Tag: Nikon D80

Sharks N Stuff

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This past weekend, Cobalt and I went to the Denver Aquarium with the Denver regional alumni club for my undergrad university. Knowing, as you do, about my love for sea creatures, you would think that the Denver Aquarium would be a place that I would frequently visit but actually, in my 4 years of living here, I had never once set foot in the building. So when I got the invitation for the regional club event, I pretty much instantly signed Cobalt and me up.

It was kind of a neat event (and three of us from my graduating year turned up!). We got to meet an African porcupine up close and personal (see below for pictures) and we got to go on a behind the scenes tour of the aquarium! On the tour, we met some of the sea turtles who are named after the ninja turtles (even the girls); we learned all about how the animals are trained, how their food is made, how their water is made, etc; and I pretty much decided that it is time for me to get dive certified so that I can volunteer in the shark tank! Anyway, after all of that, we got to go explore all the exhibits (it was really cool to look into the shark tank and be like “wow… we were standing right there!”) which is where I took this super awesome shark picture.

For those of you who are skeptical of aquariums in land locked states like I kind of am (having grown up in CA), I think this little aquarium actually does a pretty good job (and it is bigger than the one in Albuquerque!) though I was sad that they didn’t have an octopus…

Moving on…. porcupine! So this porcupine is like 6 months old and we got to meet her! A couple of pictures for you:

Here she is!!! She got really excited about being in a new room and shuffled off behind one of the tables before the trainer could get her leash on her. It was really neat to see how she is trained to follow a target and gets positively reinforced with food and a clicker when she goes to the target. The people in the room who have never heard of this training method before thought that she was making the clicker noise… Haha… Though she does ruffle her quills together to make this weird swishing sound if she thinks you are trying to eat her (this was her response to being put on a leash too…).


I just wanted to show you what her quills looked like in more detail. Apparently if she really wanted to quill you, she would back into you. Yikes! The trainer said that she is pretty much harmless and that she, the trainer, has only gotten quilled once – when she accidentally dropped the porcupine she was holding and then tried to catch it with her knee (>_<). She said that the only thing you really have to worry about is getting your shoes eaten. Apparently this little porcupine was on the news recently and the news anchor was freaking out because the porcupine was reallllly interested in her leather shoes… Hehe… aww porcupines…

Anyway, that pretty much concludes the aquarium summary. I will leave you with an Instagram of me and a shark at the gift shop…

What did you do this weekend? Cobalt and I also saw two movies, Moonrise Kingdom and Brave. Have you seen either of them? What do you think?

So many weddings!

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So Cobalt and I have been busy: this past weekend we made pasta and then the weekend before we went to see our friends A and T get married! What a great night! The ceremony was adorable and heartfelt. A made her own dress which is freaking awesome. This first picture shows off her dress as she stands all ready to get married to T! What a gorgeous bride! :)

During the ceremony, they sealed love letters in a box with a bottle of wine to be opened on their 10th anniversary. Look how cute it was! 10 years from now will be exciting!

Finally, I love this cake picture!

After all the cake shenanigans, we danced the evening away and that was awesome! Congratulations A and T! :):):):):)

Pasta Party!

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Yesterday, Cobalt and I went over to our friend L’s house to hang out with L and our friends T and C for a day of adventure. We made homemade pasta. L charged us with two tasks: making mushroom ravioli and spaghetti carbonara. So we divided into two teams – Cobalt and T on the spaghetti and C and me on the ravioli while L started on the ravioli filling. That picture up there is my sad looking mummy ravioli. He surprisingly didn’t explode when we cooked him so I guess I patched him up pretty well! C said he was delicious… :)
Anyway, it was really fun/tasty! Here are some more pictures:

First we have C mixing the ravioli dough:

Next we have Cobalt and T working on making the spaghetti… The pasta machines were of course the best part…

Once the spaghetti was ready to be cooked, everyone switched over to team ravioli and we had quite the assembly line going on (someone painting the dough, someone filling the dough, someone making the little raviolis, etc). Look at C’s cutting skill!

And two hours later, we have the final dishes:

Spaghetti Carbonara

Mushroom Ravioli

Oh man… it was so delicious… Have you ever made your own pasta? What is your favorite kind of pasta to make/eat? Did you do anything amazing this weekend?

Mr. and Mrs…. ????

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Let’s do a scandalous post today….

Let’s talk about last names.

I know I know… I can hear everyone get all awkward… or maybe that’s just me being awkward. Maybe everyone else is totally cool with it. If so, can you help me?

So the last name thing is a hot spot for me and I’ve blatantly shrugged it off over the past few weeks and months promising to deal with it later. Well, last weekend we had our last premarital counseling session with one of our officiants and we were working on planning the ceremony. He asked if we had thought about how we want to be introduced at the end of the ceremony (you know, after “You may kiss the bride,” there’s that part where you are announced as “for the first time ever…”). What’ll it be? Mr. and Mrs. [insert Cobalt’s last name here]? Cobalt [Cobalt’s last name] and Potassium [my last name]? Just Cobalt and Potassium, for the first time ever as husband and wife? The short answer is I don’t know.

For the entirety of my life, I always assumed that I would change my name to be my husband’s last name and become “Mrs. Whatever” because that is what you do. Then I even started joking about it and I was like Hey! My last name is cool! If he has a boring last name, then he should change his last name to match my awesome name… but then when it actually happened and I actually got engaged and actually had to think about changing my last name… it broke my heart. I have been Potassium [last name] for so long that it is part of my identity! Some of my nicknames even are based on that last name. It seemed like changing my name would be like changing my identity. Like lopping off my connection with my family and my past life and joining Cobalt’s family. I mean, I want to be a part of Cobalt’s family but not at the risk of completely losing my connection with my own. I know that is not what is going on here but it still seems weird to me that the girl is expected to do that but the guy doesn’t do anything like that for her family. I don’t know. These are the things that I think about.

So I’ve compiled a list of my feelings on this issue.
Reasons why Potassium doesn’t want to change her name

  • Read the above paragraph for all the emotional reasons Potassium is attached to her name: family, identity, etc.
  • I’ve published a paper in the scientific world with this name. And if you look up my last name in a certain scientific database, this paper along with papers published by my uncle and my grandfather pop up as well… Which is kind of cool. A nerdy family legacy if you will… Okay that is sort of a family issue but the real point here is that if I publish any other papers under any other name, then this one paper will be lost in a search for me and so people won’t have my complete paper publishing record… It’s a complicated science thing…
  • It’s a pain in the butt/very expensive to change your name!!!!! I don’t really think anyone LIKES going to the DMV so why would I purposely give myself a reason to have to go back there?

Reasons why Potassium does want to change her name

  • I still do kind of want to be Mrs. [Cobalt’s last name] because marriage is a joining of families and because it makes everything all tidy with kids and mail and checks and bills etc. Plus my mom didn’t change her last name and it made me feel like she didn’t want to be part of the family or something (it sounds stupid but it was kind of weird for me…)
  • I can keep my scientific name my maiden name so my papers could still be published under that name even if I legally had a new name.

I am sure there are plenty of other reasons to go in both categories but there are a few. Let’s discuss!

In other news, it is really exciting to get our RSVP postcards back in the mail every day.

In other other news, we are having problems coming up with the fortune for the inside of our fortune cookies. Any suggestions? Someone suggested that we put “lucky numbers” on the back that are 8, 4, and 12 (wedding date… hahaha) but what about the actual fortune? We have thought of jokes, trivia about the two of us, cute “ice breaker” questions like “When did you first meet Potassium/Cobalt?” and nothing has really stuck. Thoughts about those?

Okay… Here is your mission for today:

  1. What are your feelings about name changing?
  2. Be excited about RSVP postcards (and send yours in if you have one but otherwise just be excited)!!!
  3. Fortune ideas?

One more thing – the picture! It’s the cake for the bride and groom at the wedding Cobalt and I went to last weekend (hopefully a post about that coming soon!). Adorable, right? I love it. The groom’s mom made it too. Nice work!

Congratulations to a new married couple!

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This weekend, Cobalt and I headed to our first wedding of the summer! It was awesome. J looked beautiful in her dress and S looked handsome in his tux. The ceremony was lovely and we all cried like babies. We caught up with friends who we haven’t seen in years over dinner and then we danced the night away! Good times… During the dancing, J and I talked about how exciting this summer is! First her wedding and then wedding number three of the summer is Cobalt’s and mine! Can’t wait! Cobalt and I are sooooo excited right now. :) I’ve been up to a lot of stuff so hopefully I’ll get a chance later this week to talk about it all… but for now, I am celebrating Memorial Day by taking a nap in the middle of the day! I hope you all are having wonderful Memorial Days! Is there anyone you are honoring today?

Pictures: up there! J looking stunning during their first dance – one of my favorite parts of a wedding.

Down here: J and S during the toasts… they were all very good toasts… :)

Ribbit?

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This weekend, Cobalt and I went to the Denver Botanic Gardens as part of his birthday adventures and we had a really good time. The gardens are kind of awesome (except the plains one which, in our opinion, seemed a little plain… :-/). It was all overcast and wet outside, which apparently inspired me to be really creative with my photography. I took so many cool pictures with my DSLR… it was awesome. As soon as I can pick out which pictures I like best, maybe I will post some cool flower pictures on here. Today’s pictures come from the rainforest part of the garden (verrrrry humid in there…) where they had some poison dart frogs. The frogs were being a little antisocial and hiding behind the plants in the darker parts of their aquarium so it made taking their pictures kind of challenging (working at really low exposure speeds and f stops…). Which is your favorite?

I like that his little toes are in focus in this one…

One without a flash…

Transparency

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Last week, Karyl tagged me in a blog post. Basically, each person tagged had to answer a specific question. Mine was: “What do you look forward to in your marriage?”

I thought about this all week last week. Not that I’m not looking forward to anything… more like I was trying to figure out what will be different about being married. I know that things will be different but Cobalt and I have been together for so long now that it’s hard to nail down exactly what. So I thought a lot about what changes when you get married: the breaking off from your families and forming a new unit, coming up with new traditions, etc.

Then Cobalt and I met with our premarital counselor/pastor last weekend and he talked to us about this idea of being transparent to each other. We were talking about learning how to better communicate our feelings to each other and our pastor told us that we are becoming the safest person in the whole world for the other person. That it’s okay for me to open up to Cobalt and that it’s okay for him to open up to me. That we can be totally transparent about our feelings and our beliefs and that it’s okay. It’s safe. Cobalt won’t stop loving me when I am feeling fragile or angry and I won’t stop loving him when he is feeling frustrated or hurt. And I think that is what I am most looking forward to in marriage, learning how to be transparent to Cobalt. Makes me feel all warm and bubbly inside. Makes me feel safe to know that he’s the one I get to finally open up to…

In other wedding news, we have officially paid off the photographer! Kudos to her for making us a contract where everything is due BEFORE a month before the wedding so we can get her checked off before we have to start paying everything else off in July…
Also, the invitations are almost done. Cobalt and I had to decide on some fonts for T, which we did this weekend. Hopefully we can get those printed off soon.
ALSO – we are starting to get registry gifts! I am excited to try out Natalie’s Gift/thank you note excel file and excited that Cobalt and I already purchased our Thank You notes.

Picture: Cobalt and me at 14,000 feet above sea level on Pike’s Peak – the easiest 14’er to get up around here (you drive).

Easter Balloons

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For Easter Sunday this year, we were invited to my friend J’s family’s house. We had a really nice time. The best part was of course seen J’s adorable niece A. When we got there, A and her daddy were blowing up balloons. Daddy was working on A’s shyness by having her give each one of us a balloon (shown here: instructions on who to give the next balloon to). It was fairly dry so we all ended up looking a bit like this with our balloons (shown here: my friend M!):

Hahaha… It was kind of fun. Anyway, below is my favorite picture of A playing in her sandbox after dinner:

It was sooooo fun taking pictures of A! I felt like I really got back into my photography groove. What’s something that you enjoy doing to relax? Do you like doing things that challenge you? Or do you like being lazy? Or both?

Happy Birthday Dad!

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Today’s my dad’s birthday! Yay! Happy birthday Dad! Sorry I can’t be there to celebrate it with you in person but I love you and I hope you have an amazing day…
Today’s picture is a picture of my parents from last Christmas. You can see my Dad’s rocking his epic winter bear beard in this pic. Also you can see that I was playing with bokeh at the same time by turning all the lights on the tree into stars. :)

In other news, Cobalt and I planted the first few plants for our garden yesterday. I have been staring at the pots ever since waiting for the plants to sprout. I knowwwww they don’t sprout overnight but I still have the little kid in me who is so excited that she wants to watch the plants sprout right now!. Do you guys have gardens? Have you planted anything for them yet? Do you prefer flower gardens, vegetable gardens, or both?

Fun with High Dynamic Range

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In addition to hanging out with my mom and playing with my sharks last weekend, I also decided to play with a new form of photography (at least to me). HDR (high dynamic range) photography allows you to get both the bright stuff and the dark stuff in the frame to show up. You know, normally on a bright day to get your subject in focus, you have to overexpose the sky. Or to get the sky in focus, you have to underexpose anything else in the picture. So HDR is a technique where you take the same picture multiple times, changing the exposure time for each picture (I just walked down from 1/800 to 1/100 so I had 5 or so pictures at a variety of exposures). Then you use a fancy program like Photoshop to combine them all together into one image. Tada! Sky and subject are both viewable! Or in this case: the bark and the cracks between the bark on this tree are both viewable! That picture up there is from my second attempt – I had read about HDR and had played around with the HDR mode in photoshop so I knew what I wanted my pictures to look like.

This picture down below was from my first attempt when I just tried it out – no tripod, no reading up on how to do it/the best subjects, etc. I just took a few pictures at various exposure times. Because I didn’t use a tripod, I had to stick all the pictures into a program I generally use for microscopy images from work (ImageJ from NIH) to align all the images (note to self – when doing HDR work – USE A TRIPOD). ImageJ did a pretty good job though. The only things that didn’t get aligned were the clouds (note to self – when doing HDR work – DON’T PHOTOGRAPH MOVING OBJECTS… for obvious reasons! You are taking multiple pictures so when things move, they won’t line up right in the composite image!). So the clouds (and their shadows) look a little funny in this picture but there you have it: my first HDR attempt showing you the most well known sight in Boulder – the Flatirons.

Some people LOOOOOOVE HDR because of its ability to capture bright and dark things and some people hate it because they say that the midtones turn out so gray (my photography teacher said that). I didn’t like my pictures at first because Photoshop’s original HDR composite does turn out looking quite gray but then after playing with the colors a little in Photoshop using the Curves function, I think it turned out pretty neat (i.e. not gray). Thoughts? What should I try to photograph with HDR next?