Frozen Fog and I Can Do THAT!

This morning, as I stumbled into the kitchen for coffee, my eyes began to focus and I realized that the trees were full of beautiful lace. Canon is feeling better, so I slipped on my rubber boots and out the door with my other Canon. Here are a few shots from this morning.

I think YOU should go out and take some pictures, too...and I'll show you how to get some beautiful pictures with your point and shoot.
First here is what NOT to do...grab your point and shoot, walk out on the porch, push the button, and come back in, cause this is what will happen....

Now, here is the trick. If you don't isolate your subject, then your camera takes in so much information you lose the impact. Now there are ways to manipulate your settings to isolate subject, but that is quite a bit of learning which is great...but for today, your frost will melt before we get through all of it...SO with your camera on auto, to isolate your frost...trick it with adding a background, like this:

Grab something dark colored since your subject is light, the ice. It doesn't have to be something fancy, just a piece of paper. Now, you place it behind your subject, and hold your camera as close as you can where it will still focus. And this is what you get with only cropping and sharpening for the web:

Pretty cool! Show me what your get on facebook, I can't wait to see!

Feathered Friends

Over the past few years my father has cultivated an interest in birds into a full time hobby. It is always such a joy to visit his backyard to observe the flurry, and get an opportunity to hear a bit of Dad's knowledge about all things aviary. Above is a male cardinal, and (I believe: I had to look this one up) a female downy woodpecker enjoying the provisions on our bitterly cold Christmas Day 2009.