New lens...

I got a new lens and haven't had a lot of time to play with it yet since I got a new job finally. But I got these 2 pics of Daisy today. She's so funny, she makes us laugh all the time.

Snow

We got some snow last night and are still getting some now. The weathermen really messed up this forecast. We went from expecting 10-16 inches to barely getting 4 inches here at my house.

Anyway, I threw Daisy in the snow and tried to get some pics of her - she's really difficult to photograph because she moves all over the place (unless you put her on a table like I did in previous pics). I ended up having to hook her up to the tie-out so she wouldn't run away on me.

Here's the best of the worst!

A day at Kelly Drive and Main Street Manayunk

Jess finally got her camera!! So I finally have someone to go out and shoot with. It's so much more fun learning that way. We headed to Kelly Drive by the Philadelphia Art Museum:

Water Works

Boathouse Row


Another shot of Boathouse Row. Jess was doing a photoshoot with the geese.

Philadelphia Art Museum (side shot)

Then we headed to Main Street in Manayunk. One of our favorite places is the Manayunk Brewery. We always have a great time there, especially in the spring and summer when we can hang out on the back deck along the Schuylkill River.

Jess with her pregnancy glow

We found this awesome rock wall with some moss growing on it, and some strange blue coloring. It was so neat to come across such great colors in the drab winter landscape.

Daisy did some posing for us

And I happened to get an accidental panning picture! I've read a lot about panning and how it takes a lot of practice but you can sometimes get them accidentally. I was pretty proud of this one.

Daisy

When you're playing with your camera, you need things to take pictures of. The easiest thing for me is my dog, Daisy. She's adorable. But she hates having her picture taken. It's pretty evident in the pictures I take, but it's so funny when she runs away when she sees me pull the camera out.

My living room is painted this amazing blue color. I took the opportunity to play with some daylight photography since losing my job last week. Here are a few of my faves:

The Beginning

So a few weeks ago I purchased my first ever DSLR camera. The Nikon D60. It's my new baby, my pride and joy. I'm having a ball getting familiar with it. My ultimate goal is to just have fun with it. So far it's brought me loads of joy. I can only imagine how much fun I'll be having with it when Spring finally comes and there's more exciting things to take pics of outdoors.

In the meantime, check out the progression from day 1 with the camera to now:





Finally I was able to take a few quick pictures outside with Daisy in the daylight:









And eventually I got so sick of trying to figure out how to take correct exposures indoors with the awful lighting we have so I purchased Understanding Exposure: How To Shoot Great Photographs With a Film or Digital Camera by Bryan Peterson. This book is incredible. It was beyond enlighting by page 20 of the book. The picture examples to help explain things were beyond helpful. It's a quick read and definitely a book that I will be referring to as needed in the future. I definitely recommend this book to any new DSLR user.

So once I started playing around with what I learned from the book, I was able to get these pictures which were leaps and bounds better than the above photos:

The moral of the story is - I've still got a ton to learn, but I'm going to enjoy it in the meantime :)