March 6 - Reflection

OK, I swore that I wasn't going to take pictures of the "usual suspects" (daughter, husband, family, etc.) for my photography blog, but how do I have a month that focuses on my favorite things WITHOUT taking pictures of these people.

So, in an effort to stay creative and take a picture of usual suspect #1 (my daughter)...here is a picture of her reflection in my rear view mirror. Don't worry, I wasn't driving while I took this picture.

Shutter Speed: 1/100 seconds
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO: 100

March 5 - My lifeline

What would I do without my computer? Entertainment, communication, scrapbooking, photography, music, journaling, blogging...etc. I would be lost without it. After all, I feel it is part of the family.


Shutter Speed: 1/40 seconds
Aperture: f/3.8
ISO: 250

March 4 - Cute Tootsies

OK, so I have realized that white balance is not very interesting. So, in an effort to make things a little more interesting, March's focus is also going to be an ode to my favorite things.

These little feet definitely make the top of that list.

Shutter Speed: 1/40 seconds
Aperture: f/4
ISO: 100

March 3 - Freshly fallen snow

As sick as I am of snow, I still think this picture is nice. I love the look of freshly fallen snow on the trees, it is very pretty, even if it is March :-)

Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
Aperture: f/4.5
ISO: 100

March 2 - Scrapbook Room

An ode to my scrapbook room...how I miss thee....

I am hoping to get down there this weekend to get some stuff organized for my scrapbooking weekend coming up in a few weeks!!!

Figure 1:
This is the photo I actually took, obviously the wrong white balance because it is WAY too yellow...

Figure 2:

This has had the white balance adjusted in Adobe Photoshop for a truer white.

Shutter Speed: 1 second
Aperture: f/22
ISO: 400

Over the next few weeks, I am hoping to learn how to get the white balance right with the camera instead of having to adjust it in Adobe.

March 1 - Hospital Room

I learned today that my camera has this cool feature called white balance bracketing. I snapped one picture and I got 9 frames with various white balance settings. I thought I would three of those shots as my "photo" of the day to show the differing white balance.

Figure 1: Correct white balance -
Figure 2: too pink -

Figure 3: too green -

Shutter Speed: 1/30 seconds

Aperture: f/3.5

ISO: 100

March Focus - White Balance

The reason we adjust white balance is to get the colors in your images as accurate as possible.
Why would you need to get the color right in your shots?

You might have noticed when examining shots after taking them that at times images can come out with an orange, blue, yellow etc look to them - despite the fact that to the naked eye the scene looked quite normal. The reason for this is that images different sources of light have a different ‘color’ (or temperature) to them. Fluorescent lighting adds a bluish cast to photos whereas tungsten (incandescent/bulbs) lights add a yellowish tinge to photos.

The range in different temperatures ranges from the very cool light of blue sky through to the very warm light of a candle.

We don’t generally notice this difference in temperature because our eyes adjust automatically for it. So unless the temperature of the light is very extreme a white sheet of paper will generally look white to us. However a digital camera doesn’t have the smarts to make these adjustments automatically and sometimes will need us to tell it how to treat different light.