Campfire

The recent warm weather (although it's snowing outside right now) urged the family to get together for dinner over the fire, dutch oven desert and a night under the stars. Adjusting my camera to a large aperture and a fairly rapid shutter speed, I was able to hand-hold my camera and get fairly crisp flames with no blur. Here they are.

Keeping the shutter open for a fraction of a second longer for this second shot showed trails of glowing ashes after poking the fire with a stick.

On the Playground at the Park

My little 2-year-old has been excited to go to the park to play. We told her she would have to wait until the snow melted and the weather was a little warmer. But as I considered photo opportunities, my little girl was about to get her way (as usual).

It was a cold evening so our visit to the park was short. I didn't even stick around long enough to pull out proper lighting equipment to use while shooting, so I grabbed my camera, two lenses and a tripod and set up my gear on the playground. My wife was a great sport standing at one end of the merry-go-round while I was on the other end. I mounted the camera to a tripod and selected a smaller aperture than I typically shoot with to increase the exposure time. We got the merry-go-round spinning at a good speed, and I fired away until my fingers were too cold and numb to press the shutter release button anymore (which didn't take long). We were dizzy and a little sick for a couple hours after this because of the spinning, but here's two photos that made it worth it:

I typically don't use color filters to make adjustments to my photos, but I wanted to try a warming filter for this one, as well as a few other adjustments such as the vignetting and blur around the edges.