Finally Free!

 This is how my Sunday went.  I led the music in Sacrament meeting, then taught the Gospel Doctrine class in Sunday School.  When that I over I heaved a BIG sigh of relief because it was my LAST turn to teach THAT class, and I hurried to Relief Society because it was the first Sunday of the month and the Young Women go to Relief Society opening exercises on the first Sunday of the month - and I had to give the opening prayer.  Then I hurried to the library to get copies I needed, and then hurried to the Young Women's room so I could take roll before I gave the lesson to our combined Young Women and all three members of the Bishopric who decided to attend this week.  After that, I needed a break!!  So we went to the mountains where I worked on photography :)   Yay!

I worked on depth of field, because I am taking senior pictures for three girls in my Young Women's group and I needed depth of field practice.  Since I had no people to practice with, I had to use pretty, pretty flowers.

 And I worked on shooting in manual, and shooting a scene without the sky blowing out.  Something I have a really hard time with.  The picture below was a hike - or rather, a mountain goat climb - we went on.  The photography book I was using was Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Photography Field Guide".

 The leaves are starting to change on the mountain.  A sad sign that summer is really over.

 Look at that!!  A beautiful scene and the sky is blue, not an awful looking blown out white like my scenery pictures usually turn out.  It's a beautiful spot in the LaSals.

 This is on Cliff's property.  Dave is working here and he is in heaven!!  Again, a somewhat blue sky . .

 My friends, the Daltons, have property right next to Cliff's property.  I told Sue I was trying to work on shooting scenery, and she asked me to get some pictures of her view.  Isn't it pretty?  The technique I was working on here was shooting scenery in focus front to back.  I was supposed to set my camera's aperture at 18 or 22, then set the shutter speed I needed, and then manually focus on something about 5 feet in front of me, which in the picture below was the tree limbs you can see in the foreground, and he PROMISED the rest of the picture would be sharply in focus.  Only on this one, I forgot to manually focus, but it worked pretty good anyway.  

 This time I focused on the grass in the foreground, but again, auto focused.  It takes me a while to get the concept when there are so many things to remember to do!!

 One more of Sue's view . . .

 Here we are again on our hike.  If you look closely you will see Dave hiking among those slide rocks.  And  pretty view behind him.

 NOW I finally get it all together.  Aperture set at 22, shutter speed set, manually focusing on the tree limbs on the side foreground, and poof!  A pretty scene, all in focus, and a blue sky with white clouds.  Pretty good for a sunny day. 

 

 Now my focus in on the twisted tree in the foreground.  This was where we ended up on our hike.  A pretty forest oasis in a bowl surrounded by rocky cliff that I was SO tired of climbing. 

The last two are just fun shots, one of a squirrel trying to peel a pinecone to get the pine nuts inside.  And the other is an old abandoned cabin at the entrance to the property Dave is working at.  

 It was fun to get away, fun to get my camera out again, and fun to hang out and do anything I wanted to do.  I'm going to do it again soon.