UPGRADE!

You are looking at the proud owner of a brand new Nikon D3000 SLR camera!  That's right, peeps.  This chic FINALLY upgraded from her Kodak point-&-shoot to her first SLR and she could NOT be happier!

I have been really considering and saving for a new camera for about a year now.  I really thought I would end up with a Canon -- for some reason I just was leaning toward a Canon.  But I've heard really good things about Nikons, too, so I wasn't opposed to having one of those either.  This Nikon deal just kind of fell in my lap when Jeff got an email from TigerDirect with an online 48-hour sale on this camera/kit.  After reading the reviews (all of which were really positive), I decided that this would be the perfect first SLR camera for me.

I've only had this camera for 5 days, folks.  So I still feel like I know NOTHING about it -- there are so many "bells & whistles"...I'm sure it will take me until Jesus comes back to even figure out all those but hopefully, in the near future, I will have enough knowledge and be comfortable enough with it to really take advantage of it and come out with some really nice photos.

Since getting it on Tuesday, I've had very limited time to "play" but I will show you a few photos that I've taken with it.  I'm amazed everytime I discover something new about it so the photos I take to "practice" with that new knowledge are really kind of ordinary but hey -- you gotta start somewhere, right?  :)

Everyone knows that I am NOTORIOUS for "self-portraits" as seen here.  :)  I've gotten pretty good at them and while it does appear that I cut off my chin in this one (give me a break, peeps, it's a brand new camera!), I think it has a certain artistic style...yeah, we'll go with that.  :)  Anyway, the camera has a "retouch" feature built right in to it that will let you do some basic editing to your photos before you even upload them to your computer.  The following photo is this same one but I used the "color balance" option under the retouch menu:

Pretty neat!

The next image is 2 photos I took using the manual focus -- I.love.this.feature!  I haven't worked with it enough to really be good at it yet (I forget about it since I didn't have that option before, only autofocus, and some of my photos end up blurry before I remember to focus them with the manual) but it does wonders when I'm trying to make something in the foreground or background sharp (in focus) while everything else around is blurred.  That's something I had to work REALLY HARD to accomplish with my Kodak and I love how simple it is now with this Nikon.  The photo on the left has the flowers in the foreground in focus while the photoframe in the background is blurred. The photo on the right is the opposite -- the flowers are now out of focus or blurred and the photoframe is in focus.  I did take these photos without flash so they're not even as crisp as they should be but you get the idea I was going for.

That's so cool... :)

The next photo was strictly just me taking a photo, on "auto", with flash, just a normal photo.  Nothing fancy.  But I think it came out really cool.  Like I had a spotlight on the flowers or something.  But I didn't.  It's really amazing to me how dramatic everything is with this camera vs. my other one...

Okay, one more photo.  This is the very first photo I took with my camera after I got it put together.  Before I knew anything at all about it.  While I was waiting for the camera to come, I wondered what my very first photo would be with it.  It shouldn't surprise me that I would take a photo of my most favorite person in all the world...

Aw.  :)

16 mos

I bet you thought my next post was going to be on Christmas, right?  Wrong!  That's how behind I am.  <sigh>  No, I DO have Christmas photos to post, but I wanted to just post a couple I took of little miss Cora Beth at Thanksgiving this year.

I'm noticing a pattern.

Unless I say what holiday it is, you'd never know because the majority of photos I take now are of Cora Beth.  Just her.  Doing whatever she's doing.  But I just can't help it.  She's so darn cute.  And especially NOW...

Do you not LOVE her little glasses??  She got those 3 days before Thanksgiving so they were REALLY new when we got there.  But she never bothers them.  Never.  It's like they're not even there.  She has them in an effor to try to correct a bit of a lazy eye.  Hopefully that will do the trick.  Either way, she's just as CUTE as she can be!

*little E*

Wow. It's been a.while. since I posted. Sorry about that. I may not have had much blog-worthy news to post about or maybe I've just not gotten around to posting. Whatever the case, I do NOW have something very blog-worthy to post...little miss Emily!

You remember me mentioning my friend, Elizabeth, in past posts, I'm sure. She and her husband, Matthew, had a sweet little baby girl about 4 or so months ago. I had met Emily briefly just a few days after she was born but Jeff had not had the privilege of meeting her until they got to come and visit for a little while recently. Of course, the camera flash was popping just as fast as I could get it to go. :) I got some cute ones, I think:

Emily is such a cutie and already has quite a little personality! She loves to talk and make noise, and she's always looking around to take everything in. She has very expressive eyes/eyebrows and we enjoyed just watching her. Of course, it was wonderful to see Matthew & Elizabeth, too. They are such dear friends to us and our time with them is always limited so we take what we can get when we can get it. :) Thanks for visiting, guys! We'll come to see you next! :)

cora beth's first time at the beach: day 2

Here are photos from our 2nd day at the beach during my brother & his family's visit here last week. This time we got out to the beach about 3:30pm so we had a little more sunlight. Again, Cora Beth did great and was such a cutie! Her little bathing suit was just *too much* with her little hat! Daniel & Brandi brought her little swimming pool out and we blew it up and filled it with water for her so she play in it. She loved just getting in and getting out, getting in and getting out, getting all kinds of sand in it. It was so funny to watch her...

I had a hard time narrowing down which photos to post of her here -- some of these just came out so good...

cora beth's first time at the beach: day 1

As promised, I have photos to share with you of Cora Beth's first *real* time on the beach. Back at the beginning of May, my brother and his family came for a visit and they took Cora Beth out to the beach but they couldn't stay long at all -- it was just too cold. And windy. Very windy.

So this time, we had a little bit warmer weather (after we got the sun to come out) and had better success on the beach. And Cora Beth loved it! She liked the water -- as long as it wasn't rushing at her full force. :) And she didn't seem to mind the sand at all, getting it in just about every *crevice* she had, ahem. :)

We were able to go down to the beach a couple of times during their visit so these photos are from the first day. We got to the beach just after 4:30pm on Tuesday and it was virtually deserted. I think I got some pretty cute shots of Cora Beth and the fam...

It's a little hard to see but these are her sweet little footprints, making a trail to the water...

Already a true beach beauty...

As you can see, I had a hard time just choosing *a few* to share with you. She's just so darn cute! :) Check back soon for more beaach photos of the little munchkin...her 2nd visit to the beach!

cora beth on the river*WALK*

We had my brother and his family here to visit for a few days this past week and had a great time with them. Cora Beth is 13 1/2 months now and she is walking, peeps! And she is so cute doing it. :) We went walking around in downtown Wilmington one day (while we waited for the sun to appear so we could go to the beach) and I got some pretty cute photos of Cora Beth on the riverwalk (for those who don't know, this is a really nice walkway that was recently built along the Cape Fear River).

Look at her! She looks like such a big girl walking...

She had the best time just sitting there on that slight curb, getting up and sitting down, getting back up and sitting back down, looking over the side at the grass and back over on the deck. She's so entertaining to watch. :)

I'm still editing photos of their visit, specifically Cora Beth's first real time on the beach so those are soon to be posted here. Check back soon!

a few more beach photos...

I just had to share a few more photos from my photoshoot on the beach a couple weeks ago. I've finished editing all of them and some of them came out really cool. Of course, I tried using some textures and color techniques....

I love how this came out! I probably shouldn't tell my secrets...this started out as a family photo of Catherine, Grace AND Rick, but I decided to see what I could do with just mom & daughter...

Sweet Gracers...

This is probably my favorite of the ones I edited. It happened quite by accident but I did take note of how I came to this result so that I can experiment with this technique in the future. It's pretty cool, huh?