So, I lost my cell phone within the first hour of arriving in Ocean City last week. I have never in my life lost a cell phone, and found this loss extremely insulting. Retracing our steps and searching the one restaurant we had visited to no avail, we had no choice but to suspend my service as soon as Zan could get his laptop up and running. Three days later, after hearing nothing from some good samaritan about finding my beloved phone, we begrudgingly visited the local Verizon store to get a new one.  I was cranky about the whole idea, me being not so good with that whole “change” thing, and me still being mad at my phone for losing itself on me.   And of course, they no longer make the phone that I had, so I couldn’t replace it.  *sigh*

But they had a great deal on this new Android phone…whatever that was. “Fine, whatever…as long as it has a keyboard, I don’t care what else it does.”  So after much hassle, and a long process of getting our account straightened out (thanks to a forgotten and irretrievable password) I was handed my new phone. He said I could come back later for an instructional session when they were less busy, but since I had already “wasted” nearly two hours of vacation in the Verizon store, I wasn’t about to waste anymore. I’m a quick learner and figured, “How hard can it be?”

Well, turns out this phone is quite complicated compared to my old phone, and has a thousand more capabilities and features than my old phone. Even answering an incoming call was a challenge at first.   And forget about dialing on the ultra sensitive touch screen.  UGH! At first I hated it, and considered returning it.

Well, it has taken me nearly two weeks to figure out how to use this thing effectively, but my, oh, my….I can hardly believe I am learning to love yet another gadget.  This little cell phone has wormed it’s way into my heart by attacking my one central weakness….the ability to take and share photos effortlessly.  Once again, that old adage, “The best camera is the one you have with you” is proven true.

Here…..have a look.

This was obviously from the trip….

And yeah, I know what I said about not sharing photos of the kids, but how could I resist this?  I took this last night on the lawn at Saratoga Performing Arts Center.   SPAC is the summer home of the New York City Ballet, and last night was “American Girl Night.”  The plan was to leave Mister home with Daddy for the evening, but as Zan was travelling, he was stuck coming with us.  Obviously, he made the best of it, although he was more interested in watching the airplanes than the ballet itself.  🙂

Lordy, what will they come up with next that I’ll have to have????

I was sitting on my couch one evening, looking out the window admiring the gorgeous sunset.  As my eye wandered, I noticed a dandelion head in full puff in the middle of the lawn.  Taking inspiration from Milkay’s run of dandelions, I jumped up from the couch and dashed out the door with my 50mm lens attached to my camera.  I plucked that thing out of the ground and raised it to the sky.  Using an aperture setting of f/1.8 so the background was out of focus, I took my first shot.  Although my light meter said my exposure was dead on, it was actually way overexposed, washing out the sky and drowning the dandelion head.  The only thing properly exposed was my hand holding the weed.  Obviously not the look I was going for.  So, I sped up my shutter by a few notches, and voila.

(ISO 640, f/1.8, 1/640s)

Another evening I was hanging out on the deck with my darlings.  The setting sun was casting a beautiful golden light.  I was struck by Little Girl’s face as she sat next to me chatting about her day.  This time I had my handy 18-200mm lens attached.  I left the camera at it’s f/11 aperture setting, and adjusted my shutter speed.  I love how the light captured her skin tone and eye color so perfectly.

(ISO 640, f/11, 1/400s)

Then I called Big Girl over.  I used the same settings at first, but wasn’t satisfied.  Instead, I chose to underexpose her shot by a couple of stops.  Much better.

(ISO 640, f/11, 1/800s)

And her’s converted quite interestingly to black and white.  I could not get the same quality with Little Girl’s shot.

Another great challenge Scott! Don’t think I “pushed any envelopes” but I was forced to really think about what I was doing.  Thank you.  NOW I can go look at everyone else’s!!  WhooHoo!

(In case anyone is wondering, I tend to keep my camera’s white balance set to “cloudy” and a couple of dashes into the lower right quadrant…I like the warmth this setting adds to most shots.  Now and then I have to try something different, but this is my goto setting.)