Trees and Light

I strike myself as the sort of person who would be good at taking photos. I figured there was a whole world untapped by my shutter and that I was doing humankind a disservice by not displaying God's creation to its fullest potential.

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When I went to buy a camera after Christmas, I had a wad of cash in my fist and a dream of photographic glory burning in my heart. Now, some people are hardcore researchers and they scour the city's camera shops, read stuff online, jot down advice in their little blackberries, and drive all of their friends crazy by inserting into every conversation whispers of Nikon, Canon, pixels, zoom thingies and, oh heck, I don't even know what other jargon people who know stuff about photography would use. In any case, as you can well imagine, that is certainly not how I roll.
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One crisp December evening, I confidently walked up to the counter at London Drugs, and within ten minutes I dropped about $500 when all was said and done. No, I am NOT compulsive or prone to salesperson pressure; I think I just knew what I wanted. It had some cool whozits and whatsits, but most importantly an idiot-proof guide. Whenever I want to do a close-up, I just have to press the button. Brilliant! Now, I know many of you who know about cameras know that for a person of my expertise (cough), I really just needed to go to Costco and I could have found something quite lovely for more like $200. True, but, well, I like my camera, so there.

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I have thus far mastered the candle light mode. Probably 70% of my pictures are shot in that mode right now, and recently we discovered the super close up feature. So rad. We went for a bit of a hike this weekend, though, and I found out that there is no mode for "forest starting to get dark but there are still bits of sunlight and the foliage still looks amazingly green." We did our best, and so here is what we came up with. It was a joint effort between me, Andy, and Luke.

This one is my favourite. Andy told me not to shoot at the sun, but I disobeyed him (hey, we're not married yet, you know).

Can you find the spiderweb hidden in this one? (Although, it looks more like a blob of light)Andy took it and I think it's magical.

Now I'd like to know how we would have made this picture turn out. I have no idea, and I think Luke did a great job considering the conditions he had to work under.

It's risky business leaving boys with a camera while you go pee in the bush.

This is the first classic look-up-the-tree picture I've taken. I almost lost my balance and fell in the mud.

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Photography is so much harder than it seems! My goal is to learn all the handy dandy pre-programmed modes. We'll see what happens.