The Fog Comes in on Little Cat Feet

A great way to end 2007 - with this picture made from the window of the conference room on my floor (47) of my office building. Yesterday we had a very dense fog which is quite unusual for Atlanta. Driving in to work I wondered to myself if the fog layer was higher than our office building (55 stories) and what it would look like. I was astounded when I went to the conference room and looked towards downtown. It was beautiful. I took lots and lots of photos and most of them turned out reasonably good. I chose this one because it shows the movement of the fog up the sides of the tall buildings. Most of the buildings you can see are over 40 stories. What a fun time I had taking pictures of this. Hope you like it.

Happy New Year!

Icy Scallops

Icy Scallops
Originally uploaded by kaw209

Want to see something beautiful taken by an on-line friend of mine? Is this gorgeous or what!!! Kim is in a photography group that I take part in and she posted this wonderful picture to her flickr account. All of her incredible macro shots can be found in her flickr gallery .

Photographer R Us

You know, the best thing about my new camera is that I feel like a photographer when I use it. Does that sound strange? It *feels*
like a camera. I love being able to manually turn the lens ring to select the amount of telephoto or wide angle. My PowerShot had a lever that you pushed and the motor sprang into action and pushed the little lens out. I LIKE turning the lens ring manually. Just the sensation of cradling the lens in my left hand makes this camera feel like a camera. The PowerShot never felt like that. I like pushing the shutter release and having it instantly release and sound like a "real" camera - no shutter lag. I didn't realize how much I hated that shutter lag. I knew I didn't like it, now I know I hated it. I took it to work today to show it off but was so busy I barely had time to take it out of the case, much less take any pictures. And then tonight when I got home I took a few pictures just for practice and they were all very, very out of focus. What??!!?? This camera has a wonderful autofocus. What's happening. Well, I had somehow managed to put the lens into manual mode which was overriding the autofocus feature of the camera. ARRGGHHH!! But with one little push of a button all was right with the world again.

Reindeer

I thought I heard some strange noises tonight and after my husband and I returned from eating hot wings, I found out what was making the noise. Reindeer! It had to be reindeer since Santa Claus visited my house tonight and left a huge package for me. Away to the package I flew in a flash, tore open the paper and cut through the sash. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a Nixon D40X and a big box of gear!!! Yep, that's right, a new DSLR with two lenses. (Ok, so it wasn't the Olympus E-510 I wanted, I'm not complaining - he chose the Nikon because Consumers Report rated it a Best Buy.) My husband just couldn't wait to give it to me. He expects me to know how to use it by Christmas so I can take fabulous pictures - good thing it has an auto setting! It came with a set of filters (UV, circular polarizing and ND), an extra battery, an extra battery charger, 1 4MG memory card, 1 2MG memory card, 2 tripods, a slave flash, 2 lens converters (not sure what these are yet but I think they are extenders), two camera straps (why would I need two?), a small camera case and a larger hard side camera case. It shoots in JPEG, RAW and RAW + JPG. It is so lightweight it's unbelievable - No comparison to the Minolta XD5 I carried around for a few years (sure wish I could use those wonderful Minolta lenses with this new camera).

And I have another, related present that I can't have until Christmas Day and I have no idea what it could be (but I'm hoping for a remote control).

I must have been a really, really good girl this past year.

Now off to see if the battery is charged up yet!! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

Jellyfish at My Office Holiday Party

What does my office holiday party have to do with jellyfish? We had our party this year at the Georgia Aquarium (one of the advantages of working for a large firm). We had the entire aquarium to ourselves for about 2 hours and these are a few of the pictures I took. I forgot (senility, I guess) to take my tripod so most of my pictures were blurred because of the low light levels and less-than-wonderful camera. But some worked out. I particularly like the last picture of the jellyfish. They were beautifully lit from within their pool so taking pictures of them was relatively easy. I'm sorry that my beluga whale shots were among the casualties as the whales had a great time posing for us, coming right up to my camera as it was being held up to the glass and giving it the complete once over. They seemed so playful and put on quite the acrobatic show for us.