Twilight Zone and Deer.

I found out you can't photograph deer at night with my camera unless you either have a tripod or something on which to set the camera. I do have a night setting, but without the tripod it is difficult because I shake a little. I didn't have my tripod, which is too bad, since these guys kept eating while we were sitting there and I was in and out of my car. I also cannot remember how to do manual settings, even though I used an SLR for years that had NO automatic settings. I have to take a course and refresh my knowledge in that area. I will do that once I get my DSLR.

So here you have a little family of black-tailed deer that look like something out of "Twilight Zone". haha.


Here they are with no flash and no light. It wasn't really that dark, yet.







In my headlights:



In my headlights and with flash:







So, there you have it. Some pretty bad photography!

My latest shots of the moon.

These are some hand held shots that were taken from David and Nikki's balcony. It was cold which made me shiver so it was hard to get any closer than this. I cropped them but otherwise they are as taken.







I like this one even though it is not what I was trying to achieve.

It's Thursday.

I must write a blog today, but have no ideas running through my brain. I am too hot, too full, too tired, too bloated-feeling, too restless and way too brain-dead. I seriously thought about doing a Thursday Thirteen. They used to be nice no-brainers for Thursday, but apparently the old site no longer exists and the new site looked like way too much effort. In addition to which I would have to come up with thirteen of something.
It's a beautiful, rainy day here in Washington. My tiredness makes me want to curl up with a blanket and sleep, but my urge to get the living room painted and my floor down before the end of the month makes me want to get busy. So I've been being half busy and half lazy. The spaghetti I made last night was sooooo good and I think I ate too much for lunch. Usually on my days off I get so busy I forget to eat and get going on wired energy and get a lot done until I get the shakes. When I eat it's hard to stay motivated, even if I eat light. I just want to sleep. I'm sure it has nothing to do with my constant sleep deprivation.
So, let me ask you this. Do you think I'm crazy because I want to take pictures of the stars? Here are my latest attempts. Naturally I didn't bother with the tripod. They wouldn't be very interesting, anyway, if I had been able to hold the camera steady. I can't remember what the last one is. Maybe the neighbor's porch light? Hmmm...don't know. 18x zoom can catch the moon, but it can't catch the stars. I'm already looking for my next camera on my climb up to a digital SLR. In the meantime I am going to figure out what is the strength of the biggest zoom lens a person can buy and how many millions of dollars I will need to start saving in order to obtain it. (sigh)

Blogging.

I SERIOUSLY need to start blogging again. Seriously. I have no idea how I got so far off track. Oh, yeah. Farm town. hmmmm.
Here's a couple of pics I'd like to share.
I've become entranced with taking pictures of the moon. I've been playing with f-stops and shutter speeds and I'm figuring it out. Here are some of the pics.

This first pic I took using my tripod on top of the parking garage at work and using the "night" setting on my camera. I think it was a fluke that it turned out, but I was very excited that my camera had this range.


The reason I think that one was a fluke is because this is what I got the next night taking one at my house with the camera on the tripod out in the middle of my street and still using the "night" preset setting.


I spent some time thinking about it and thought that maybe it was because at my house it is so dark and at the parking garage you have the lights of the city surrounding you. So I tried again at the parking garage but wasn't able to duplicate that first picture. I got the bright light effect of the second picture.

I found that I could always get good detail taking pictures of the day moon, however. This one was taken in early evening before it got dark.


I spent some time playing with the camera in different darkness situations and learning how to set the fstop and shutter speed and then tried again. Originally I just tried setting the shutter speed manually. I got good detail, but the moon is so dark. This one is taken from atop the garage.


So I played a little more. In this one I set both the fstop and the shutter speed manually. But it still turned out quite dark. I knew there must be some way to duplicate that first picture that apparently was quite accidental. This one was taken from my driveway.


Finally, I just took pictures, one at a time, using all different combinations of fstop and shutter speed, until finally...

One turned out


And then another one even closer


So then I tried to get a picture of the moon surrounded by the clouds that were drifting in, but I got this...just the moon.


No matter what combination I tried, I either got ones like the one above, or ones like this, where the clouds show, but the moon is a bright light. So I need to work on that technique and maybe read up about how people go about getting those lovely pictures of the moon surrounded by clouds.


These two pictures are of the planet that was to the left and below the moon and according to the starguide that I use must be Jupiter. Obviously, my camera does not have quite THAT capability, but it was fun trying. I couldn't get my tripod steady enough on the recycling can which is why you see the movement in the light. But hey! I took a picture of the planet Jupiter. haha. I'm sure enjoying my new camera.