My Walk- July 18, 2012

As I was leaving for my walk last night, as a last minute thought, I grabbed my camera. I had the place to myself and was able to just look around and get ideas. I limited myself to one lap of photography eyes and then put my camera away. Sometime soon I hope to allow more time. This photo is another one of those instances where I don't feel like I captured what my eyes were seeing. For some reason I am always drawn to this little path that curves around the pond, just past the dock. The sun rays were splitting through the foliage of the trees and I'm glad I was able to capture that, but there is more. After I put my camera away and came around for a second lap, it was PERFECT!! I couldn't believe it! The light changed to pure gold and the beams seemed to highlight the path so perfectly. It's the path that I love, with the gentle curve of the wooden fence posts. With the light shining on the path it looked like an invitation, felt like the beginning of  a story. I have to go back and try to capture it!

This is a really odd photo to add! :) I include it because I was so excited to have finally been confirmed in the fact that I know how to use the metering feature on my camera! I have been working on that for some time. The digital camera  usually measures the light of everything in the viewfinder and averages it out- then adjusts settings to provide a proper exposure. Many times that works fine, except when you have a shot that includes really bright and dark, or light and shadow.  Have you ever had your flash pop up and totally ruin the mood of a photo just because your camera sensed things were too dark? So, the metering feature allows you to focus in on an area that you would like the camera to yield to in factoring the settings. For this shot of the path, I experimented by stepping out a little to place the focal point at the bright sky with the metering setting on. With the AE Lock button depressed I recomposed the path area into the viewfinder and took the shot. See how the camera adjusted for a bright scene? It must have had a much faster shutter speed. It obviously didn't help me capture this scene any better, but I was excited that I used that function successfully on my camera!

This point of the walking path is my favorite spot.  I love walking past the pasture and I love this old piece of equipment. This is also a weird, twilight kinda spot where the air feels cooler for about 15 feet. On my walks I think I often take a deep breath, sigh right about here. It's restful to me for some reason. One of the things we are taught in my photography class is to look for natural framing in a shot. Here, I liked the way the upper tree branch provided some framing. I also like the colors of the straw/dirt, rusty equipment, light green field, darker green trees.

As I uploaded this onto the blog, I now notice it looks slightly out of focus. The camera must have been focusing on the tree. I remember reading a way to get past that problem but don't remember what I read! I will have to check into that.  Don't know why, but I like this one.

I mean, really? Look at that! :) I know next to nothing about art. But, I am pretty sure that red and green are opposite each other on the color wheel- providing great contrast and so pleasing to the eye. What an awesome Creator to provide that contrast on the SAME plant. He did that- not a clever photography display!