On Saturday, we went out to Milburn Farms to go apple picking. The weather was GORGEOUS - 70's and sunny - we had an awesome time picking sweet gala apples and crunchy empire macintosh! So delicious.
Here's Michael with his prize, albeit a little blown-out, but you get the idea that it's an apple right?
Picking some with Uncle Bill's help:
SUCCESS!
Folded up with his stylin' aunts:
And enjoying his delights in the field:
Afterwards, we bought some farm fresh vegetables (YUMM!), ate some very fried apple cider donuts, and explored the farm. Michael spent a great deal of time with their well stocked sandpit (YESSS!!! We miss the sandpit from Paris!) and saw their goats. They had these great ramps for them to play on way up high:
And Uncle B spent some time making Q-ball laugh. He is so much fun at this age. So smiley and great fun:
Uncle Bill grew a mustache, 2 trees got chopped down, my furniture in my bedroom got rearranged by 3 strong brothers, John showed us his vocal stylings in Singstar on PS2, Kelli got some SUPER cute shoes for Quinn at Gap at a fantastic price when us girls went shopping, a game of Risk got started, AK cracked us up with her Speed Scrabble skills (is YAR a word?), and Brian worked the grill for meals for us. It was a gorgeous weekend in the country. Not many pics as we did much of NOTHING!
Sunday, we went to church, and hung around, took naps, us girls shopped and we celebrated Bill's birthday with an apple crisp with our farm picked apples! He was a good sport to come out to the country for his birthday!
On Monday, we went for a hike at a little trail down the road from our place. The boys threw HUGE rocks into the stream and we enjoyed some time in nature. Drove to 2 restaurants for lunch which were closed, stopped to get pizza, and went home to finish lunch there.
Everyone's gone now and it's awfully quiet. Back to normal life!
Photographing in Direct Sun Observations.
Stop reading here if not interested in photography. It is gonna get boring.
I learned some lessons about shooting in direct sun. None of which I have had a chance to duplicate so I am not sure if they are steadfast. Getting slightly better at it! No better way to learn then to get out and do it. All pics are SOOC. The key is to get the sun at the right angle with respect to the subject. You need the sun (which is overhead)...but just slightly BEHIND the subject. So you get a little bit of a halo effect and while the face is a bit underexposed...it can be bumped up a tiny bit on PS.
Also interesting, was NOT including the sky in the picture. I had some where I just had Michael and the sunny bushes, and those came out with a cool greenish yellowish look that I like (you might not)
The shot is far from perfect...but in bright sun it 1)does not have severe blowouts and 2)does not severely underexpose the shaded areas and 3) involve squinty people staring at the sun. SO to me, it's a pretty successful picture for direct sun. And that glare to the right is a leaf in the way.
Another tricky thing? In some situations, overexposing worked out better. Example:
And in other situations, underexposing worked out better. Example:
So bottom line? Direct sun must be shot in manual - and most of the time - overexposing a little or underexposing a little helps, depending on the angle of the light. Direct sun - makes it necessary to see which angle the light is coming from and finding at what angle (behind/side/front/back) is best for the subject to be lit. Sometimes, turn the subject around until you find the place that helps the camera not blowout areas. Also useful, to have a light reflector.Best thing? GET-THEE-TO-THE-SHADED AREA!
SO while I didn't get any super awesome pics from the trip, I did learn a whole heck-of-a-lot. And I was still pretty happy with a good handful of my pictures. Not sure if you guys like it (ahem...KIM! hee), but it is what I have come up with for now. If you have some good tips, feel free to put them in comments!
