And I guess I could mention the fact that there is over a foot of snow surrounding our house and we have to shovel out a little pee spot for Macie out the front door, because the back door is just snowed right up the stairs and we'd basically loose her in a snow drift if we opened the back door...but, ya know...everything is just like NORMAL...
I suppose I could add that I think the girls have been OUT of school more than they have been IN school due to snow days in the past 2 weeks...but, really...just the typical NORMAL occurances here in the Italian household...
Well..now that that is out of the way, thought I'd share a few photo tips for anyone interested...and if not, that's okay you can peruse a couple of pictures an then link over to a more interesting blog of your choice and that's fine by me...
Man, talk about change the subject...sorry...no eloquent words coming to me at the moment...
So, let's talk aperature...
Huh?
APERATURE...we can say it together: A per a chur
It's a funky name for how much light you let into your lens in order to take a photograph. There are numbers that represent how wide the opening is through which that light is let in. The numbers on a SLR camera range from 1.4 up to 22...and it can seem a little backward, but bear with me...
The smaller the number, the MORE light
The bigger the number, the LESS light
So, if you have your aperature dial set to something like 2.8...you are letting in a lot of light, the "hole" through which light comes into your lens is wider and allows more light to come through...in doing this, you are given more "peripheral vision" which translates to BLUR in a photo.
Another way to picture this is to cup your hands up to your eye like a telescope...make the opening really small...do you see that everything is in focus in the opening...now widen your hands...if you look straight ahead, you'll notice that the things in your peripheral vision are blurred...(did that just make sense?...I would so take a picture of myself doing this, but I'm in my pjs as I write this and it's not a pretty picture) Basically when you have a tiny telescope, that's like having an aperature set at anywhere from 7 to 22...you're not letting in as much light, but everything in the view finder is in focus...if you widen it up (aperature of 1.8-4) you're going to get some blurry stuff.
Here's a better example: This picture had an aperature of 2...which means that Peanut's tooth was in focus, while everything else had lots of blur in the background. The hole was really big, so whatever the center of my camera (in my view finder) focused on, well that was clear...everything else blurred.
Remember these crazy monkeys from a little while back?
This photo had an aperature of 2.8 It works the same way as the image before, in that, one thing is in focus and everything else on the peripheral is blurred. This time, I focused on something in the back, while the monkey more towards the front is blurry.
I LOVE these kinds of pictures...that's probably why I keep my 50mm/1.8 lens on almost all the time...I like having a lot of control over the aperature so I can get those buttery blurs...
So how do you go about getting your camera ready? Well, first of all...if you have never taken your camera off of AUTO...take a deep breath..you CAN do it!
Find the dial on your camera that all those pictures and letters MASP on it and dial it over to A...this is Aperature Mode...It means that you ONLY have to worry about setting your aperature and then the camera will do the rest for you! Once it's on A...find the other dial that controls the number (also known as the F-stop)...you'll know it's the right dial because when you roll it, numbers will change somewhere on your little screen from 22 all the way down to as low as your lens will allow...(sometimes that's only 4.5, but go as low as you can)
Your camera will take care of the Shutter Speed (don't worry, I'll cover that another time)
Now, focus your camera on something fairly close to you (and for fun sake, put some other stuff in the background, like marbles or books or laundry:) Snap your picture.
Here's one that I took on Valentine's Day:
Hope you have fun...
