New Instagram Account

So... I've been pretty terrible at posting anything here lately. But I have been working on stuff! Just in short spurts. Usually between the hours of 9-10pm when the child is in bed. After everything from the day has been cleaned up and everything for the next day has been readied. Of course some days just involve plopping down in front of the tv and doing nothing.

I decided to start an official Colorful Engineer Instagram account to post progress pictures when I am actually working on something. It's much easier than posting to the blog :) You can follow me @colorfulengineer.

I am hoping to get better at posting here too. But we'll see. Baby steps.

Fireflies

I've been on a mission the last couple of nights to photograph the lightning bugs. Or fireflies... whichever you prefer. We've been noticing them on our walks in the evenings and they are present in large numbers.  Of course it also gets pretty dark out here so maybe we can just see them better.

I Googled "photographing fireflies" and turned up some pretty awesome results. See here and here. Now obviously I'm not this skilled but thought I'd give it a try anyways. So night #1 I set up my tripod and started messing with the settings. This is what I got:



Not terrible. But not really amazing either. Part of my issue was that most of the tutorials I read discussed merging multiple photos together. And I could not figure out how to do this effectively.

Night #2: I did more reading. Then went back outside and setup my tripod. I also adjusted my settings slightly. I've been shooting in manual mode, which alone is new for me. Based on what I read, my settings were adjusted to somewhere around  f/5.6, ISO 3200, 8 seconds. This was the result:



Much better. I should note that this is actually 8 different photos overlapped together. And the biggest difference from night #1 is that I learned how to overlap the photos properly. (Thank you Google.) I believe the proper term in Photoshop is "lighten blend mode."

It's this option here:



See I learned something tonight :)

A 35mm Gift

Phew, that was a long break. Apparently the Christmas season overwhelmed me... in a good way, of course. I was able to take time off from my day job but my schedule quickly filled up with visiting family and house projects. And playing in snow. Naturally, blogging took a back burner.

As one of my Christmas gifts this year I got a new camera lens. It's a Nikkor 35 mm f/1.8 lens. It has a fixed focal length (no zoom capabilities) but I wanted it for its ability to do a bokeh effect (blurry background) and its supposed abilities for shooting in low light conditions. I debated between the 50 mm and the 35 mm but finally settled on the 35 mm after reading many reviews. The 35 mm essentially shoots equivalent to 50 mm whereas the 50 mm lens is really a 75 mm lens. I can't really explain why this is. I just know its true for the particular camera I have. So I went with the 35 mm because I worried that the 75 mm zoom would give me issues when shooting people indoors. As in having their nose take up the whole picture. Have I bored you yet?

I haven't tried out the lens too much but did use it during Christmas and our sightseeing trip to DC.

 

Honestly, I still get confused with the aperture settings especially if a couple weeks have gone by since I've touched the camera. I think I'm slowly getting it though.

Meatball always makes a great subject though. So I should be getting lots of practice in.

 

Ireland

So we're back from Ireland. We slipped out last Saturday, were there for a week plus one day, and largely avoided social media while we were there. You know, so that robbers wouldn't stalk us on Facebook, know we were away, and try to rob our house. It makes complete sense.

 I have 389 pictures to weed through, but here are a few of my favorites:

Cliffs of Moher

Random countryside

Dingle

Gap of Dunloe

Dublin

One of the many, many sheep we saw

All in all, an awesome trip but I'm glad to be home. I ate too many Irish breakfasts. Drank too much. And couldn't quite manage to get used to the whole driving on the left side of the road. (Particularly when said road is narrow and winding.)

Random thing I loved: the long days. The sun was up from before 6am till past 10pm. It was awesome. It made it so much easier to have full and productive days! 

Thank you Ireland for the amazing vacation.

Blowing in the Wind...

Hey, look who's back. I can't believe it has almost been a month since I last posted something. Honestly, I have not had much time to paint. Or do crafty projects. Currently my craft room is the cleanest it has ever been.

I have, however, jumped onto the Instagram bandwagon. Actually, I was on it for a brief time. Then hopped off. And now I am officially back on. I find it fulfills my need to take and share pointless pictures. I am just getting started. Naturally, Meatball is my most popular photo subject.

Back to the topic of this post. Remember my windmill? First seen here.

Completed 2012
12"x12"
Oil on Panel

I finally finished it up. This was really more of an experiment to try out painting on a panel. I thought I was going to like it, but I'm having mixed feelings. The black dried with blotchy spots and I'm not sure if it was a result of the black paint, or the panel. I'm debating trying it again, but we'll see.

Something else I learned: black paint is really hard to photograph. All around, this was one big learning experience.

Shooting Stars

Not actual shooting-across-the-sky stars. But shooting/photographing stars. I can see why you might have thought that though.

These two guys have been shining brightly since at least last night. I only know this because Meatball has actually been letting us walk him at night. I did some intense Google searching and I think they might be Venus and Jupiter.

I know nothing about stars or planets so I could also be wrong.

BUT I did find this....

Looks kind of like my picture, right? And Earthsky.org says:

"Venus blazes like a lighthouse in the west at dusk in March 2012, as seen from all parts of Earth. In fact, all through March 2012, Venus and Jupiter – the sky’s two most brilliant planets – are the first “stars” to pop out at evening dusk, with Venus being the lower planet and Jupiter the higher in the first half of the month."

I'm going to have to say its Venus and Jupiter.

The waxing crescent moon won't appear until late March. It'll just be another excuse to drag my tripod onto the front stoop. Yes, I'm that person...

Country Roads take me home

There is a farm that I pass on my way into work, and on my way home. Everyday. Actually I pass quite a few farms. But there is one that I am in love with. This farm has a really good-looking farmhouse. 

Check this guy out.

Yes, today I finally stopped and took a picture.

Deep Creek in Pictures

This past weekend Mike and I spent a few days at Deep Creek, Maryland with his family. The tropical storm had made its way out by Friday afternoon so, despite the torrential downpour during our drive up, it turned out to be a beautiful weekend!

The opening NFL weekend also gave me some time to fiddle around with my camera. (Not that I dislike football. But I DO like to multi-task.) I found some great photography tutorials via Pinterest (wish I had bookmarked those) and learned quite a bit in three hours. I at least now fully understand the aperture and shutter speed relationship. Did I have my white balance set to incandescent while out at the waterfalls? Yes. Oops..

Lots of sunset pics. My overall goal in this one was to capture the duck.

What good fortune. A duck AND a boat!

Swallow Falls

I was really a fan of these tree roots, but I don't think this photo did them justice.

Mmm.... roasting hot dogs on a campfire.

Top 5 Meatball Photos

I am procrastinating here before getting started on one of my least favorite activities: paying bills. Of course Meatball is hanging out, which got me browsing through some pictures. We got an SLR shortly after getting Meatball. And I'll be honest, 90% of my pictures are of him. So here's a rundown of my top 5 9 favorite pictures. Keep in mind these are only SLR pictures (post-puppyhood). He was equally awesome as puppy. But those pictures are for another day...

#9 This was back when the vent was his favorite place to hang out.

#8 Looking serious and pensive.

#7 He could totally be a superhero, right? The answer is yes.

#6 Just a good portrait. It really captures his blue eye and tiny baby teeth.

#5 Close-up.

#4 This is how work gets done around here.

#3 Such a good sport! ...being locked out of the house and all.

#2 Only a year old and already a grumpy old man.

#1 My fave. Lounging in the grass.

Miniature Polaroid Magnets

During last week's heatwave Meatball and I spent a lot of time in the basement to keep cool. Browsing through blogs, I stumbled up this Polaroid magnet idea from Ambrosia Girl and thought it was adorable! What a cute thing to pepper the fridge with! And so began this project.

I graciously used the Polaroid template on the website and got started.

The longest part of this project was probably selecting pictures to use. I also, for some reason, convinced myself I needed twenty of these little magnets. (A few didn't make it to the end.)

After printing out the pictures, I pretty much followed the instructions on the website verbatim. I even glued the pictures onto the back of old sketchpad, since I have plenty lying around. The other super tedious part was cutting out all the pictures with an X-Acto knife. It could have been that mine was just dull, but it took forever. And my edges weren't the best. It was at about this point that I regretted, for the second time, printing out 20 photos.

 

Finally starting to resemble the final product. The edges on the board were painted with a white paint pen:

 

And lastly, after the paint dried, I "laminated" with packaging tape. Here's the final bunch!

 

And here they are, doing their job on the fridge: