooted. While I was squatting down and zooming in on it from my back deck last night, the wind was blowing so hard I thought I was going to fall over. We are having a bit of stormy weather for sure!

Yesterday morning while I was in the hot tub doing my exercises, the wind dragged two of my lounge chairs across the deck and literally picked another chair up and tossed it in the yard and then picked up my terry cloth robe off a chair and tossed it into the hot tub with me. I love being in the hot tub when it's stormy out like that...it was quite fun!

I submitted this photo, into my class gallery, as one of my creative assignments!