Conversations and eye candy!

We spend a lot of time in our car this time of year. A. LOT. Whether we are running errands, attending meetings or events or sneaking in a Christmas Market here or there (I'm trying to get around the "one" market this year idea, tomorrow is Metz and my mirror and I can hardly wait to be reunited, IT. NEEDS. ME.). Here is a couple of conversations you might here in the good green Blaze of Glory:

McKenna to her friend McKenna (not imaginary, actual friend named McKenna=):

My McKenna: "I used to be a baby in my mommy's belly"
Lisa's McKenna "Really? Me too"
My McKenna "wanna know how that happened?"
Lisa's McKenna "uhuh"
My McKenna "well, my mom ate a lot of food and the food turned sparkly in her belly which magically turned into sparkly me!"
Lisa's McKenna "wow!"

As we listen to our collection of Christmas CD's in the car one has become our favorite:

Bailey: "mom, will you please put in Luther Vandalism?"
Me: "what?!"
Bailey: "you know, that guy that we listened to last time"
Me: "oh, you mean Luther Vandross?"

And by the way, here are a couple of pictures I took after we had decorated our tree.



Love the glowing look. Wanna capture your glowing tree as well? Here are my tips:

Turn out all overhead lighting. Place your camera on a stable surface to prevent camera shake which leads to blurred pictures (if you don't have a tripod, use the back of a chair or a table). Enter the following settings on your camera:

1. ISO up to 800
2. White balance on tungsten or the light bulb icon
3. flash off
4. You need the lowest aperture setting so either use the setting with the picture of a person's head or go to your Av mode and dial down to a low number like 4.0 or lower.
5. Hold down your shutter button half way on the part of the picture you want in focus, re-compose the shot and finish pushing the button down all the way to take the shot. In the new title picture on my blog I focused on the corner of the red present then recomposed the shot so that the present was now in the corner. Don't focus on a light bulb. If you do you won't get a glow you'll get a bulb in complete focus to the point of seeing the wire inside.

If this is too complicated do this, flash off, portrait setting, camera on a stable surface. Shoot away! If it looks yellow you need to adjust your white balance as above.

Now, if you choose to try this out, let me know and post your results. This will be fun to see! Happy Shooting!