Busy

We haven't posted lately because we kind of went nuts after the semester was over and haven't done anything productive since. See...

But we did manage to organize the bathroom thanks to this trick I found on Pinterest.

I recently took a solo trip to Seattle. I've always wanted to travel by myself and rely on walking and public transportation outside of cabs. Here's a couple unedited pictures from my trip:

I lost my remote at this point which kills me because this shot could have been so much clearer. It didn't help that I don't have vibration reduction on the lens I used.

The shot above came out clear because of a miracle. Haha, there's no other explanation.



I think I'm done editing pictures except for print. Neither of us are competing in beginner competitions this year. I was going to enter this into something but I missed the deadline:

We're both entering the Idaho Outdoors photo calendar contest next year...we just need to find some good outdoor shots first. We're heading back to Castle Rock when temperatures cool down in September or October and are hoping to get some good shots there.

Family outside the state visited earlier this month so the house was packed. I've got a giant family. I'm the youngest of six. I have ten nieces and nephews. Everyone seemed to be in town at the same time. I don't have any pictures of the whole family together, but I do have some shots of baking two of my nieces and I did together.

Kimberly is on the left, Kaitlyn is on the right. Kimberly is my sister Jennifer's youngest and Kaitlyn is one of my sister Christy's twins. They wore matching outfits every day they hung out together. Kaitlyn's brother Kyle patiently watched Spongebob as we baked.

While my nephew (who's older than me by a couple years) was here I bought a 35 mm 1.8 Nikkor off of him which has forced me to shoot in manual. I took the girls' shots outside which turned out to be overexposed but the picture of the cupcake burger and sugar cookie fries turned out okay.

We're big Groupon users and redeemed a Groupon for Sugar Rush cupcakes recently. I took these shots the other day. The first is on automatic with the in-camera flash and the second is on manual.

Before this lens, I shot in automatic or an automatic preset (indoors, candlelight, landscape, etc.,) 99% of the time. I'm really glad I'm learning how to shoot manual because the shots I get from it are SOO much better. At least, I feel the two above are a good example of that.

Here's some non-competition worthy shots we've taken from camping this summer:

We're headed up the McCall tomorrow for a day trip. We're going to check out Ponderosa. We have an annual state park pass and we figure we might as well use it. So far this year, we've forgotten it at home when we went to Castle Rock and then Crater's of the Moon.