Pear Tree Blossoms

What's more beautiful than these Callery Pear trees blossoming in Spring? These showy white blossoms don't last long and they liven up the streets with their whiteness. It's the smell that is so strange. It's an overwhelming fragrance and to some it smells wonderful and to others it smells horrible. I overheard comments the other day at church while we were waiting for the service to start. When one of the Deacon's said she couldn't stand the smell I was surprised. And lo and behold, at the end of service the smell had turned and it wasn't so pleasant after all. They are still so beautiful though!

December lights

December 12th Full Moon

On December 12th, 2008 the full Moon loomed larger in the sky than it has since 1993. It entered its full phase, its disc appeared completely illuminated by the Sun, just four hours after reaching its closest point to Earth.

I missed taking any pictures of it at the beginning of the night but got my first moon picture ever the next morning. I know, I know, I wasn't using the tripod. It was enough for me to realize that the moon was looking pretty good at 6 something AM . I had just woken up, saw the moonlight, grabbed the camera and a sweater and ran outside in the freezing New England morning. I wasn't thinking of the tripod but just wanted to capture what I could before the dawn light took away the dark sky.

I used my Canon XTi Digital Rebel. Didn't do anything special, 6.4 aperture, 200 iso with my Tamron zoom lens out to 300mm. I tried to frame it as best as I could without it being to busy. There wasn't much open space and I was still in my pajamas so I wasn't about to run around the neighborhood looking for a better shot. That's the down side to getting that few minutes window of opportunity for those golden hour shots. Maybe the next full moon I will be better prepared.

Yale - Princeton Game Nov 15

Well, I learned how to protect my camera by using a bag tied around the body and the lens and I made sure I had a microfiber cloth to wipe away the rain. That didn't help me to get clean shots though. The weather went from raining to misting to just cloudy back to rainy again. What I wasn't prepared for was the low light situation making the photos come out as blurred as they did. Since I'm still pretty much a newbie I made the mistake of relying on the sports action mode. It just didn't have a fast enough shutter speed to capture the action clearly.
I tried some other shots with an increased shutter speed but still didn't get what I was looking for. I did like how the football on the ground came out though! Hah!
They didn't all come out this shaky but I wanted to show what happened.

Yale - Columbia Game Nov 1

My latest fun with the camera is taking photos at any football game my husband drags me to. He watches the game, I watch through the lens. This is quite different than all the landscape/nature/fall photography I've been shooting for the last couple of months.
Instead of playing around with all the aperature and shutter speed settings I let the camera go on it's own and just set it on sports mode. Took all the guesswork out of it and I just shot randomly where I thought something was happening. The next game I'm going to I'll use a few more tips I picked up from some online sports photography searches. One thing that I read is that it is important to know the game to anticipate some of the action. Knowing nothing about football I just had fun going with pure instinct and seeing what I came up with.

Fall in Connecticut

I'm taking an online photography class called Image Design through betterphoto.com. It's teaching me how to develop my own personal vision through photography. Now I am enjoying this fall and taking a ton of pictures not only to try and capture photos for the class but for the sheer beauty of New England in the Fall. This photo is a picture alongside the bottom of Talcott Mountain State Park in Connecticut. It was a beautiful quiet morning and I got a picture through the trees. I softened the effect around the trees with Photoshop to give it a softer feeling.

Photo Hunt - View

These are the views from Gouveia Vineyards in Wallingford CT. I went there recently on a photo hunt to look for pictures to take for a photography class I'm in. It was also a night for a social gathering for work so it served two purposes - fun and more fun!
This first photo is overlooking the pond on the property and some of the rows of grapes . What a lovely place to sit on the dock and have a picnic.
This photo is taken from the patio area overlooking this front side of the building and some more grape fields towards Wallingford. This was one of those last hazy days of Summer. The wine there is pretty good too.
Grapes the day before the Fall harvest.