I took this bird shot with my old canon XSi. We went to Magic Kingdom in Orlando and while waiting outside one of the rides Michael and Aidan were feeding some birds. I used one of my favorite lenses, the Canon 55-250mm. It is a great lens for portraits outdoors with lots of light. You cannot beat it for the price! I almost forgot this shot until I uploaded to Flickr yesterday after looking for old shots with this lens. I was so impressed with the quality of the picture! I was getting so used to my XSi camera and getting decent shots. I now have a brand new 7D and this time I am taking the time to know the features and learn to use it. It is such a machine that sometimes I feel like I am riding a wild horse!
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Sometimes you do not know what you have…
Behind bars
I am originally from Venezuela and I visit my family as often as I can. This time I decided not to take my camera and used my brother’s new camera instead. Crime is not joke there, all houses have bars everywhere, some even have electric fences on top of high walls. It is very sad to live in a place where you do not have a basic level of security. Porlamar is better than other cities like Caracas, but little details reminds me the hostility of a place. Even when I was a little girl we had bars in the apartment windows. Home break-in is a common crime there. I just saw my nice standing in front of the bars, such contrast between the softness of a kid and the harsh vertical lines from the bars. It is sad to live behind bars when you have not committed a crime, but sure makes for a nice portrait.
The lense does not make the photographer… but it helps!
There is an old saying that the robe does not make the monk. When it comes to photography, having very expensive equipment may not translate in better pictures but good equipment can certainly help. When you have the right lens, you can easier translate your vision into an image. Imagine National Geographic photographers without big zooms for animal shots or wide angles for breathtaking landscapes. Imagine low light photography without tripods or wide apertures…
My new camera makes me a better photographer, I am a klutz when it comes to exposure and manual settings. My Canon 7D has an amazing metering system. Bracketing is very easy to do with all those handy controls. My portraits got better after I started using my 50mm 1.8 lens… My landscapes got better after I started using my wide-angle lens and a gradient neutral density filter.
I had to make a decision on getting a lens to replace my Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR Lens
Last but not least I have on my list is a macro lens… like shoes there is no such thing as having too many lenses 🙂
Red Rock Canyon, Las Vegas
This is my first time visiting Las Vegas. I am not sure what I had in mind, but a spectacular place in the middle of the dessert was not even remotely in my thoughts. We landed around 11am, rented a car, checked into our hotel and drove a short 30 minutes to The Red Rock Canyon conservation area. The park has a visitor’s area and a 13 mile driving loop with plenty hiking paths on different levels: easy, moderate and hard. The first area we visited was the Calico I, with massive orange-reddish rocks. As I would learn later in the trip, Las Vegas is the place for extremes: extreme cheesiness, extreme luxury and extreme nature. The Red Rock Canyon was a spectacular place, the Mojave Desert at its best. Bring water, sunscreen and a camera… a polarizer or neutral density filter are a must to get the deep blue sky and manage contrast between the bright sky against the rocks and mountains.
Canon 7D, Tamron 10-22mm 3.5-4.5, B+W ND gradient filter.
A mega bucket list
If you have to summarize your bucket list in one sentence, what would it be? I want to………
Imagine if the bucket list is written by a bunch of college kids! Jam with Eric Clapton wrote one, a Ferrari wrote a couple, Meet Ellen, Change the world? Really? Don’t you do that every day?…
And it occurs to me that I cannot be that brief, that precise. Truth is we are all dying one day at the time, so everything I do I am doing before I die. Grim, I know but liberating LOL I guess I am lucky. I rather think of the wonderful things I’ve accomplished than all those things I may never do! A matter of perspective 🙂
My Life on a Frame 