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A few weeks ago, I was mourning the loss of the Rocky Mountain Balloon Festival shortly after learning one of my favorite fields of wild sunflowers had been mowed. Tears nearly ensued.
"Patience is a remedy for every sorrow." — Publius Syrus, 42 B.C. (42 B.C.!!!)
We decided to take a sunrise bike ride on Labor Day because there isn't enough daylight for me to commute to work and back via bicycle these days. We thought the sunrise would be the best photos of the day. We were wrong.
We found a small patch of wild sunflowers, so of course I had to lay down my bike and shoot away. Then the most amazing thing happened. First one balloon went up, and then a second.
I got my sunflowers and my balloons, both via bicycle!
I was going to use these for Wordless Wednesday, but I thought it might be more fun to share the story behind the photos, demonstrate an exercise in depth of field and hope my lucky stars might provide something equally as photogenic for Wednesday. (fingers and toes crossed, stay tuned)
Depth of field, or the amount of focus between the main subject and the background, is controlled by the aperture, the adjustable leaf opening inside the lens. Big openings (small numbers) will cause the background to be less focused, drawing attention to your subject and minimizing distractions. (This also relates to bokeh, which is a term describing the appearance of out-of-focus background highlights. Good bokeh means soothing or interesting shapes enhance or dramatize the main subject; bad bokeh means the eye is confused and doesn't know where to look because way too much is going on inside the picture. But bokeh is a topic of a different lesson on another day.) Small aperture openings (big numbers) allow detail to remain more recognizable in the background.
The blurrier balloons and Lizard are shot with a fast shutter speed and wide open aperture, such as 500th of a second at F11 (which actually isn't that wide, but we were in bright sunlight, and I was using a medium telephoto on a macro setting, both of which affect depth of field as well). The better-defined balloons and Lizard are shot with a slower shutter speed and the aperture as small as I could get it, in this case 60th of a second at F32. Can you see why camera settings can help or hurt what you're trying to achieve? And why I'm such a huge fan of manually setting my controls?
Guess what I have in my hot little hands!!! Two DVDs of more than 600 retouched Makeover Madness photos! Actually, they are not in my hands... they are in the DVD drive and being uploaded for printing as I type.Light at the end of the tunnel!I thought I'd finish the retouching Friday night. But with just 14 photos left to go, I could no longer keep my eyes open. I retired for the night unfinished.Because I thought I was so close to done, I splurged Saturday morning and shot the sunrise for the first time in what feels like forever. Jackpot, too. I could not have picked a more perfect sunrise or location to shoot. Watch for Wordless Wednesday.When I got back home, My Dear Lizard wanted to go on a bike ride, being as the weather was so perfect. So off we went, me wasting a good three hours when I could have been retouching. But I had only 14 photos left to go. I could afford such luxury. I was one happy camper. Or maybe I should say happy cyclist...About 5 p.m., I picked up where I'd left off on the retouching and finished at 6:08. You should have seen my happy dance!But then a couple of hours later as I was building the slide shows I make for each girl, I found another folder of photos. One more girl. And of course, it would have to be the one who needed the most retouching. My heart sank.I finally finished the last round of retouching (and this time I did make sure no other untouched folders were lurking in the dark recesses of my hard drive) at 11:38 p.m. I slept through the sunrise Sunday morning, sang a duet in church, served in the nursery of my new ward for the first time, then made sugarless maple pumpkin muffin crowns for the women I visit teach, went visiting teaching, and picked up the slide show project once again after dinner. I really, really, really wanted to be done last night. I had planned to do another snowflake pattern today.But it was not to be. Once again, I had to go to bed before I finished because I could no longer keep my eyes open, and I had to get up in time to be at work today.At 6:10 this morning, I finished the last of the slideshows, got everything backed up in three different locations and then burned DVDs, still making it to work on time! Now I just have to order the pictures and schedule the scrapbooking party for all my volunteers to assemble the photos into albums and fill the gift bags, and the residential treatment center will be getting Santa early!It feels SO good to be done!!!
