You Know You're Crazy...

...when you can't.stop.taking. pictures of a weed.

A dead weed.

In front of compost.

Because when you've spent weeks trying to achieve that seemingly illusive shallow depth of field, and all you want is a blurry background with something...ANYTHING...in focus in the foreground...

and when your camera will only do f/2.8 at wide angle so you're stuck with f/3.5...

and when it hits you that, DUH, just make the "field" deeper because that's how I've done it by accident before with this

and this...

and even when there's nothing really shallow about either one of those...

you'll take what you can get.

Because it was just me, my wheel barrow with the very last of the year for the compost (or at least one can only hope), the sound of the wind in the pines, the distant voices of tots playing in the fence while daddy hung Christmas lights, and it was so quiet that I could hear my camera making the changes I nervously made to aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance while I cupped it in my hands and held my breath.

And that's when one learns what's in a photo...even if you're still unsure about how to take a really good photo. You begin to learn what it means to take meaningful photos of your family and the world around you. You learn to see things differently, to recognize the beauty in things that you've never noticed before. You learn to isolate from the chaos the serene. You learn that your children's fingers are just as photo-worthy as their faces and that it's really not all that important if they're looking at the camera, even if it's great if they do. You learn that even the smallest changes to camera settings affect the overall look and feel of the photos. You learn that it's more than holding the camera and pressing a button.

For me, it starts by spotting something that strikes you...and why it strikes you, you're not sure. But you swing your camera around, raise it to your face, point, and click.

And then you cringe and wonder why the photo looks less then stunning when you know there was something there that caught your eye. I mean, yes, it's just a pile of stuff added to the compost. But there was some beauty admist the frozen pumpkins and half dead allysum (those are some tough flowers) that made me stop. What was it? And more importantly, how can I capture it?

What if I move? What if I change my angle?

No. That's not it either. Hmmmm. But what about that weed...that thistle thing? It's out of focus. And my flexible spot focus is not helping me pick it up.

Ugh. Guess I'll have to use Manual focus. I do everything else manually. Why can't ONE thing be auto?

But there it is...sorta. Except I don't like the angle.

I like that better. And oh glory! My depth of field is about as shallow as I can get it!

And that one's about the same, but I might like the minute change in composition better.

And then I go in for the money shot:

And look! There's ice inside one of the....weed things. This is them in front of half-dead allysum. And then I move, only slightly, and capture them in front of frozen pumpkins.

And I sorta look at the box thing that's called a histogram in the lower right hand corner of my screen for all these photos because even though I don't fully know what it's telling me, I know it means something. And on that thought I remember a friend told me that I tend to underexpose, so I bump down the shutter speed by two little notches and get this:

And I really have no idea if it's better or worse, but at least I know that the histogram could tell me if I knew what it meant.

Now I'm really into this, so I snap some more.



And honestly, I have no clue if these are good or not. I mean, I'm happy with them, but I'm not sure if I thought about everything the way I could have or should have. Lighting? Balancing shutter speed and aperture and ISO? Composition? Rule of Thirds?

I dunno.

I may be crazy, but at least I know it.