Adventures in lighting

I'm trying to find the best lighting solution for when we have poor light inside the house, mainly for during the winter. :cP I found a couple halogen work lamps at Lowe's for $24 for the set, so I grabbed them up. I definitely need to diffuse the light, but Spencer and I played around a little with different lighting and camera settings today.

One thing I figured out quickly as I was editing them is I need to write down the settings I use as I take the picture. Even 30 minutes later I had a hard time remembering exactly what I had done for each picture.

Another thing I learned, I really love shooting in RAW. The problem is the file sizes are just too huge for me to be able to do that on a regular basis. Maybe I can do that just for when I'm shooting portraits.


This one had the lights and the flash on the camera. Too much light! Too harsh! Diffusing/softening the light would have helped. I think this was full auto portrait on the camera.


Very cute picture, but I can't get the color cast out of it. Dang. Not enough light. This was using the portrait style setting with the camera set to Av. The halogens were surprisingly yellow sometimes. I thought halogens had more of a white light.


Camera on Av, style on standard. Still not quite right.


Camera set to Av, style standard, RAW, no lights, no flash. It's a shame RAW has such HUGE file sizes. I didn't play with the lights and RAW. I need to do that.

Those lights get *hot* in a hurry! I'm going to have fun playing with them and seeing if I can get good portraits at home.

A new roof!

Before(the worst section of the roof, although shingles were missing elsewhere):


After:

(They're going to come later to replace the gutter.)

Isn't it beautiful? :c)

Babies

I've shown the picture of the baby lemons. We also have baby strawberries and baby tomatoes.





When we drive in toward Kirk's work, we get to see the baby horses in the field. We need to go drive by the sheep at VA Tech. I bet there are lambs!

Spring

Isn't springtime great?



We had a lot of fun on Saturday at a church party. We went to a pond at one of the member's homes. The kids always have a great time there. In fact, they woke up on Saturday morning asking if it was time to go to the pond.



We had lots of fun fishing, boating, playing, eating. The kids found a baby turtle and were excited about that.



In other news, Kirk bought a dwarf Meyer lemon tree for me for my birthday. It has lots of tiny green lemons on it! So cute!

Rainy Days

It is definitely springtime.



We've been getting lots of rain.



And you know what?



I'm not really minding it too much. Everything is looking so lush and green. Plus, when it rains, I don't have to go water my plants. :c)

Of course, I do have more work I would like to do outside and the grass is starting to get pretty tall. I wouldn't mind it too much if the rain stopped, either. Maybe we could reach a nice compromise.

On the way to school

Grace: Did you have pigs growing up on the farm?

Me: No. We had cows, horses, guinnea hens...

Sheri(interrupting): Guinnea pigs??

Me: Guinnea *hens*. You know, hens, they laid eggs, like chickens.

Grace: Guinnea pigs don't lay eggs.

Let's Recap

So it's been another month I've let slip away with little or no blogging. Sorry! When life gets busy, this is the first thing to drop. Let's see if I can summarize what all happened in the month of April and mix in some pictures as well.

There were many soccer games and practices. We enjoyed the warmer weather.



The kids had Spring Break from school that lasted a week and a day, so 10 days total including weekends.



We had a fun Easter.



A new branch was split off from our ward at church. I realize that if you aren't LDS, that sentence might as well be in another language. ;c)

We worked on planting some things outside and getting places ready to plant.

There was a Spring Carnival at the primary school.



We had Stake Conference where a new Stake Presidency was made, with Kirk as the new Stake President. He's been doing double duty since then as the Bishop of our ward plus learning the ropes of being the Stake President.



Elijah hadn't been feeling well for a couple days leading up to Stake Conference weekend. He had a mild fever that lasted for around 8 days and was cranky. I blamed teething since he is working on two teeth right now. I learned it was Roseola when he broke out in a rash on Tuesday.



My 36th birthday was Friday, but it wasn't really very good because I wasn't feeling very well and we were kind of too busy the week leading up to it. I have been told by Kirk that I get a birthday do-over. :c)



Kirk and I found out Saturday evening that we both have strep throat.

We missed my grandmother's 90th birthday party on Sunday afternoon because we really didn't want to get anyone - especially her! - sick. I'm really sad about that. I hear it was a great party.



I've been trying to hold down the household this month, cooking, cleaning, baking... I have some touch-up painting and re-organizing I would like to do this month. Kirk is working with the insurance company to see if we can get a new roof after being told by the roof guy that we need one. We've had some other repairs done to house and truck.



I'm sitting in Elijah's room with him right now, because he's having a really hard time sleeping tonight. I'm hoping he settles in very soon so that we can both get some rest. He woke up earlier, I think from a bad dream, and seemed to want me to sit with him as he fell asleep.

I think that's about it for the month! LOL

I hope to be more blog present in May. If I'm not, just know that it's not you, it's me. :c)