Here's a fun video (for me... I know that watching other people's old cat videos may not be so fun for everyone) but this one made me really happy this morning!  I apologize for my weird pants...



A lot of things are working out today! It's exciting.. I have a job interview on Wednesday, I'm officially signing a lease for my new apartment on Monday, I have a bunch of fun big band gigs in the next 2 months... After feeling kind of icky the past couple days, I am starting to feel a lot less apprehensive about everything :)

Some recent photos

I have a couple photos to add today!

What I see on my way to school every morning.

Kind of a weird picture, but I like it for some reason.

Here Brian!! This one was actually me trying a new "technique."  Didn't reeaaaalllly turn out right and the colors got all weird.  But I'll keep trying.  

An Edit

There. I edited one of the pictures.  What do you think? Better? Worse?

Live music! Everyone watch :)

Took some pictures outside but didn't really get any I'm thrilled about.  Sometimes I find it hard to find a good picture without a subject.  I think this weekend I am going to go on a walk to see if I can find some pretty wintry scenes.

TWO bands that Brian is in are playing in Chicago at the Elbo Room this weekend and I'm finally able to see them. Online. From Boston. Both bands have new music and being 1200 miles away, I haven't really had a chance to hear any of it since I moved so I'm super excited! Tonight is Koplant No and tomorrow night is Slip Silo.  Definitely check them out if you are up at midnight! (or in my case 1:00 EST.... maybe I should take a nap?).

I did come home today to mess around with come camera features with Stella and am really happy with some of the results.  All of the ones displayed here are pictures I didn't expect to get, but I was photographing a live animal.  But I ended up being way happier with these than the ones I kind of tried to stage.  Learning from this, it seems to look much more natural and interesting by just going with the flow.  Pictures that are staged, maybe usually seem staged.  We had a fun little photo shoot and it did seem like Stella liked all the attention.  She definitely likes to put on a show sometimes.

I have only slightly messed around with editing photographs.  These have not been edited at all.  I think that is the next thing for me to start learning.  I was kind of thinking about getting the program Aperture. It is a lot cheaper than Photoshop and I can download it right on my computer from the Apple App store.  Has anyone tried this or have any thoughts?  I would also appreciate thoughts on what you think should be done to make these pictures look any better than they are.  Either by editing, or what I could have done while taking the picture. 

Kiss.

This is the point where I stopped trying to get her to do what I wanted, but instead decided to work with what she wanted to do.

4 second exposure

Good ol' quesadillas for dinner?  Yeah, it has been awhile.

Cozy Day for Kitty

We are having some crazy snow today.  It has been snowing all morning. Those big huge fluffy flakes that cover everything in five minutes.  I guess later it is supposed turn into rain.  I keep checking my email, but classes are still on.  Well, class is still on. One.
So before trudging outside to the practice rooms, I thought I would take some pictures of cozy Stella.  Forget what I said earlier about her being a patient model.  Today every time I tried to get her to look at me she would run over and bump into me and/or my camera trying to get some love and cuddles.  You can't hate her for that, I guess :)  So after a couple really failed attempts, I waited for her to fall asleep and then take pictures of her then.  Half way through she woke up and gave me the "I can't believe you woke me" stare, but then took a little bath and fell right back asleep.

 This is the best one from the first bunch of pictures I took of Stella.  This is her ignoring me.

Her mouth is open, but I thought it was funny. I think she just got done yawning. Poor thing.

While these photos were uploading, I decided to see if I could capture the size of these snowflakes outside so I went out on the deck and tried to get some snowflake pictures.  

You can see some of the big flakes, but they are HUGE! Hard to capture. I had it set on a fast shutter speed...maybe I should have just kept taking more and more pictures until it worked out.  Any ideas on capturing snowflakes?

LX3

I recently received a Panasonic Lumix LX3 and am so so so unbelievably excited! Now my obsessive picture taking can possibly produce some decent results. I think most exciting for me is knowing I have so much to discover about photography and my camera. I want to be able to capture moments in the best possible way.  Stella, my lovely and patient cat, is my #1 model; so she will pop up probably way too often. Please let me know what you think!  Tips and thoughts are greatly appreciated!

 Thanks to the birds :)