Summer Shooting

~~Lake Pend Oreille from Sunnyside Fish and Game property~~

I succeeded at a couple of things yesterday. At the end of the day, I was pretty pleased that the old brain could awaken and do something right. One success had to do with my camera. The other, with my horse Lefty.

After patience and a little firmness, Lefty happily opened his mouth to accept a bit. I have a feeling he'll do that pretty willingly from now on because we had no bad scenes in his first introduction to the snaffle which will eventually become a basic tool in his future as a saddle horse and maybe even a cart puller.

My camera success came from returning to my roots as a photography student and teacher. The other day my daughter Annie http://www.nnlove.blogspot.com/ asked me what f-stop would be best for a certain shot she wanted to get. In our conversation, I told her I'd been upset with too many washed out pictures during the past few months. I wondered out loud if it could be my digital card going bad. We all agreed that it probably wasn't.

Then, she suggested looking at the manual and seeing if the camera had the option to return to factory settings. Her question about f-stops got me to thinking. I had taught about f-stops, speed, ASA's, etc. I had always considered them when taking pictures back when. Then, I received a digital camera, which had an automatic setting on it, and at that time, my eyes were getting so bad at up close and personal that I got lazy and used the automatic setting all the time.

That was mainly cuz I don't like to take my glasses when I'm doing stuff outdoors. Well, yesterday I did. And, while taking some time off in the afternoon to shoot some summer scenes, I used my glasses and, amazingly, I could read the settings for f-stop and speed on my camera. What a difference!

Well, gollee gee, I came home with a bunch of photos that weren't washed out. Some experimentation will be needed to get back into the groove of specific settings for specific pictures, but yesterday's success makes me want to go out and shoot, shoot, shoot---especially during this week, which Bill always calls the greenest week of the year here in North Idaho.

So, enjoy the photos, and I'll keep snapping and doing my photography the "old-fashioned way," along with wearing my glasses to see what I'm doing with the camera. You'll see a barn scene from Oden; that's Art Burnett's.

The lawn display is on Hickey Road; it belongs to my dear friend and former student, Jacque Meneely Turner. The lake shots are from Sunnyside, and the Lovestead lupines are looking mighty pretty right now, especially those in Love Canal. And, of course, Kiwi and Kea were having a great time running through the walking herb garden near the house.