Memorial Day brings a Rolling Thunder

I've seen it and HEARD it many times when I was living on the Hill. So many bikers and so much noise. But I never saw it at the start and I never really knew what it was all about.

Rolling Thunder major purpose is to publicize the POW-MIA issue.  To educate the public of the fact that many American prisoners of war were left behind after all past wars.  To help correct the past and to protect the future veterans from being left behind should they become Prisoners Of War/Missing In Action.   We are committed to helping American veterans from all wars.  Rolling Thunder, Inc. is a non-profit organization and everyone donates his or her time because they believe in the POW/MIA issue. You can find more about Rolling Thunder at http://www.rollingthunder1.com/index.html.

It's amazing what they do :)  No I didn't get to see Sarah Palin but I did get to see better people! My friend Rachel and her husband and friends all road...I got to see them all off ;)

 

Bubba graduates...eventually :)

So this past weekend, Bubba crossed the stage and later this summer he finishes officially!!! Yay Bubba!!! I'm soooo proud of him and his stick-to-it attitude :)  Here are some pics from the weekend and I hope I'm not in too much trouble for posting :)

It was an EXTREMELY bright day so I played a lot with how much light I was letting in.  Clearly I need more practice :)  A lot of the pics came out overexposed when we were outside so I touched them up in lightroom. And a lot of them were underexposed in the civic center so I played with those too.  Lightroom was my savior this weekend :)

Love a good pattern of repeated items. Here we have the graduates seats and their programs.

 

   

 

He was so proud

 

The graduate

This is us...self portrait time

I've been trying and trying to get engagement pics taken but the weather just hasn't been cooperating. So today, after church, I attempted to start playing with camera some more ;)  They're not great but not too bad :)  Do you know how hard it is to run back and forth in semi-wet ground in HEELS???!!!  :)  Hard!!!

It was sunny outside so my white balance is set to sunny, with ISO very low (200).  Also, posing yourself when taking pictures can be quite difficult. For example, the poses of Marc and I sitting in front of the bush...something looks weird with my neck :(  Obviously more learning and practice are necessary.

Truly "capturing" the light tonight!

I am so excited tonight! I attended class again this weekend and was so disappointed to have missed the previous one. The pictures produced were absolutely amazing and so much fun!! I walked out feeling inspired and frightful that I would not be able to do the job...to catch up. And if you know me, you know Ii am a student that does not like to be behind the curve!

So here goes. Tonight I tried to paint with light!  Yay! At first I couldn't get it. I had covered the windows and the tv and clocks, but just couldn't get it. I thought it was the flashlight and tried a lighter but burned my fingers :(  Turns out it wasn't the flashlight at all. Keep reading...you'll see what was causing me to have more light in the room than I wanted.  Here is one of the examples of too much light.

Now in order to paint with light you have to have several things. First you need a camera that can slow it's shutter speed to literally SECONDS...mine is set at 8 seconds for these pics. The seconds is how long you are exposing the "film" to the light.  You need to capture it all!  Then you probably need a tripod or very steady setting (ledge or chair or something STEADY) and remote. Although for these, I set the timer and walked across the room (suggest removing all obstacles as tripping is NOT fun). Third you need your light source (not recommending the lighter :)  Finally you need a really DARK room...REALLY dark. The above picture was BEFORE I realized the mirror was reflecting the light and ruining my dark room...sooooo I covered it with a dark sheet.  And these are some of the results.

That's painting with light!!!  Yay!!!  

Working the camera

Do you know what white balance is? Do you know what triptych means?  If not, this is the homework section for you.

You know how sometimes your picture comes out bluish or yellowish?  That is because of the source of your light. Now remember the colors of heat...which one was hottest? Blue was hot right? Right (like the hottest part of the fire). When this happens in your photos, you can fix this by setting your white balance.  Your white balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person come out white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "color temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light.  

You can see the color changes as we play with the WB categories on the camera:

    

A triptych montage is a group of three pictures that tells a story. For example, last week I took pictures at the Washington School of Photography. The "story" is about it's location, what goes on at the school and the school.