Taking pictures with my Lensbaby, and new Car

I was at a picnic Saturday, took about 250 pictures with the Lensbaby 2 lens,and f 2.8 aperture disk, with 1.6x telephoto. Not many keepers in the bunch (series), still weeding through them all. Artistically I like some of them, but they are not in the normal sense, to the average person, the idea of what a picture should look like. A lot of blur/bokah (selective focus), and softness.
I choose the wrong aperture. I should of went with f5.8 or higher. I thought with the overcast, lowlight, indoor ,and outdoor change of shooting scene, the 2.8 aperature would give me a lot of light to work with, but it also gave me more blur and softness, when I wanted more strong focus. Plus the fact I am shooting from the hip, not composing many shots, and then the indoor lighting giving the yellowish tint, I should of changed my camera setting to reflect the indoor lighting but forgot. Even with the 1.6x telephoto, it is still bascially a foot zoom lens, meaning you have to move with your feet to focus, rather than moving the lens, so sometimes you get the picture, and sometimes you don't. I should of known the 2.8 aperture was too low, so unless I have the time to compose the picture, take my time, and review afterwards, I will go with f/4 or above from now on.

Bought my new car on Wednesday. A 2008 Suzuki SX4 Sport. 0% financing. Took about 1 1/2 hours at the dealer to seal the deal, and then I drove home, and got a ride back in to pick up the new car. The car has everything I was hoping to get when I started my search. I will have to write more on this later, especially the fact that the Ford Focus looks strikingly similar to the Suzuki SX4 Sport. Just like my Suzuki 2 door Vitara, looks like a Chevy Tracker. In both cases I got the better deal with Suzuki. Once the weather clears up I will post some pictures of my new car.

Favorite things discontinued - And some New Things

I was going to order another vacuum coffee maker this weekend, either the 5 cup model, or another 10 cup model, but Bodem-Santos has discontinued the electric vacuum coffee maker. The stove top model won't work for me. The electric model has a timer, and is nicely compact, works great. It is even a form of entertainment watching the coffee brew through the clear plastic. The steam produced by the heated water in the bottom pushes the heated water up into the top where it mixes with the coffee grounds and boils, then when the heat is off, it all comes back down into the bottom again, ready to drink. Hot! 196 degrees at least. That is just one of the 3 or 4 items in the last month that I tried to get that is now discontinued. I am on a roll here.
I am going out car shopping tomorrow. My little 4 wheel drive is now in it 9th year, and I think it needs to be driven less for it to last me a few more years. I was hoping to wait about 2 more years to get another car, but tomorrow might be the day.
Another Suzuki for me. Either the SX4 Sport ( good financing till 9/30) or the SX4 Crossover.
The picutures here are of a pine cone in the drive way, looks sort of interesting/abstract maybe, and the wasp on the yellow flower is one of my favorites.

Lensbaby came out with some new SLR Lenses today;

"THREE LENSES,INFINITE POSSIBILITIES
No two eyes are exactly the same – especially when they belong to an artist who sees for a living. Given these infinite possibilities, Lensbaby offers three distinctly different lens bodies for different types of shooters. Each lens gets you to the same place: a Sweet Spot of sharp focus surrounded by graduated blur. But each one gets you there in a way that reflects your individual personality and shooting style. Are you fast and loose? Smooth and precise? Methodical and step-by-step? Your first decision is: which Lensbaby has your name on it?"

I think the Lensbaby Composer has my name on it....

10 million things to do this Weekend, and not enough time to do them

Well that's what it seems like! Shopping, cooking, cleaning, Web Classes,Meal Planning for the week, pay bills,getting things prepared, and ready for Winter, even though it is months away. I am going to get my heater up and going this weekend, as the mornings are getting cool, but it's the dampness that is bone chilling more often than the cold.
I will be spending time catching up on my Web Classes, as I fell behind when my iPhone was crashing b4 the 2.1 upgrade, and I spent a lot of time on that, and my digital photography, when I should of also been working on the Web Classes. I think I need an assistant, and will leave it at that...
More to post later today, but I have to get out shopping, and start completing my list of 10 million things I have to do today.

White Pumpkin in field of Orange

Went to the pumpkin field tonight that I was going to go to last night, and was in luck. They were getting ready to harvest around 6PM and only the boss was their. I asked if I could walk in the field, and take pictures, and he had no problem letting me take pictures. They grow pumpkins, and gourds for Wal-Mart, Target... all the big name stores, he was telling me all the acreage they have all over the place that they rent, and grow the pumpkins on. It spans multiple counties. He let me take the white pumpkin, and a few other ones too. As usual, more pictures on my Photrade page. They also grow gourds together with the pumpkins, and had a flatbed trailer loaded with containers of gourds. He said I could drive my car into the field to load it up if I wanted to, but it looked a little bit too steep even for my 4 wheel drive. I would of loved to have gotten a picture of my blue car with the white top in that field of Orange.

Autumn Harvest begins

The Autumn Harvest season is upon us now. Fall is only a few days away, Halloween is 44 days, Thanksgiving 71 days, and 99 shopping days until Christmas. Driving around the Topton, Kutztown, Maxatawny area I came across the Farmer's harvesting their pumpkin crop for market the past 2 nights. Still a lot of pumpkins out in the fields. The pictures I posted here tonight are from Burkholder's Farm Market outside of Kutztown. I have some pictures from the commercial farm fields I took today, but not posted yet on my photrade web page. They have security in trucks patrolling the roads around the fields. They waved to me as I was in the field taking pictures. Must of thought I was from a newspaper. Didn't take any free pumpkins, I will buy them if I want them. They looked so tempting though, and I just love drawing and painting pumpkins.

Telework - Meal Plan - Bake Bread

I'm Teleworking from home today, something we can do about 4-6 times a month. There are the obvious advantages of saving on your gas bill from your daily commute, and for me that is about 1 hour of total travel time. l still get up early, and shower, dress casual, and make my breakfast, and lunch like I was going into the office. I could work in my P.J's if I wanted to. But what I like the best is, being able to sit at my desk, and feel the refreshing breeze coming in through the screen window, You can't get that in the office. It's an Ahhhhhh.... feeling! I must admit I do work harder at home, most likely because there are no distractions.

I've got to get back on my meal plan. For a whole year I was planning all my meals at least 3-5 days in advance, but usually 5-10 days. A great learning experiance too. I rarely had food go to waste, or forget that I had something in the refrig to eat. Now I took a break for a little more then a month, and I am back to eating candy, chips, cupcakes, ice cream instead of the fruit and vegatables I should be eating. I eat anything and everything on my meal plan, just in moderation, and not out of despartion, or being lazy. I use a program called Weightmania Pro of the same web site name, and it was about $60. I track sodium, sugar, carbs, protein..., and the percentages or ratio of the carbs/fat/protein in my daily meal plan, over a period of time from like 1 week, 1month, 1 year, or whatever range you specify. So this week I shall crack the whip and get back on track. The image below is a rolling 30 day pie chart, you can choose daily, 7 day, 14 days too. This is just one of the many data tracking abilities of this program.





Baking my own bread now since Februrary. I found out that most of the sodium/salt in my diet came from bread/cheese/pastries, and other baked goods. I found some recipes on a no sodium web site, and have been baking my own bread in the bread machine ever since. I also use honey instead of sugar and no salt margarine/butter. Sometimes I use the honey that is produced here on the farm. When I use the commercial honey I buy in the store, it gives the bread a browner color. The honey from the farm has no color. As for not using salt in the bread dough recipe, a lot of people tell me I have to use salt or my bread won't rise or bake, but I have found out different. I saw on a Food Network program, the host said you don't have to use salt, the bread just rises slower. Plus sodium is a preservative and used to flavor. So, later tonight I will bake a loaf, it takes 4 hours, and then time to cool. But oh is it so worth it...!

I found some things I like to eat every day, the foundation of my Meal Plan, and will elaborate more on that later, or in another post. I will also post one of my favorite recipes and explain how I developed it over a period of time.

Wow, what a busy weekend! Not even any time to micro blog on one of my many distractions, err I mean hobbies. Went out Saturday morning to take pictures of my Bell Peppers finally turning yellow, and noticed the tomato horn worm neatly camoflaged in their among the pepper plants. See the 2 pictures here off to the right, or I have 3 on my Photrade gallery. It is covered with the cocoons of the Braconid wasp, and I heard not to destroy because they are beneficial wasps, and that this caterpillar is doomed.
Then I cooked 2 large Pork Loins in the Big Green Egg ceramic grill, and came out with 6 total pounds of meat, and I also grilled 2 big Red Beets from the garden. The red beets tasted really good.
My house is 70 miles away so I usually head up there every 2 - 3 weeks to cut the grass, check things out, etc..., stopped in at my Mom's today too, and had some of her famous Chile, so finally back on the farm, and settling down for the evening. Gonna be nice the next few months with Autumn just around the corner. The pumpkin fields are overflowing with pumpkins, the air is getting cooler and crisper, and pretty soon we will be smelling the leaves burning all around the area, as the people clean up their yards. The Sun is setting lower, and the light is at a different angle and color, and then the big orange Harvest Moon to top it all off! I don't think I could ever live anywhere that doesn't have a change of seasons!

Aperture Nature Photography Workshops Contest

Oh well my Saddleback Caterpillar Photo didn't get me to the workshop. A week in Jacksonhole, Wy at the Grand Tetons would of been real nice. Beleive it or not, 3 out of the 4 pictures chosen pictures were scenic views, or landscapes, heavily edited, HDR, IR and looked more like Thomas Kincade oil paintings than natural real photographs.
I would think nature, natural, plants, animal, bugs, insects, fish... not all scenery and landscapes would of been the chosen winning pictures. Where is the rationel for each selection? The reason it was picked, and why?s Just the pictures, no explanations for the selections given.(To see the picture I submitted, look in my Insect, bug... gallery by clicking on one of the Photrade links)

Tonight I think I will add 2 of the grape pictures I took around the farm, from my Cherry and Grapes gallery. One of the pictures looks like raisins on the vine, dried up, and the other one was on the ground, and has a bite taken out of it by a bird.

In the next day or two I will have to post a picture of my iPhone page with all the Kanji and Japanese Language apps I have installed on my iPhone. Almost a whole page full (you can have 16 total apps on one page). Later I will give a brief explanation about the language and what it entails to learn it, pronounciation, written, graphic... , and today I ran into a stranger at work with a Kanji tatoo. I asked him if he knew what it meant. He said he, and a few of his close friends all have the same tattoo. They researched it, and he said it was Chinese for Eternal Life. Which would be right because the Japanese Language evolved out of Chinese Language, and that is where we will pick up the rest of the story later on the Jananese Language. I looked up Eternal Life on my iPhone App, Jishobot: English/Japanese Dictionary, and there were 3 results for Eternal Life, and his Kanji tatoo was one of them.

Lilly, iPhone, Kanji,

Edited the Blog title, added one of my drawings from life drawing class. Just changing things up a bit, see what works out best. 

This morning I can't decided what picture I want to spotlight from my Photrade Gallery. And when I choose one, and write about the picture, in the future it won't be attached to the blog in the Archive, but still in the Photrade Gallery website. So, I will always have to make that reference to view the picture on that site, if reading from the Archive. 

Not much happening from the Apple Special Event September 9, 2008 that was earth shattering,  but nice upgrade to the iPod/iTouch line, and iTunes 8. Now I can hopefully add the 97 apps I downloaded back onto my iPhone and it won't crash. I was restoring my iPhone and backing it up too much, and it was taking up most of my time. I felt like I was back in pre Apple Computer days of 1999 before I switched to Mac. I was constantly having to restore the Operating System software, and then the applications, and any data I could salvage. With the iPhone 2.1 OS coming out on Friday, Steve Jobs said at the Keynote, that these issues were addressed.

The iPhone issue is causing a Domino effect on everything else in my life, I am 2 weeks behind on the 2 Web classes I am taking, and new classes come out on Wednesday and Friday. So I have a lot of catching up to do, and that is just the beginning.

A quick word on the Japanese Kanji as Art. I think taking the art approach as I am with Kanji will help get back into painting, more specifically Watercolor, and Pen & Ink. I really miss it, and the digital photography has filled that creative gap so far. Plus the photography is instant gratification. 

Time to get ready for the day job, the picture for today will be Lilly, the farm dog. She is so fast it's hard to get a picture of her standing still. I like this one I took, almost like she is posing, vouge, for the picture. I have some more of her in my picture gallery's too. (Oh good, I just figured out how to edit my post's. I'm still finding my writing voice and style, and going through a little learning curve with the blog)

Smiling Yellow Jacket

Another picture from my album on Photrade. I will have to figure out how to make thumb nails of previous pictures, and I want to add a few more gadgets to the blog, but for now I have to get ready for my real day job!

First Blog Post - mostly a test.

One of many pictures I have taken with my digital camera, a Nikon D40x. This one of the Caterpillar, was taken with a lensbaby 2.0 Selective Focus Lens. I am mostly using one of my 2 Lensbaby lenses right now for pictures, and will post a lot more links to my Photrade page. Hope you like them.