Summer, Family and Fun!

It's that time of year when family gets together for reunions and other stuff.  We have two family reunions in a row this summer, so we've already got family trickling in, even though they don't start until next week.  My brother and his daughter drove in from Chicago last night, and we spent the day hanging out with them.  I had my camera out (of course) so I took a few shots of us lounging in the living room after dinner.

Our house is hot right now because the A/C is a little wimpy, so most of us were in shorts and t-shirts, and spread out as much as we could be, except for Steen.  haha!  Unfortunately, Tina was upstairs on the phone when I took these, so she isn't represented in this series, but I'll make sure to catch her later.

I love my family!

First Month Down!

So last month I started a 3-6-5 Photo challenge where I have to take a picture every day for 365 in a row (click here to see my last entry about it).  I also have to write a little blurb about each photo, and post it on the blog I created for it.

Now that I've got one month under my belt with this photo challenge (yeehaw!), I'm getting a pretty good feel of what I'm doing.  Below are the pictures from last month which I posted on my other blog, along with my favorite shot from the month.  Enjoy!

Favorite shot for June:

Candid

So I'm starting my laptop up to download some pictures from my camera when Stine walks in from the bathroom and says, "I was thinking I could do two things at once, and then I realized...my hands are tied."

I looked up to see what she was talking about, and saw this:

HA!

That was a good one, Stine...

Learning to Use the F-Stop

I'm not a self-proclaimed professional by any means, and I barely know my way around my own camera. But I'm try to learn more about photography and all that stuff, so when I read a short tutorial the other day on the difference between a "shallow" and a "deep" background, I decided to try it out.

Leaving all the boring details aside (for those of you who just care about the pictures), here's the result of my little test:

Shallow background (f-stop was at the smallest aperture I could get - 22 I think):

Deep background (f-stop was at 3.5 - the widest aperture I could get in this lighting):

Conclusion:
Awesome!

Easter

I didn't really "celebrate" Easter this year...at least not in the sense of the Easter Bunny.

But my brother and his family did come over to watch conference with us and dye a few Easter eggs.  Of course, I forgot to get a single shot of the cool eggs we colored, but I did get these awesome shots of my niece after she rubbed easter egg all over her face:

Priceless.

Having fun with Macro!

I decided to test out my new 10x Macro lens yesterday after work.  Here are a few of the good ones:

These next three shots were my favorite, and even though I did some post processing, I think I still prefer the untouched versions:

My Christmas

Sadly, I hurt my back on Christmas morning, so I took a sparse amount of pictures during my 10-day break.  Still, there's something to be said of minimalistic photography...

I may not have taken many, but I got a few good ones (when they weren't blurry):

Us on Christmas morning eating our huge breakfast before opening presents! (BEFORE I hurt my back)

Baby Lauren's first exposure to Christmas Crackers (her parents' as well, I believe).

I love babies in big hats...and they usually like them too!

My brother James and his family came to visit the week after Christmas, and his youngest son was a crack-up.  Here's one of my favorite shots of William watching The Iron Giant for the first time...CLASSIC!

I never got any good shots of James and Rachel, or many of their kids, but this one of James makes me laugh (and actually, Christine took it):