Taking Creative Christmas Pictures. . . .

It was last year at this time that we bought our Nikon D3100 camera....I only shot on automatic....for everything!


Slowly, I began how to learn to shoot in Manual mode....I read a lot of blogs and books and I still have SOOOO much to learn!


At the most recent Thrifty Thursday, Mindy from a {day with} lil mama stuart linked this idea.....custom shaped bokeh....I almost missed this fun post.....I wasn't quite sure what "bokeh" was....


According to Wikipedia, bokeh is:  /ˈboʊkə/ boh-kə,^[2] Japanese: [boke]) is the blur,^[3][4] or the aesthetic quality of the blur,^[5][6][7] in out-of-focus areas of an image

If you look carefully at Mindy's photo.....bokeh is the heart-shaped light in the background...

Read more ...

Picture taking in the Poconos. . . .

Our family is on a mini-vacation in the Pocono Mountains.....we are staying at a friend's cabin and in exchange, we are doing some painting for them!  


We had a great day at Rickett's Glen State Park....it has tons of hiking and waterfalls.  The largest one was 94 feet.....it made its own wind!

We are having a blast hiking and I am learning how to use my Nikon D 3100.....


Have you been following any of The Nester's 31 Dayers?  I am following along My 3 Barbarian's 31 Days of Photo Tips....and I am loving them!!


On Day 2 she recommended Bryan Peterson's book Understanding Exposure.  I requested it immediately from my local library and have been devouring it!


Today, I wanted to try taking shots of "cotton candy" water....my only problem....I remembered the tripod, but forgot the attachment for the camera, so some of my photos are way blurrier than they should be.....you must shoot with a tripod!

To achieve the "cotton candy" water look.....you need to shoot at a shutter speed of about 1/2.  In my light, that meant that my f setting was about 22-29.  The slower shutter speed captures the soft flow of the water.


Compare it to this shot, where I had an open aperture ( f 5.6) and a fast shutter speed....

There's so much to learn about taking good pictures that it just makes my head spin....the fun part of this trip....just spending time with these monkeys....

How are you spending your fall?



Thrifty Thursday will be a little later tonight.....look for it around 11 pm EST!

Read more ...

Customized Sizes for Blog Pictures

Customizing the size of your pictures is super-easy!  I first saw the idea over at Funky Junk Interiors!  I made some changes to make Donna's suggestions fit my blog.


Here are your standard Blogger picture size suggestions:


Small

Medium

Large

X-Large

Because my picture is vertical, the X-Large size works, but normally, a horizontal picture will spill over into my sidebar and that just looks sloppy.

There's an easy way to customize your pictures to fit your blog page.  If you are on Blogger, go under Edit HTML.

Once there, you are going to look for something that looks like this....it's the html code for your photo.

From here, you are going to make the following changes...

Delete what I have highlighted in YELLOW.  

It will now look like this:

I have removed the height and the width.  

The last thing that I will do is change this "s" number:

You will need to customize it specifically for your own blog.  For me, I change all my photos to s500.  That makes the photos fit perfectly within the boundaries of my sidebars.  

The actual photo size looks like this:

Here's the photo at s300:

You'll need to do some experimenting to find the custom size that you like the best!

Making little changes to your photos like Editing in Picassa and changing the size can make big differences in the appearance of your blog!

Read more ...