♦ Filed Under Too Lazy To Organize ♦
♦ Filed Under Celebrations! ♦
Well, we were going to go visit my beautiful nephew today, but Alissa is feeling a bit overwhelmed, so we’re going tomorrow instead. I can’t wait 
♦ Filed Under PhotoWhore, Sight Seeing ♦
As promised… here are some photos…
These are the Superstition Mountains from the Northwest.
♦ Filed Under Celebrations!, From the ♥, Happy Happy Joy Joy ♦
At 7:38 this morning, my nephew, Russell Ray Gere III, was born. 6lbs 12oz…
I got a photo via my cell phone, but I can’t figure out how to get it to my ‘puter, so you’ll all have to wait until the weekend to see photos, but believe me, he’s beautiful, isn’t he!!!
My first nephew!!! I’ve soo been crying every time I look at his pic!
I can’t wait to get my mitts on him this weekend! I’m gonna just gobble him up!!!
Thanks Wander for telling me how to send to my email! It never even dawned on me!!!
Goldfield photos will have to wait till tomorrow. LOL
♦ Filed Under Too Lazy To Organize ♦
This weekend was the Family Baby Shower for Alissa.
She’s due to pop any day now! LOL Her actual due date in the 11th… but I’m hoping for the 10th!!!
We all got her a bunch of small individual gifts… clothes, bibs, blankets, etc. Then, all the Aunts went in on a travel swing and everyone went in on a jumperoo thingy.
Since one of the themes she wants for my nephew is the jungle / rain forest, I was inspired and made reservations for the Rainforest Cafe for lunch… tasty…
It was actually a lot of fun. We got lucky and got a round table up against one of the walls, in a bit of a corner, so we were all able to watch her open her gifts easily and we only traffic going past us on one side.
It was also fun to play around with my new camera and try out the 1600 ISO… I loooove it!!! If you’ve ever been to The Rainforest Cafe, you know how dark it is. Here’s some of the photos I took without a flash, just with a high ISO and wide open aperture.
Then, yesterday, we all went to Goldfield Ghost Town… I’ll post those pics tomorrow LOL… I love my new camera!!!
♦ Filed Under PhotoWhore ♦
So, yesterday I had to walk some postcards down to the mailbox for someone who wanted to do a postcard swap with me. I decided to take my camera… we live in a community so we have mailboxes like apartments. There was an ocotillo cactus in bloom down there I wanted to photograph…
I figures, since I was out, I’d take a little stroll in the gully between our community and the one next to us. I found another cactus in bloom…
And then… the most awesome… My first ever wildlife in the wild… A JACKRABBIT!!! Woooot!
LOL, this little trip was definitely a learning experience. I was actually able to get closer to the bunny as it was hiding in the bushes with this perfect little window and I took multiple shots, but the lens kept focusing on the bushes. Next time I’ll try taking my telephoto lens and change from auto to manual focus!
♦ Filed Under Happy Happy Joy Joy, Must Have Precious, Shindigs, Sight Seeing ♦
This past week, my friend Lana and I were chatting about our two favorite subjects… Travel and Photography.
One thing led to another and we thought how cool would it be to go on a photo vacation. Somewhere scenic and somewhere without the guys LOL. Although, I have to admit that I wouldn’t mind having the husbands along… Knowing that I probably couldn’t pull if off because of the girls and trying to come up with the money needed, especially if it involved airfare, I had a sudden burst of inspiration… San Diego.
Every summer my parents take the girls for 2 weeks. They just happen to live in San Diego county. I happen to know San Diego, having lived in the area for about 20 years. And Lana has never been there before! I think some of the best vacations are when you are showing your town to someone who’s never been there or when you have someone who knows the area you are visiting! I could drive the girls out and drop them off at my parent’s house.
If I can save up the money for this, it would only be for gas, food, hotel (1/3 since we’d split a room) and admissions and some souvies. So, I got my sis in on this and we came up with some ideas…
- The San Diego Zoo
- The Wild Animal Park
- Sea World
- Old Town, Sea Port Village, The Star of India & The San Diego Harbor Cruise
- The Point Loma Lighthouse, Tide Pools and Mission Beach
- Coronado Island and/or Balboa Park
Through my sister’s travel agency, Lana can get round trip airfare from Madison WI to San Diego for about $320, not too shabby at all. We can also get a pass that covers The Zoo, Wild Animal Park & Sea World for $109 as well a discount on the San Diego Harbor Cruise.
I think my little thermometer saving account thingy will be making a come back LOL. We decided on next summer to give us ample time to all save up some moooolah.
♦ Filed Under Happy Happy Joy Joy, Must Have Precious ♦
I am so in love. This camera is amazing!!! It takes the best of 35mm and digital photography and bundles it up in an amazing little package! It’s so awesome to take photos through the view finder again… to set the focus, aperture, lens speed and so on. Yet it’s so easy to use! If you want to make sure the depth of field is perfect, the shutter speed will set automatically and vice versa. Or you can go all manual and control every aspect.
Here are a few photos I took just trying out different settings…
This was one of the first photos I took. It was done with the flash, yet the color tones are amazing!
My first macro shot… ok, so it wasn’t technically a macro shot, but look how soft it turned out!
I was so excited about trying out this technique! I love going to the zoo to see and (more importantly LOL) photograph animals. The biggest bitch about it though are the cages. No matter what I tried with my digicam, the lens focused on the cage. Since we have ferrets who have a cage, when I saw Moose sleeping in it, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try this out! See those shadows that go across his face? That is actually the cage bar. Now that I know how to set it all up, I can do this at the Zoo!!!
Just a random shot of Alissa… The depth of field feature rocks!!!! I love how she stands out even with all the craziness behind her… all because it’s blurred and she isn’t!
I could go on & on, but I’d probably bore you to tears… Instead, I’ll just keep taking photos and posting them when I want! LOL
