Thursday, January 17, 2013

Only on the tundra

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Ever since they announced this was coming

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I've been eagerly anticipating the magic.

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Bought my half price Groupon before construction began.

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I was not disappointed.

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No, in fact...

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I was giddy.

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Color.

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Texture.

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Light and contrast.

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I felt the need to use my flash once.
I was pleasantly surprised.

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(I also felt the need to tell other people to turn their flashes off.
I refrained.)

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Me.  Still squealing inside.

6 comments:

Melissa Mae said...

Amazing.... all of them are SO good! Your skills are getting SO good too. The 12th one and last one are my favorites though. The sunset through the castle is great. And I love seeing you in front of the camera, especially with your kids.

Sandy said...

Great shots! Like you said, what a beautiful combination of color, light and texture. It warps my little Floridian mind to even imagine something like that (let alone makes me shiver) but I think even I would brave the elements to witness the wonder of that display. Btw, there's a night portrait mode that works really well in situations like this (it's the setting with a person with a star behind them). It picks a slower shutter speed and adjusts the aperture so your subject is lit but the background keeps its normal appearance. I don't know if it automatically does this too but setting the flash to slow sync will also help (fires at the beginning of the shutter opening). You can, of course, do all the settings manually but it's not always easy at night to set all the controls (and especially when it's so cold and you don't want to have to keep experimenting).

HJ said...

As I said elsewhere WOWZERS!!! It's about the best description I can think of for these!! The 12th and last one are my favorite too!! You look positively gorgeously giddy, for sure!! And I too love the sunset through the castle, like Melissa said!! I also super love the texture one, and the one w/ Lee and Ben - I love both their expressions!! Wowzers!! :-)

I want to get better about not feeling the need for my flash. I think I need to do some studying this weekend.

Tracy P. said...

Thanks everyone! Sandy, I need to try working with some other settings like that--thank you! HJ--I am trying to think of a good tutorial or two that I've read that would help you to know more about turning off your flash. The best thing I can suggest is just turn it off and see what happens. If your photos are too dark, you can try using exposure compensation, which I talked about in my amateur to amateur way here (among other things--it's about 2/3 of the way down the post. You may have to switch from the full auto mode to a program mode (usually "P") to be able to use exposure compensation. It's worth learning.

Skeller said...

fabulous. utterly and completely fabulous!

Deanna said...

what a fascinating place!!