Tag: Nikon D80

That awkward moment

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when you realize you can’t be two places at once.

Let’s start up the Wedding Wednesday posts again! First of all, I think we are supposedly going to get our professional wedding pictures soon (finalllllly) and second of all, there is stuff that I never finished talking about.

So let’s start. We’re married now (yaaaaay!) and the holidays are quickly approaching… What are we going to do about Christmas? For those of you who don’t know, Christmas is a big deal to both of our families. However, Cobalt’s immediate family is in NM and my immediate family is in CA. Every year before this year, Cobalt has gone to NM and I have gone to CA for at least Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so this year marks the first year we will be together on the actual Christmas holiday. The problem is… which family do we spend the holiday with? We already decided that we want to try to see both families during the Christmas season but of course only one family can see us for the actual holiday. Cobalt and I have been stressing out over this issue… mmmm since we got married… because we know that at least one family is going to be sad and one of us will be sad because we won’t be spending Christmas proper all together. That said, we love both of our families a lot so Christmas is still going to be special… just… different. However, it’s time to stop freaking out about it and actually buy tickets because holy crap they are getting really expensive.

Now it’s your turn. Any advice for the newlyweds? What did you do your first Christmas together?

Picture: One of the many crochet sharks I made, “Licky shark,” licking an ornament on my family’s Christmas tree last year. I took this picture when I was playing with the out of focus light so you can see that the reflection on Licky shark’s eye (and all the other out of focus light) is in the shape of a star. I like it…

Goin’ to the zoo, part two!

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I thought I’d continue on with my zoo post from Monday today. I apologize for those of you wanting a Wedding Wednesday post. I have stuff to talk about on that front (the minimoon will make an appearance!) but I felt like talking about the zoo again today.

So when we left off in our story Monday, Cobalt, A, and I had returned to the booth where we rented out camera equipment. I went up to the guy at the Nikon table and said “What else you got?!” Not that I was unhappy with my 18-300 mm zoom lens from Monday. Mostly, I just wanted to see what else I could play with. The Nikon guy hooked me up with an 85 mm prime lens. Really, the only word you need to take away from that sentence is the word “prime” as in a fixed, non zoom lens. He told me it would be excellent for low light conditions (the 18-300 mm lens really wasn’t that great for low light conditions) and then sent us back off into the zoo.

At first, I was regretting being so bold about switching lenses. Here we were in the middle of a BRIGHT day and I had a non-zoomable lens that was good at taking pictures in low light conditions. Ohhhh greattttt. Cobalt and A were zooming in on monkeys and I was grumpily glaring at my lens. Then we came to the spider monkey up above and I realized this lens had some potential. This lens is so good in low light conditions because it can do really low f numbers – this is something that controls the amount of light that goes into the lens as well as controlling the depth of field. When you set the lens to take pictures with really low f numbers, you are asking it to let a ton of light into the camera and as a result, it has a very shallow depth of field. Shallow enough that anything you are NOT focusing on gets really blurry… like the fence in front of the spider monkey. You can’t really see it at all even though there was definitely a fence between him and me. Wahaha… The other tricky thing about the spider monkey pictures was that the holes in the fence were really small. The camera’s autofocus function couldn’t find the monkey behind the fence so I had to manually focus the lens to find him. I think it turned out pretty good!

It was at this point that I felt a challenge rising. Zooming was one way to take cool pictures of animals, what about playing with the lighting and the depth of field? Challenge accepted, prime lens!

Okay, it’s no zoom lens but to be honest, the idea of a lens that could seemingly do everything (wide angle and crazy zoomed in) left me kind of suspicious as to what it COULDN’T do. Hence the bold “what else you got?!” and the handing over of the prime lens. And by the end, I had a healthy respect for the prime lens – especially after we visited the reptile house and my lens totally ruled at getting cool pictures of those creatures that like to lurk in the dark (without using a flash)…

Really, I think if anything, this experience with the prime lens reminded me why it’s good to have a variety of lenses – a zoom lens of course for zooming in on cool things that are far away, but also a prime lens that is really good at taking pictures at that one focal length and makes me focus on the details of the picture I am taking (the lighting and the composition of the picture). Makes me happy that I do have both (an 18 to 70 mm lens – nowhere near the zooming capability of Monday’s lens – and a 50 mm prime lens)!

And now without further rambling – some more prime lens pictures!

Another one of the adorable spider monkey…

The flamingo on the left wants to be the center of attention. Ooo ooo! Look at me!

This frog looks like it knows something we don’t. Also, I love how fat he is…

Hey guys… how’s it goin’? I’m just chillin’ here… you know how it is…

And finally, a penguin for those of you who asked…

Do you have a favorite picture (either from Monday or today)? Do you like the zoom lens pictures or the prime lens pictures better? Also, I love it when a picture tells a story. You guys want to play the caption game with my pictures? Let’s go! What are all the animals saying?

Goin’ to the zoo – close ups

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This weekend, Cobalt, A and I went to the Denver zoo because Mike’s Camera, the big camera store out here was hosting a zoo day. They were out there renting out cameras, lenses, and tripods to anyone who wanted to play with photography. (In case you were wondering, this is similar to the day I spent with the butterflies at the Butterfly Pavilion). This time was awesome because both Cobalt and A rented fancy DSLR cameras too and then we all got to rent super epic lenses. So the three of us trekked around the zoo with our expensive cameras/lenses capturing the wildlife (funny story: Cobalt and I kept hearing small children being excited to see the squirrels running around the zoo… really children? You see squirrels every day… LOOK AT THAT ELEPHANT! *sigh*). I actually switched expensive fancy lenses halfway through and then ended up taking something ridiculous like 427 pictures (!!!!) between the two of them. Since I took a bunch of keepers, I decided to write two posts on the zoo day, one for the pictures taken with each lens.

So today… we discuss the amazing 18 mm by 300 mm lens I tried out first. For those of you that aren’t keen on photography terms, this lens does EVERYTHING. It can do super close ups like these creatures on today’s post or it can do your typical “wide angle” type expansive mountain shots (not shown today). So that’s pretty amazing. It was also REALLY heavy. My hand was getting tired by the time I got back to switch lenses.

One more thing I want to say about these pictures is that I want to thank Patrick for his amazing zoo pictures and his “how to” zoo picture taking guide on his blog. Really got me thinking about the best way to capture the animals at our zoo with my epic lenses…

And without further ado… more pictures…

I like this tiger pic a lot. He just seems so grand but also kitty-like.

Action shot!

I am not sure what this creature is but I like it… They were hanging out with these neat birds. Maybe I will post a picture of them later…

So, this elephant picture is really special because Mike’s Camera had a bunch of HUGE lenses set up on tripods by the elephants. You basically gave the guy your lens and then hooked your camera up to one of the epic crazy lenses. That’s why I decided to focus on this elephant’s eye. I like it… Boo that I couldn’t get rid of the fence though….

That’s all for today! I had so much fun being an epic photographer with Cobalt and A! It was awesome that all three of us got to play with cameras at the same time. Made for a great time at the zoo. Look forward to seeing more pictures from the other lens later this week!

What is your favorite zoo animal? I might be able to post a cool picture of it… :) What did you do this weekend?

Golden

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This past Saturday, Cobalt and I went up to Aspen with our friends A, J, K, T, and L to continue our search for fall (which officially started this weekend). The seven of us checked into our condo and immediately headed for the fancy hot tubs and pool.

J, A, and T hanging out at the hot tub

Then we spent the rest of the evening feasting on Chinese delicacies mostly made by T, J, and K, though we all helped. There was sooooo much food that we all totally overstuffed ourselves.

In the morning, L and K made us an epic breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, pancake balls stuffed with red beans, and Korean pancakes. Oh and Cobalt found this crazy Dragonfruit when we were shopping on Friday night so we ate that too. Then we headed up to the Maroon Bells (two mountains near Aspen) to check out the beautiful changing aspens (all that gold in that top picture comes from the aspens). It turned out to be a wonderful day for running around and being silly in the midst of these gorgeous trees and mountains. I ended up being a crazy photographer who would lie down in the middle of the trail just to get the perfect shot.

K and J with the prettiness behind them…

The first set of pictures I took were pictures of everyone jumping up and down. T was especially good at it as you can see in this picture.

Jumping

T jumping while L checks out a recent picture…
A and T jumping with aspens behind them

Then we decided to take some “Hunger Games” shots, so named because I would focus on the aspens and hold my camera steady while everyone else ran through the trees, getting slightly blurred, not unlike the way the Hunger Games movie was filmed.

Hunger Games


Finally, here is a picture of part of our group towards the end of the trip, J and K had already left at this point.

This trip was so much fun. The drive to and from Aspen was beautiful (the changing trees made the scenery look painted gold), I had a ton of fun with my friends, I got to see the Maroon Bells (which I had never seen before), and I got to have a lot of fun being really creative with my DSLR. I was talking to A today about “life changing experiences” and how I feel like I’ve had a lot of them this year (getting married was obviously one). I think this trip was definitely a life changing experience too. It was so neat to see everything come together – from shopping for food with T, A, and Cobalt on Friday night, to riding the bus up to the Maroon Bells, to running around like crazy people through the aspens… I think it all lead to me feeling at peace with myself and the world for a bit and that was awesome.

Because I posted this today and not on Monday, all bets are off on what the rest of the week will look like. Also, if you want to hear more about the trip/see more pictures/learn about how I took some of them, I have about 173 more pictures left so I can always post more in another post if anyone is interested.

Now it’s your turn. Is fall happening where you are right now? Do the trees change color? What is one of the best life changing experiences that has happened for you recently? Let’s discuss.

Beautiful wedding in Santa Fe

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This weekend, Cobalt and I headed south to Santa Fe (Do you know the way… to Santa Fe?) for K and M’s beautiful wedding. Everything about this wedding was so perfect for the two of them, from the well thought out vows and touching ceremony to the adorable bride and groom rat caketopper (not to mention their tower of whoopie pies instead of a traditional cake). We had so much fun with these two. We ate delicious barbecue and then danced the night away with all our friends… Plus it looks like they had quite a bit of fun themselves:

Congratulations you two! We’re soooo happy for you!

In other wedding news, our friends D and D are getting married this weekend! Yay! Congratulations to you guys too! :)

Finally, in other happiness, Baby L was born on Monday morning this week! Yay! Congrats B and T too! :)

Who can make the longest udon noodle?

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This weekend was full of activities. On Saturday, Cobalt and I volunteered by getting college students registered to vote. We were strictly not allowed to discuss politics or political parties (seriously, all we could say was “Hi! Have you updated your voter registration information? If not you can do it now and it only takes 90 seconds…”) and people replied by yelling all sorts of insults at us about the presidential candidates… It was a bit awkward. Oh and we were in the sun for 2.5 hours and we only got two people to register. That was kind of depressing. Come on Colorado! It’s fun being a swing state! :-/

Then yesterday we made salmon teriyaki with homemade udon noodles! The recipe called for stretching the noodles out after we cut them and before we boiled them. Cobalt and I had a lot of fun with that part, as you can see from the above and below pictures.

Aw yeah… This noodle is gonna be great!

The salmon teriyaki also turned out pretty delicious as you can see from the following picture. Result!

You know you want to eat this…

What did you do this weekend? Have you noticed that almost all of my food posts are about noodles? Maybe I should try some other recipe just to be balanced. Do you like cooking? What is your favorite thing to make from scratch? I have to say that pie crust is kind of fun. I got a little obsessed with making homemade pie crust during my first year of grad school… It would probably be easier to make now that we have all these sweet cooking wedding presents… :)

Is Fall here yet?

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Hey! I hope you all had great weekends! In honor of the holiday weekend, I think I will be posting on Tuesday and Thursday this week instead of my usual MWF posts (maybe you’ll get a Friday post too… who knows). Anyway, today has some pictures from this weekend. On Saturday, Cobalt and I went up into the mountains to see if fall had arrived yet (yeahhhh… we’re getting a little tired of the hot Colorado summer days). We were checking out the aspen trees to see if they’d turned the gorgeous shade of yellow they turn in the fall. The results: sommmmeeeee aspen trees turned…

Bottom picture: on our journey, we found this random Ford hubcap so I decided to take some cool grungy shots too. :D

Anyway, Cobalt and I had a very productive weekend. Our apartment is starting to look like a real apartment! Yay!!!! Did you guys do anything fun?!

Nine Lies and a Truth -or- Fortune Cookies and other Fun Wedding Stuff

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Lots of fun in this post. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. First, the fortunes. So in case you are just tuning in to the “Recap of Potassium and Cobalt’s Wedding” Series, let me remind you that for our wedding, we made felt fortune cookies as our favors (pattern is here). The fortune cookies were prominantly featured on the blog mostly because Cobalt and I couldn’t decide what to put on the fortunes. We actually figured out the back first (It said: “Lucky numbers: 8 4 12”) and then finally, one day while visiting Cobalt’s family, we cranked out 10 possible fortunes: facts about Cobalt and me. Nine of them are complete lies and one of them is a very silly truth. Cobalt typed them all up to make them actually look like fortunes (he picked an amazing font and they printed out really great) and then Cobalt and the T stuffed each fortune cookie with one of the fortunes before the T and I set off to CA. All this work was put in…. and then we forgot to put the fortunes out for our guests…….

I think what actually happened was that it was a bit windy when the caterers were setting up the tables so they didn’t want to put the fortunes out and have them all blow away. In the end, it was Cobalt and me running around during the dancing part of the reception handing out fortunes (it was kind of funny…) and we ended up with a lot left (as you can see from that picture). Anyway, I am sure you are all interested in reading the fortune options (even if you received your very own fortune cookie at our wedding!) so without further ado, here they are:

9 lies and a truth

  • While living in Albuquerque, Potassium & Cobalt were featured in “Breaking Bad.” They were in plain sight.
  • To recreate the day they met, Potassium & Cobalt are honeymooning in the belly of a whale.
  • Potassium was impressed with Cobalt’s uncanny ability to sing like a capaberra.
  • Cobalt was impressed with Potassium’s uncanny ability to crochet 50 chickens in an hour.
  • Cobalt and Potassium are secret agents. They appreciate your discretion.
  • Cobalt and Potassium have a pet dinosaur named ‘Sinatra.’ ‘Dino” was already taken.
  • Potassium and Cobalt accidentally spilled yogurt on President Obama when he last visited Boulder.
  • Potassium and Cobalt once went to Amarillo, TX just to try on big hats.
  • The understudy for the groom is Nathan Fillion. If you see him, let us know.
  • The understudy for the bride is Amy Adams. You won’t see her. She is hidden.

Switching gears a little bit. I thought I could also talk briefly about my bridesmaids’ gifts. I got them each a necklace/earring set and… a stuffed Shark Banana. The shark bananas were a huuuuuge hit and all five of them plus mine showed up for the wedding (without any of us discussing this idea). We took some pictures of us pre ceremony and then our photographer found out and went to town with it. “Okay… have your banana shark kiss Potassium… okay make your banana shark a mustache… OHHHHHHH I SAW THAT! You dropped your banana shark on the ground! I am going to have to call BSPS – banana shark protection services…” It was a shark banana/bridesmaid/bride extravaganza. Can’t wait to see those pictures… But until then, here is a picture of all the Shark bananas in the bridal suite before the wedding started… :)

What is your favorite fortune? Any other requests for wedding Wednesday posts? I am kind of running out of topics…

The calm before the storm

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M, me, Cobalt, and my wee at the beach. I think I look weird taking the picture… At least you can see the tail shadow cast by my raptor hoodie… Yesssssss… :)

Last Wedding Wednesday ever (at least prewedding…)! Craziness!

Things are looking good. This past weekend, Cobalt and I got everything that needed be printed at Kinko’s (table seating assignments, etc) ready and then on Monday, we printed everything out AND ran our epic shopping trips to Costco, Target, etc. We paid the caterer her final check so we have now officially paid everything off. We are pretty much ready to sit back and watch everything just fall into place now… Yay! Let’s go!

Things got a little interesting on Monday when one of the groomsmen found out that he was actually flying to CA on Tuesday instead of today (we actually can’t decide if he chose the wrong day or if the airline totally just screwed him over) but everything seems to have worked out great! We picked him up Tuesday morning and then he and Cobalt ran errands while my mom, my sister (who came in Monday night! Yay!), and I went out and did girly things, like playing with makeup and shopping for jewelry. Then Cobalt, M (groomsman), wee (sis), and I took off for the beach to relax a little.

It was amazing out there. I am always in awe of the ocean whenever I see it (living in a landlocked state has totally intensified this feeling) but today just seemed perfect. The weather was perfect (not too hot, not too cold), there were seals and pelicans out playing around in the water for us to see (see below), and it was just a nice calm before the storm hanging out there with Cobalt and two people who are also very important to me.

Look at that pelican! Flapping away…
Dive pelican, dive! You should have seen them! They were dive bombing the ocean and as soon as one pelican found something, all these ducks, other pelicans, and seals would show up to try to grab it…

I’m signing off for a while. Friends and family are coming in today (safe travels everyone!), the bachelorette/bachelor parties are tomorrow, craziness Friday, and then WE GET MARRIED on SATURDAY!!!! Maybe I will be back next Wednesday for a wedding recap? Maybe the Wednesday after that… Only time will tell…

Butterflies at the Insectival!

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This butterfly’s wings are wrinkled because of a birth defect. It can’t fly very well… :(

So… this weekend, the Butterfly Pavilion hosted an Insectival (or Insect Carnival)! The best part about it was that the local camera store in the Boulder/Denver area was there loaning out macro lenses for free! For those of you who don’t know what a macro lens is, check out your point and shoot cameras. Macro mode is always identified by a little flower shape. When you turn on macro mode, you can take pictures of super tiny things and the camera will do its best to bring those little things into perfect focus. It’s kind of similar for big DSLRS too except you can actually use a totally different lens that specializes on focusing on the tiny. Macro lenses are pretty expensive (the one I played with is around $1000) and I don’t do enough photography of tiny things to justify buying one but if someone wants to loan me an expensive macro lens in an area full of tiny things (like butterflies) and let me play, I am okay with that!
So we went! I was so stressed out and nervous the whole drive there, worrying that they would be out of loaner lenses or something. >_< Poor Cobalt…

It all worked out though. I got to borrow a 105 mm macro lens which turned out to be HUGE. My friend J also brought her DSLR and she got to borrow this epic telephoto macro lens which was even bigger. The difference between our two lenses is that with her telephoto lens, J could look at tiny things farther away and have them appear as if they are right next to you. With our borrowed lenses in hand, J and I (and the rest of our group) headed into the world of butterflies!


It was interesting trying out a new lens with my camera. Usually if you go to a camera store and ask to try a lens, they bring you a random camera with the lens of interest attached and you play with it in the store. This time, I had my own camera (that I am completely comfortable using) and my own memory card and I could just mess around (i.e. take a million pictures and look at them all later in the comfort of my home). I usually shoot all my DSLR pictures in manual mode – meaning that I often take several pictures of the same thing to try to get the settings the way I want them. I found that with demoing a new lens, I would rather just mess around with the lens settings and let the camera take control of the light settings. I couldn’t let myself go all the way to automatic mode so I settled on Aperture Priority (Av mode on most cameras), which lets you set the depth of field and it adjusts the shutter speed to whatever it thinks will work best. It was hard trusting my camera when I am so used to doing everything myself (I found myself constantly judging the lighting of certain situations and wondering if I should change something before I realized the camera would take care of it) but it did a good job. Once we got inside to look at some of the other bugs, I had to put it back on manual because I was disappointed in its choice of shutter speed but otherwise, good job camera! Thank you for letting me only focus on the lens.


Long story short… it was a blast. I have so many butterfly pictures on my computer right now… AND the camera store is holding a photo contest! I am currently trying to figure out which of ALLLLLL my pictures is my favorite (these three are in the running with about 8 other ones…) so I can enter it in the contest. Winner wins a fancy Nikon J1 camera. Maybe I will post the picture I submit when I submit it…

Finally some non butterfly/camera geekiness:
Cobalt LOVES tarantulas. You can tell from just his mouth in this picture… He actually got to hold one named Rosie (and he got a sticker saying that he held her). Rosie also must have really liked Cobalt. When the handler tried to take her back, she wouldn’t leave his hands…

And a picture of J, me, and A (taken with my normal 50 mm lens). I am sad because we just had to give our fancy lenses back to the camera people…

Crazy week ahead! MOH comes tomorrow and we leave on Saturday for CA!!!! Gotta finish that crazy grant too. Plus, I should probably clean the house before T shows up tomorrow….

Your assignment for today: What do you look for in a good photograph? Do you look at photo composition, colors, focus, etc? Are you a huuuge nerd about something the way I am about cameras/photography?