It was another chilly, wet day. At least it was just wet and not snowing. The rain has done well to wash away most of the snow. On the other hand, it didn’t help to revive the crocus or daffodils.
I am struggling with this point and shoot camera and focusing to get clean, crisp images. There are two “issues” that I’ve identified. Both will require more practice to overcome.
One is, of course, the lack of manual controls. I can’t control the aperture manually to manage depth of field and when I shift into a scene mode that gives me a shallower depth of field, the camera focuses on the background rather than the foreground. And for the life of me, I couldn’t locate the settings to try to change the way the camera attempted to focus … and both the camera and I were started to get wet.
The other is me and my inability to take a photo holding a camera out so that I can see the live-view screen. I had purchased my first DSLR before I got a cellphone with a camera. My dear son thought that the reason I couldn’t take a decent photo with my cellphone was because I had gotten used to the DSLR. But I can’t take decent still photos with my iPod touch either. The point-and-shoot I’m using doesn’t have a viewfinder, so here I am holding it out in front of me just enough to see the screen and trying to keep my arms folded as closely as I can to my body to reduce camera shake. It has a little indicator that tells if you are moving … I’ve only seen it turn green once ;-).
On my little walk-about around the yard in the snow on Monday, I noticed the little clump of snowdrops that come up in the early spring next to one of the trees in the front yard had bloomed. Since they were right at the base of the tree, a couple of the flowers were not buried in the snow. I snapped a photo thinking I’d focused on the bloom; but when I looked at the image, the focused area was at the edge of the snow a few inches in front of the bloom. I was happy with the subject and the composition, but found nothing I could do in post processing made it into something I was thrilled about.
Today, the snowdrops have pretty much given up and laid down. But the water droplets on the “wilted” blades were quite interesting. I crouched down a bit and rested my elbows on my knees to try to stabilize the camera and took several photos. I got one that isn’t to badly out of focus this time.
