Here are the photos:

Syran: She is gettin up there in age, but is very pretty. Here is Tanya’s version of today’s photo.

Maul: This is using one of our backdrops. (foamboard). He was really not happy when I brought him into the bedroom to shoot these. But, after about 20 minutes (Tanya and I shooting pictures) he got kind of tired of it all, and tried to go to sleep. Here is Tanya’s Version.

Paints: I was running out of time to get a picture on this day, since I had been painting miniatures all evening. I tossed this together really quick, with my macro lens.

Dinner: This was quite yummy. The recipe is posted here.

Tony and Anna: Our friends came over, and we had been planning on going out and getting a picture. The picture from the NEXT night, was my origional idea, but the parking lot was closed. Tanya came up with going to the Anne Frank memorial. This bridge is right there. This was done in High Dynamic Range, along with the Topaz Adjust filter.

The Boise Depot: This picture is taken off the top of one of the downtown parking garages. I had wanted to take this pictuer the night before, but the garage was closed. This was taken with my 250mm lens, and cropped in some.

There are this week’s photos. Watch for next week’s photos, starting with an HDR shot of the mountains of Idaho City!

From a technical standpoint, photography is the art of capturing the light that is reflected off your subject. With the example above, about the night shooting, over Boise, you are capturing the light itself. Figuring out HOW to do that, properly, is a trick. I am ATTEMPTING to capture the vista, in camera, how I want it to turn out, with the least amount of tweaking. This particular shot was shot at 75mm, using f/4, ISO 100 and a 10 second exposure time. A lot of the lights pop MORE than what I want, it was the best of the bunch, the most crisp looking. After I did some processing in raw, and over-saturated some of the colors, I thought that the picture took on a life of its own.

My previous post about low-light, was more concerned with the WHERE to shoot from. This one is more about the why. As I learn more about photography, I get better. In the week between the previous night shot of Boise, and the latest night shot. I have read more, learned more, and upgraded my camera to a Canon XSi. I am pretty sure the biggest change between the previous week and this later week, was a MUCH nicer camera, but that is not all. I noticed with my Canon A650 IS, a LOT of the shots were blurry. This last time I went up, instead of having my tripod behind my car, I put my car between the wind, and the tripod. With the 10, 20, and longer exposures, this made all the difference in the world. It are these little things, that all add up to make a photographer great. I have to look around, and figure out what aspects of a shot I am able to master, and then I try to figure out a method to master them. I am sure that someone with years of experience would have noticed the wind right away, and shielding the camera from the wind, would not have required a conscious thought.

So, I have discovered, I like shooting at night. My other favorites I have discovered are macro, and taking shots of patterns. Finally, I DO love my daughter, as a subject. She is a real ham, and does an amazing job in the front of the camera. Oh, and this weekend, my daughter got her FIRST digital camera. A 5MP, Kodak digital camera I picked up used for her. She had been asking for a camera, to be like daddy for a long time. I look forward to our adventures together.

As I was returning to my car, I heard a scrabbling sound above me, and looked up. There was a herd of deer up there! I started taking pictures. I fired off a bunch of pictures. I was there long enough, that the herd came down the hill, and went over to the lot I had been shooting pictures of Boise from! It was pretty cool. I fired off 34 pictures, and got 1 that is ok. Most are about snapshot quality. The biggest problem, was shooting in low-light again. I was kind of fighting my camera tonight, on the low-lighting issue. It kept jumping up to ISO800, which is TERRIBLY noisy. Though, the deer were not keeping still much, so running at a lower ISO with a longer shutter, may not have worked well, either.

I started my trip off, looking for the road up to Table Rock. It has been a LOT of years since I last went up there. Even though, I did not find it intially, I did find a cool spot, to shoot from.
After I packed up, I decided to look around to see if I could find where the road to Table Rock was. I DID find it, though, there is now a gate they lock after sundown. On the way back down the hill, I found a great shot of Boise. By this time, it was pretty dark, so Boise was alight, with, uh, light. I took some pictures, and a few turned out pretty cool, though, it could have been better. I tried running at ISO 100, with a long shutter, and that did not work. There was a bit of wind, and I NEVER thought some wind would cause my camera to shake as much as it did.