Weekly Header Challenge - Purple

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Feel free to click on the other participants' blogs

to see what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Purple

I didn't think I'd use this picture for my header--it's not all about purple!  But since I just took it, and since purple is a dominant feature in the rainbow (the I-ndigo and V-iolet of the ROYGBIV colors), I figured I'd feature it.  It's a reminder of God's promise to never flood the earth again.  It was especially significant this past Sunday, since these were the very storms that brought tornadoes and devastation to our nearby Illinois towns.  It was a triple rainbow for not-quite-enough-time for me to get a picture, but a double rainbow is pretty special, and I've never captured any rainbow from end to end.

Now, lest I persist with piles of paragraphs and punctuation, I present to you, dear people, my purple pictures!

Chives in bloom.

Honeybee on purple variegated beard tongue.

Jacob graduating from JJC.

Purple clematis.

Wildflower at a local park, hiding deep in the grass.

Crocus at a friend's home.

Scilla in my spring garden (it's more blue than purple).

Convocation at Western Illinois University.

Purple onion growing in my garden.

Purple fireworks (looks kinda blue, huh?).

Grape preserves canned last September--yum!

Thanks for perusing my plentiful pictures!  Perchance you'll pass this way again soon!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - Panning

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Feel free to click on the other participants' blogs

to see what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Panning

For this week's header, I chose the only picture I have of true panning!  I took it (there really are two!) for a photography class lesson on...panning lol, and capturing action.  Here are the two full images I took:

For this class lesson, I asked Danny (left) and his friend Nathan to run by me.  Since we were doing this after church on a bright, sunny Sunday literally at noon, I knew I'd have to fiddle with settings in order to achieve the blurred panning look I wanted.  The settings:

• ISO 100
• Canon 17-85mm lens at 28mm
• f/22
• 1/30 second shutter speed

The reason behind the settings:  I recall trying to get a slow enough shutter speed to achieve blur in the image, so I set the shutter speed first and adjusted the rest so the images would be properly exposed.  In the bright noon sunlight, this meant the lowest ISO possible, and a pretty high f-stop.

I also used the AI Servo focus mode so that the camera would continually focus/refocus as I panned with the guys.  This form of panning is a great way to achieve a sense of motion, if that's what you want to convey in the image.

I do use panning, just not with the above effect.  For Thomas' football team, for which I was the official team photographer, I had to pan with the players running around on the field.  I did not want to have the blur, however; I wanted the sharpest images possible, to stop the action in the image.  Here's a series of images I took of Jonah, the team's captain, as he ran with the ball one play:

In order to achieve the stop-action look, I knew I had to set my shutter speed at 1/500 second or faster (according to the quick research I did as a non-sports photographer!).  So I set the shutter speed and set everything else to jive with it:

• ISO 500
• Canon 70-300mm lens at 170mm
• f/5
• 1/1000 second

Fortunately, this was an afternoon game, meaning lots of light.  My 70-300mm lens is not the best, but by bumping up the ISO to achieve a fast shutter speed, I could get a nice overall sharpness.  The F-stop was set as low as the lens would let me.  And, of course, I used AI Servo focus to continually focus/refocus as Jonah ran up the field.  (BTW, I captured a little face-mask action there--tsk, tsk, Jonah!)

One final shot, but it's not really panning.  Panning is basically moving the camera in order to follow the subject.  But what if the subject is stationary?  Can you still move the camera somehow and achieve a blurred effect?  You sure can.  :)

Now, I'm no expert, haha.  But I read about this particular technique right before Fernando and I went to Paris.  And there was a stationary subject that leant itself to this technique, in my mind, so I figured I'd try it.  And what came out of my camera was pretty cool.  Here it is, the Arc de Triomphe on a beautiful Friday evening:

It's called zoom blur, and it's achieved by keeping your camera stationary, but turning the lens to zoom in (or out) while the shutter is open.  Click here if you want to read a detailed tutorial.  But basically, the essentials are a steady hand (or tripod), a slow shutter speed, and a zoom lens of course!  As soon as you click the shutter, twist the zoom lens in (or out depending on how you started).  The settings:

• ISO 100
• Canon 17-85mm lens starting at 85mm, ending at 17mm as I twisted
• f/4
• 1.3 second shutter speed

Here's another tutorial (click here) if you're intrigued; the really cool images are the three examples at the end.  I'd like to experiment more with zoom blur; I think it achieves a sense of motion in a unique way!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - Memories

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Feel free to click on the other participants' blogs

to see what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Memories

When I first saw the theme for this week, my mind took a trip down...  Oh, well, you know.  :)

I immediately thought of Christmas last year, which had an added element of special-ness to it.  See, last June my parents celebrated their silver anniversary, but due to selling their house so quickly in May, they had to spend an extended summer up at their Lake Bonaparte summer house while their new house back home was being built.

Because they stayed through September, we never really had a chance to celebrate their anniversary with the entire family--even though there are only 11 of us altogether!  We just were never able to get everybody together at the same time.

Here's a picture of my dad and mom that I took for their 2011 Christmas cards:

So the months went by, and we finally decided to wait until Christmas to present our "labor of love" to them.  It was a memory book of their lives, before marriage, then celebrating all the years they've been together since.  It was filled with old pictures (many digitally scanned by my younger brother) and other digital images sent in by family and friends, with words of encouragement and blessing sprinkled throughout.  It truly was a memory book for them!

Here is the photo documentary, from them opening the gift, to our little extended family gathered around, enjoying leafing through the pages of time.

Yeah, my dad's pretty goofy.

I love my parents, and I love the memories they've given me over the years.  It was a blessing to give back to them.  :)


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - No Fear

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Feel free to click on the other participants' blogs

to see what they've come up with!

Theme ~ No Fear

I'm posting rather late in the day, so fewer words with my pictures this time!  (So sorry I'm late!)

I got to choose the theme for this week.  Since Halloween tends to be about death and all things dark, and scaring the pants off people, I decided to go against the grain and challenge my colleagues to find images that show No Fear.

One day, Thomas was leaping over things.  So, we went outside (it was March) and I set up my tripod, cranked up the ISO to get a super-fast shutter speed (it was dismal and gray out), and he ran and jumped.  He almost didn't clear the glass-topped patio table.  Yikes!  But he showed no fear, and actually jumped 3-4 times.  Here's the sequence from which I pulled my header image:

Later, in a photography class I took, we had to take pictures showing motion--whether stop motion or motion blur.  So we went to a grassy area near our house and set up some sawhorses.  Danny and Thomas both jumped and had tons of fun doing it.

I love the below of Thomas, because you don't know where he jumped from, nor where he is headed.  Looks like he's flying!

Danny decided to be all acrobatic and everything, twisting in the air.  These next two shots show him traveling from right to left, spinning backwards then landing forwards.  Crazy kid.

I also loved capturing their expressions.  It truly was an art form for them.  Here's a funny:  While we were jumping and photographing, one car stopped, the driver leaned over toward the passenger window, and he took a picture of us!  Maybe he thought we were filming for a movie or something.  It was pretty hilarious.  After all the jumping, we walked across the street to Andy's, our absolute favorite ice cream (frozen custard) shop, because of course we had worked up an appetite.  ;)

My conclusion:  Teenage boys have no fear.  :)


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge -- Who Done It?

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Feel free to click on the other participants' blogs

to see what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Who Done It?

I thought I'd have a hard time coming up with some images for this theme.  But, scrolling through past images helped me see that I did have a lot of images that I felt fit!  The Who Done It? question conjures up mystery, as in either "Who did what happened in this picture?" or "What is going on in this picture?"

I supposed I could've chosen any one of the below images you'll see for my header, but this first image was creepy enough for me to make it shine up top.  Basically, Danny and I were cleaning out the garage, and we came across an old VCR that Fernando put out there on his workshop counter.  Something had gone wrong with it, and he thought he'd get around to fixing it some day.  But, when we followed a trail of critter droppings we found during clean-up, it led us to the largest concentration near said VCR.  When we spotted something moving inside the VCR, we knew we were in trouble.  We suspected a mouse, so we put the VCR in a see-through Rubbermaid tote box and shined a flashlight in.  I captured the below foot, and you might be able to see the tail.  Creepy, huh?

And then through the plastic bin, the critter popped his head out to see what was up.

And that's who dunnit.  :)  Here are the rest of my themed images for this week:

Who broke my favorite tea mug?  I did, while washing it.  Grr.

Who scored the strike?  Probably my son Thomas last year, when we used to bowl with my parents on a weekly basis.

Who made the splash?  Fernando, the biggest guy in the pool.  Our friends' kids thought it was awesome.  :)

Okay, skip the fact that they're nice-looking legs.  I don't know who they are, but I took the picture at this Labor Day parade because I wanted to know Who in their right minds would walk an entire parade in those shoes?
 

It looks like Thomas is guilty of the mess, but all of us contributed it to it.  He just posed for me for extra effect.

This below was not a fun phone call.  Jacob, who had just left to drive to his first internship, took a turn a teensy wide and grazed (okay, more than grazed) the curb, blowing out the tire.  Another grr.

We came to his rescue, then made him fix it.

Who got my garden gloves all dirty?  Well, I did, of course!  They are awesome gloves and came pretty clean easily enough.

Who made this mountain of packing paper so high that her mother couldn't get into her own master bedroom of her new house on move-in day?  Ahem, no comment.  ;)

My mom.  (I was trying to make her laugh on a stressful day.  It worked.)

My sweet Joseph spent an hour flattening the paper for his grandparents.

Jacob (the 22yo tire-smashing son from above) was helping me bake Thanksgiving pies last year, and the recipe called for a stick and a half of butter, cut up.  Which is what he did.

There's a boy in those shoes!  Danny climbed in under the ping pong table (moving my parents' stuff out of our house into their new one--finally!!), in order to get stuff tied down properly for the drive.

And, that's who done it!!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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