Photos of the Day - 7/1/10

I think the best thing I've learned so far in Finding the Joy has been how to use the selective focal points on my camera. I'm sure I could have learned about them by reading the manual that came with my camera, but it seemed so much easier to pay money to sign up for a Virginia-based online photography course than it did to pull that thing out of the filing cabinet. The next best thing I've learned has got to be how to find, and use, natural light in the house to take better indoor pictures. One thing that I've noticed from reading blogs (food blogs authored by excellent food photographers, photography blogs, etc.) is that many contemporary photographers loathe the flash. The Pioneer Woman has gone so far as to say that if she can't get the picture using natural light, she'll just skip the picture. I'm way too much of a novice to have a strong opinion about these things one way or the other, but seeing as I'm already trying to work the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO while toggling the focal points and reading the light meter and chasing down my kids, I'm more than happy to skip the flash if somebody with some air of authority tells me to.

Elizabeth and I were playing in her room this afternoon. Afternoon is the perfect time to play in Elizabeth's room. because it gets great afternoon light. Today we were playing "puppy library," which is just like a library, except that you borrow puppies instead of books. And sometimes you can borrow things other than puppies, it just depends. Elizabeth was getting her puppies ready to borrow/be borrowed, which involves putting their collars (and maybe crowns) on them and putting them to bed. (If you walk around our house you'll have to just step around a virtual minefield of little beds all over the house with puppies/babies sleeping.) Anyway, in the pictures below Elizabeth is getting Rosie ready to be borrowed (all of Elizabeth's puppies have names like Rosie, Sophie, Lucy, Chloe, etc - very sweet girly names - and they are all girls. If she shows you a puppy and says "isn't my puppy cuuuuuuute?" and you say, "oh yes! What's his name?" she will invariably look at you very seriously and say "it's a girl. Her name is Maddie." Anyway, here are some pictures from Puppy Library.