I'm still amazed at the amount of detail I can achieve with my Nikon 5100, even with my mediocre photography skills, from 20 to 30 feet with a zoom lens. If I thought I could have set up my tripod without scaring the ducks, I could have achieved sharper focus for better results.

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Despite the fact that I had snow on the ground - again! - this morning, spring is almost upon us. A sure sign in our neighborhood is the appearance of Donald and Daisy Duck.

We've lived in this neighborhood since November of 2003 and each spring has seen the arrival of Donald and Daisy. They fly in, stay a few weeks and then move on to who-knows-where. Today I snapped a few pics. They let me approach to within about 20 feet and I used my 55-300mm lens zoomed in all the way. I'm going to try to make it down to DeYoung's this week for some feed. If they have reason to expect a handout, they'll come right up to me.

While it's true that I live on a very quiet street, I still wonder why Daisy thinks this particular spot at edge of the road is a good place for a nap.

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I'm working on perfecting my green (or in this case yellow) eye correction on Shasta's photos, and I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out.

I made this edit in GIMP. I used a brush size just slightly larger than Shasta's actual iris set to 35% opacity and a very dark brown-black.

I set the opacity low because I like to be able to control how dark I make the correction. With opacity set to a low number, I can click repeatedly until I get the effect I like for the particular photo I'm editing. Also, since I'm not completely obscuring the underlying photo, I can see exactly where to place the highlights. I chose a dark brown-black because, for this photo, using pure black looked "obviously edited."

To add the highlights, I selected a brush approximately the size of the original highlights, set to white and also with 35% opacity. Again, I clicked until I had the right effect.

Here's a side-by-side of the before and after.

I'm just glad I don't have a cat.

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As surprising as this may seem, Shasta can sometimes be naughty, as shown in this photo where she has brazenly staked out a spot on Mommy and Daddy's bed.

This was my first attempt at fixing green eye. I chose a photo where the green was obvious, but not glowing like a Goa'uld.

Original on top, my edit below.

Original

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I went back to the drawing board in GIMP to try to improve my results on the moon photo I wrote about here and here is the result.

I used the same layers as in the previous post but this time, instead of adjusting the transparency of the entire top layer, I added an alpha channel, selected the black sky and made just the sky transparent.

If you look closely, there are still a few issues I need to work through, the main one being I need practice making accurate selections. I'm sure there's some kind of easy way to do this but I don't know what it is yet. As a result, the outer edge of my moon is kind of funky looking, but it's good to know I'm moving in the right direction. I think.

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Shasta is not what you would call a bold and independent dog. She loves to go to the dog park and play with the other dogs, but she likes to stay close to Mom and Dad at the same time. These two shots are typical...she runs ahead, then stops to check that we're still coming and waits for us to catch up. When I'm lagging behind, she'll even run part way back to check on me, before sprinting ahead of my husband again.

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We had some unusual March snow earlier this week. I love the snow and, sadly, we don't get all that much of it around here, so when we do, I tend to take a lot of photos. One thing that made this week's snow even more unusual is that it snowed all morning with temps hovering just over 32 degrees, then cleared up late in the afternoon. The setting sun combined with the melting snow set the many trees in my yard and neighborhood to glittering. I took many, many photos and only a few even come close to looking as amazing as it was in real life.

And a couple of my less successful shots. My main mistake here was trying to take the photos from too far away. I should have walked right out there instead of using my 55-300 mm lens, fully zoomed in, but - I'll be honest - the glittering, dripping trees were beautiful, but that didn't mean I wanted to, you know, walk under them.

I saw this blog post a few weeks ago about a zoom lens being a crutch. I need to acquire some better lenses and occasionally venture out without my crutch.

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Hah! Made you look!

Western Hemlock silhouetted against the moon.

The next two photographs are two different versions of the same shot. The top one was save as a jpeg by the camera. The bottom was converted to a jpeg from the camera's RAW format. It's interesting to note that for this shot, the RAW file produced a much darker image than the jpeg, but for this one, the RAW image is much lighter.

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I love this shot of my girl. Look at that sweet face...mere mortals are powerless to resist!

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I've been working on getting an interesting shot of the moon for weeks. Seeing as we're in the middle of the rainy season in the Pacific Northwest, this is no small feat, but tonight I finally have something to share.

Here is my final image.

I wish I could say I just pointed my camera at the sky and used some mad camera skillz to get this shot but, sadly, that's not exactly what happened.

This is my original shot. The shutter speed on this was 1/50 second. It's not bad, but the moon lacks detail and the trees don't stand out from the sky.

I opened my original in Picasa and cranked up the brightness to make the trees pop. Then I opened it in GIMP.

Then I opened this in GIMP as a layer. This is the same shot as my original, but from the RAW file. As you can see, it's much darker than the jpeg. Then I set the opacity of the layer to around 35%...transparent enough to see the silhouetted trees in the base layer, but opaque enough to add some detail to the moon.

Then I flattened the image and voila! There you have it!

This was the easiest and fastest way I could think of to get an acceptable result, given that it was the first time I've used the software. I need to keep working on it so I can have more definition on the moon and more contrast between the branches and the sky.

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I snagged a couple of good shots yesterday while Shasta was outside playing with Daddy. My Nikon was set to Action Scene mode so, yeah, nothing fancy on my part.

Unedited:

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As I was snapping away at Willis Tucker last Sunday, I caught a photograph of Shasta greeting another dog. Unfortunately, the photograph, while it captures a sweet moment, has issues.

My issues:

• The focal point of the picture, the noses, isn't centered.
• Another dog has its nose in Shasta's business.
• A random tail makes Shasta look as though she has a horn growing from between her shoulders.
• Shasta has an extra leg growing out of her chest.
• There's a distracting partial human directly above the focal point of the picture.

I tried cropping it a few different ways, but I can't get satisfactory framing that results in a standard sized photo.

Better...the noses are roughly centered, but Shasta still has those unnatural growths.

A square crop isn't an improvement over the original rectangular crop.

This isn't bad. The distracting human is mostly cropped out and Shasta no longer looks deformed. Unfortunately, I've lost the original charm of a sweet interlude amid the chaos.

It may be that I'll just have to settle for this being a cute snapshot rather than a really special photo, but I hope not. Any suggestions?

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I take a lot of pictures of my dog so you might as well resign yourself to that right now if you're going to visit this blog. Last Sunday, we made a trip to the local off-leash dog park and I managed to snag a few good shots with my Nikon set to the pre-programmed action mode.

These first two shots are my favorites on the day. They have their issues, but I love how they capture the action!

The focus here is on the wrong dog, but if I can stop thinking of it as a photograph of Shasta, it's a great shot. Especially for anyone who may have been wondering what a Golden Retrievers would look like if their ears stood erect like a German Shepherd.

The Retriever would chase after Shasta, then body slam her to knock the ball loose. Again, the focus isn't quite right, but I still love this one.

A couple of still shots.

I tried cropping this for a closeup of her adorable face, but she was too slobbery!

I love how this shot captures Shasta's sweet personality.

A random dog.

Of course the photo of some random stranger's dog is in perfect focus.

 And here we're getting ready to leave the park. Shasta waits for her best friend, Daddy, to catch up.

I had a high proportion of photos from this day of shooting that were badly out of focus; many more than from other days of dog park shooting. As I mentioned above, everything was set to automatic, so I'm not sure why. When I got home and tried to upload the photos to my computer, I did find the battery was dead, so I'm wondering if a weak battery could have affected somehow.

This is a blog about me learning to be a better photographer, so if you have tips or suggestions, please, feel free.

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Hey, thanks for dropping by the grand opening of my photography blog. I'm an amateur photographer with a lot of enthusiasm for taking pictures and learning about photography.

My first grown-up camera was a Minolta Maxxum 3xi film SLR. It was a great camera but I used it like a $1,000 point and shoot...I never ventured off the automatic plantation. It was too hard to keep track of the settings I'd used and film processing was too expensive to allow for much experimentation.

Then in 2001, I got my first digital camera, a Fuji FinePix 2800Z, a digital point and shoot. I could take as many pictures as I wanted! Yay! The downside was that it didn't have a lot of options for shooting. In fact, if I recall correctly, it didn't have any! Still it took wonderful snapshots and I used it until it died. RIP, little camera.

The untimely loss of my Fuji left me without a dedicated camera and for several years, I used only the camera in my iPhone. It was mostly adequate, but, again, no options and this time? No flash either!

As you can imagine, I was longing for a new DSLR camera, even after I acquired a shiny, new iPhone 4S, complete with flash. And finally, my hope was fulfilled. Santa (a.k.a. Mr. Snaps) surprised me with a Nikon D5100 for Christmas. Unlike my Fuji and my iPhone, the Nikon has plenty of bells and whistles; some of which seem more useful than others. I'm having fun exploring all the features and learning how to use them to take great photos.

I don't expect to stop taking pictures with my iPhone - it's a pretty good camera, after all, and it fits quite nicely in my pocket - but learning to use and take fantastic photographs with the the Nikon will be the focus of this blog.

That's the story of my blog. I'll be posting semi-regularly...so whenever life doesn't get in the way. Please check back in once in a while and feel free to leave comments any time.

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