Got to go out and shoot some more today... I've been wanting to catch the sunset for some time now. I should have been there earlier but what whatever. I can't complain.

Looking back at that bridge shot... way too much noise... should have shot at lower ISO but not sure there would have been enough light to do that.

Sounding Board

Feel free to skip over this... It's just me studying... :)

Exposure- how much light you allow to reach your camera sensor.

The amount of light that reaches the sensor(exposure) is the result of the interaction of three factors being, your ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.

ISO- International Standard Organization: A rating scale used to determine how sensitive a sensor is in reading light.

Depending on your camera, it can be anywhere between 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, or 6400. Each step represents a doubling of the sensors sensitivity to light.
With lower ISO being less sensitive, and higher ISO being more sensitive. With higher ISO the camera loses it's ability to record detail. Your photos will be less sharp and have more noise. Shoot at the lowest ISO possible!

Aperture- refers to the mechanism inside the lens which controls the amount of light which passes through the lens to the sensor when the shutter opens.

Snack attack... ok so I've been working on this for hours... and looking forward to some of my All Dressed chips after my hard work... well I go downstairs and grab the bag only to find it has been devoured with a few crumbs left in the bottom of the bag! Oh man... so much for snack attack...

Anyways.. back to work.

Aperture- most cameras range from f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11 and f/16. Each increment represents a halving or doubling of the amount of light that will pass through the lens to the sensor during the exposure. Contrary to ISO, the larger the f/stop number the less light will pass through the lens. Example: f/4 let's in more light then f/8.

Aperture effects the depth of field or DOF. The smaller the aperture setting, the less depth of field. If you want more of the image in focus use a higher number of f/stop. If you want a very shallow depth of field use a smaller number f/stop.

Shutter Speed- represents how long the cameras sensor is exposed to light, measured in seconds.

Rules of Thumb regarding Shutter Speed

To take sharp photos, your shutter speed must be equal to or more then the reciprocal of your focal length for non-moving objects. Example: if you are shooting at 55mm, your shutter speed must be at least 1/60. To freeze movement in your photos, you must be shooting at least at 1/500.

Are you getting all this?? I know I'm not... see I go over some of my pics and for instance there is one of these berries... here let me show you. Ahh I can't find it... Time to go to bed... anyways f/11 and super shallow depth of field so what the heck?

Ah whatever... I'll finish another night. Chances are you'll have to put up with me studying for a while.

Put me to sleep...

I did something today that I haven't done in a LONG time. I watched two movies, back to back. First one, pretty woman... which wasn't as wholesome as I remembered it being... and then Penelope... which is a teeny bopper of a chick flick. Not half bad if I do say so myself...

It's past one and I should so be in bed! I just started getting back into somewhat of a regular sleeping habit since my cold and now it's all shot! I'll pay for this tomorrow big time... I went online just to check my messages and happened to drop in to chat and stayed for an hour! People made me so darn hyper! And that's why I'm here. I have no good book to read so this was the next best thing. I have no good pics to post so I'm feeling cheep...

Ahh... well let's see if I can pull something up..



It;s still in need of post processing... that's right brother! I said it! But it's likely going to be one of my entries for the contest.

Hmm... what else should I tell you.

My shallow breathing is not helping the creative juices flow here... people are stressing me out lately. I should have pre-anticipated that... wait a minute.. I DID pre-anticipate that! Well would you look at that...just not quite at this force. And maybe it's not even the people that are causing it...

Here I go again... being all random and stuff.. For a while now I have thought about renaming, revamping my blog. Just wasn't liking Chaotic Harmony anymore... besides.. it's not all that chaotic around here anymore. It's about time to throw another little person in here just to shake things up a little...

My girls were telling me about this gargantuan puzzle they have at youth.. that's where I would have spent my whole evening without a doubt. So yeah... Pieces of Me. That shall be the new name... bits and pieces... when I get around to it that is. Which may not be for a while...

Oh and on a different thought... I finally managed to get some oomph back in me to tackle this fraudulent french door again... have it mostly cleaned and ready to go. Man this better turn out right this time!

This one is SO overshot as is but one almost has to have it in their portfolio.
Would have been better with a tripod, but one thing at a time...

Surprise!

Ok so you know the story about my french doors, and you know how it was a surprise for Conrad and how I only managed to get half of it done before he got home. I'm thinking that may have been a good thing... Take a look at these....

This is a picture of the first door I did... before Conrad got home... you probably don't see much of the actual "frost" but I'm sure you'll see what my problem is...



This is the second door...



What the heck? Get my drift? Now I did everything the same way from how and with what I cleaned the doors right down to the product and application... So not happy to say the least! What the heck went wrong? Now I have to go and hunt the Rona guy down and.. well.. it won't be pretty. :) Imagine that was how the first door turned out! Conrad would have been so pleased! lol

Gottta feed the kids...

Well it's Sunday night, Conrad is back home and despite of my fears the weekend went by without much if any trouble at all. It feels uncanny for me to be saying this but each and every one of them was rather well behaved. Friday night I drove my older girls to and from youth and in between that my three muskateers and I went to the Forks for some ice cream and took in some of the live entertainment.

Saturday morning I made french toast and we had a great breakfast together. I picked up some items at the grocery store and then C, L, S and I went to a little carnival in our hood. We only stayed an hour but it beat last year when they shut the place down just as we got to the ponies. L cried and cried that day... So it truly was a joy to see her proudly galloping along. Maybe I'll get around to posting some pics... Then took H to drums, did some errands for grandmas, and met up with Shivvy for supper at Dennys. Kids eat free on Saturdays... although you wouldn't know it seeing as my kids were the only ones in the whole joint. Anyways... came home, threw the kids in the bath, and got my house ready for entertaining. Had some friend over and that was that. Sunday morning we did church, came home, oh... and the most impressive part of the weekend! Not only did I run the show on my own all weekend long, I managed to tackle a home improvement project to surprise Conrad with when he got back!

See one crazy day our family had a water fight. What's crazy about that? Well not too much except that we had it in side the house and not outdoors. So our upstairs bathroom had a set of frosted double doors. Well... to make the long story short my "frosted" doors were no longer frosted. They just looked nasty after that day and it was rather annoying.. more for Conrad then me living in a house full of girls and lacking that privacy so I decided that I was gonna fix it while he was gone and so I did. Well sort of. I'm half done, gotta get another can from Rona tomorrow and gosh darn it, it looks good if I do say so myself! I only killed about half of my brain cells just from all the toxic fumes and all but whatever!!!

Then we went to see a movie... Kungfu Panda.. it wasn't excellent or anything but not bad. It certainly had it's moments and if you like Jackie Chan movies this is kinda like the cartoon version of it.

Ok, seriously my brain is still hurting so I gotta sign off... another time...

LOL

Haha!!! That was so totally not right! Oh well...

Ahhh!!!!

Ok, looking back at those previous pics, there really not all that great. We'll have to redo that.

I should post my new stuff of H and some of our Yurt weekend like promised. In a minute...

Here is a tip for parents of younger ones that I've discovered. If you keep the music loud enough it will satisfy their need for noise and hence significantly reduce the amount of bickering going on. I wish I had learned this earlier on...

Back to school... honestly... last year I was SO ready for my older girls, and Conrad for that matter to go back. Not that I didn't enjoy their presence (for the most part anyway) but you know what they say, too much of a good thing and... Anyways. I just needed life to go back to some kind of routine. This year I'm not so keen on it. I feel like I hardly get to see H and M and with all the kids only getting older it seems that Conrad and I have more and more of those days where we are little more then two ships passing in the night. My head hurts when I think of all the things that we will be picking up again... house group starting tomorrow, GEMS for L, Squad 1.5 for S, Youth for M and H, hockey for Dad, hockey for S, Ladies group, drum lessons... AHHAHHH!!! Oh well... it's all good. I'm sure it will work out fine.

Cool thing is, I just ordered my camera bag. It's just the one I wanted. Tamrac Velocity 8X. Blue. You should google it. It's totally cool. I can fit my camera w. lens on, two extra lenses and a flash plus some other extras.Not that I have all that gear yet but with some patience... Urggg!!! I can not believe I have to wait 2-3 weeks to get my hands on it! Like I haven't waited enough. But I'm kinda impressed with myself that I still went for despite of the long wait. I guess when you want what you want you gatta do what you gotta do.

Ok so bout them pics... I'm fading kinda fast... You know it's time to go to bed when you find yourself starting blankly at the screen without moving a single muscle for minutes at a a time...

But tomorrow is a day off, yeah!

And the Yurt if I can track it down....







And last but not least, our Dessert Pizza... C, L, and S, and I made it. Pretty impressive if I do say so myself. Oh shute... I don't know where that's gonna end up but whatever, You'll figure it out.