Novel Update

This has been my writing station for the past two days. The weather has been warmer lately so I've been able to set up shop on the front step with my story and a CD.

       Hi all. I am working on my next Messing with Manual post, but in the meantime I wanted to post a quick update on my NaNoWriMo novel. For anyone who doesn't know this already, I participated this past November in a novel writing challenge called NaNoWriMo.

         The challenge is essentially to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. I made it to the necessary word count, but still had about half of the novel unfinished. I've been trying to keep busy working at it, although it has been hard to be consistent. Well, a few days ago, I completed Part 3 of the story. That means I only have Part 4 to go. I am hoping to have it finished and edited by June. One of the prizes of meeting the 50,000 word deadline is that you have the opportunity to have five copies of your novel published through a self-publishing company for free. The offer is only good through June, though.

         The past few days I've been busy configuring an outline for Part 4. To celebrate my reaching this point, I will hopefully in a couple of days have a fun post that will aquaint you a little more with the characters of my story.


        While I was out on the step, typing my outline, I had my camera with me. Every once in a while I took a writing break to capture the life around me. :) Here's a few of the pictures.

My grandma was out sweeping the walk, so I tried a few black and white photos.

BTW: One of the songs from the CD that's in the first picture is the song of the week. Be sure to check it out on the sidebar.

Messing with Manual ~~~ The Sunset

The past few weeks I have been really excited to be able to explore the manual settings on my Nikon. I have played with the aperture (f/stops), shutter speed, and focus. In these photos that I took of a sunset at a nearby park, I mainly changed the aperture and the shutter speed.

Left Photo: 1/800s (shutter speed) f/5 (aperture) Right Photo 200s (shutter speed) f/5 (aperture)

These two photos were taken when I was still trying to figure out the correct balance of aperture and shutter speed. By the way, I don't know about you, but I have mainly been adjusting the shutter speed to change the lighting. Is it better to use the aperture? I seem to have more flexibility using it.

1/1500s  f/5

I finally figured it out. :)

1/400s  f/5

Left Photo: 1/320s f/5.6  Right Photo: 1/320s  f/4.5 

1/800s   f/4

1/800s  f/5.6

1/1500s  f/3.5

1/500s  f/8

I hope you enjoy this first installment of Messing with Manual. I am having a ton of fun learning about all this and I hope it encourages any other photographers to give it a try if you haven't before. If you are a reader who has been doing this for a while, I would definitely appreciate any tips. Have a great week all of you!



Common Museum Pieces

I have a bunch of different pictures that I want to post right now, but I can't post them all at the moment. I have been trying to mess with the manual settings on my camera, so I can't wait to share what has come from my experimenting. I thought that I would just take a few moments to share some more recent pictures. This weekend, I was surprised by a visit from a very close friend, Jaynie. We were able to spend some time together, and once, during the time, we went to a museum. I didn't really take any pictures of the exhibits, but found some of the more "common" items around the museum to be very good photo opportunities.

               These wall panels had such wonderful texture.

This bench probably wouldn't be too fun to sit on, but for pictures? Ahhh..

I tried my hand at some stairwells.

I loved this part. I didn't love trying to take a picture of it without people in the way. Oh, the price we photographers have to pay....