Photography help?

I brought my camera into work with me today. This is my Panasonic Lumix, the one I bought right before we went to Scotland. I didn’t get a lot of great shots while in Scotland, mainly because I was more involved with experiencing our vacation rather than trying to catalog it. The other reason was because I just didn’t understand the camera. I went with a lot of ambitions, lenses (yes-its not a DSLR but it has two additional lenses), filters and ideas and came back with just a handful of good shots.

Here I am again, in the same situation. I want to take some good pictures of Evy and I just can’t seem to get any that are properly lit or without movement blur. I know that the camera isn’t as adjustable as a real DSLR, but I can change a lot of settings on it and I find it hard to believe that I can’t find the right setting to let in light and catch motion without a blur.

Someone want to point me in the right direction? I kind of assumed that having an open aperture and a quick shutter speed would do it – but I’m still not getting clear shots. I’d list what my camera can do – settings wise – but I’m not sure all that someone would need to help me out. I know that I can set my aperture between 8.0 – 2.8 and my shutter speeds are between 1/2000 – 60.

PLEASE HELP! I don’t want every picture I take of Evy to be in broad daylight or washed out with a flash

Culture QotD: One Year Anywhere in the World

If you could live anywhere in the world for a year, where would you go?

Scotland – hands down. I didn't want to leave (well I wanted to leave, but just because I was home sick. I wanted my bed. I wanted to stop "running". I wanted my cat.) in the first place and if I knew I could live there – successfully – for a whole year, I'd do it.

Despite my visit there, I'm still baffled as to how people survive in Scotland – particularly the smaller towns. That is part of my fascination with wanting to live there. It seemed like so many of the towns we went to didn't really have "industrial" areas – so how to people make money and pay bills? What do they do all day? Does everyone commute to the larger cities? This would explain why their public transportation system seemed very well oiled (in comparison to where I live at least) – but I'm not sure.

I remember when we were driving, into what seemed like the middle of nowhere, to Egol for a boat ride to see some seals. It took us awhile to get there and most of the way we were on a one lane dirt road. It was scary – very out of our element we were – and that's when we learned about how to let oncoming traffic pass you. Anyhow, as we were going to the middle of nowhere we actually saw a commuter bus. So unlike where I live, it seems like Scotland doesn't just abandon their distant cities, and actually supports them and keeps them commuting.

I say this all with the observation of someone who asked no questions and confirmed nothing – so if I'm wrong then that's why

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QotW: Top Museums

If you were to rank the top three museums in the world what would they be?

Getty Courtyard, 2

Oh, I wish I could rate museums. I haven't been to many that I would call anything other than "local history" – other than perhaps the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The sad part is that I really enjoy museums and I wish that I would take the time to visit more. Now that I remember though, we went into quite a few while on our trip to Scotland.

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• Posted in Uncategorized, Writing Prompts
• Tagged edinburgh, eilean donan, getty, getty center, j. paul getty, QotD, scotland, tartan weaving mill, top museums
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Note to October: END ALREADY!

I feel creative today. I think I'll work on our Scotland photo book some more. I've been using Blurb and it's been working well, except the program seems to run slow on my PC at work. I tried adding some more RAM but I think it was corrupted in some way because as soon as I installed it I started having a lot of memory errors; issues with internet pages in particular. At first I thought it had something to do with Firefox, so I uninstalled, but in the end it was the RAM.

I've been feeling really down lately, we (Paul and I) are going through a rough patch and a lot of it stems from money and our living situation. Talking to my sister last night made me want to start making some lists and I'm working on that today. First off will be a To Do list of the projects I need to get done – most of them involving tying up loose ends and getting ready to move. The next will be a weekly "chores" list of things we need to start getting in the habit of doing around the house. I don't know when it all changed, but suddenly I don't seem to have the time for any cleaning and that's just not right. I'm hoping this list will help.

This week has been going by at a snails pace. I'm so anxious for the holidays because I get time off and so anxious for Nov 10th (my first chance to see if we can tell the sex of the baby!) that October has felt so long…

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Its terrible mild!

The first place we stayed in Scotland was the Glasgow City Hotel – which was somehow connected to Best Western. I still don't quite understand how TV worked over there, but this hotel had some form of cable because they had the most channels of all the places we stayed. One channel was called Sky and they played this comedian who I instantly recognized as David from Shawn of the Dead, played by Dylan Moran. I'd never known that he was a comedian outside of being an actor and I was amazed at how hilarious he was.

Remembering how much I enjoyed his show, I went looking to see if he had a DVD. I found out the show we saw was called, "Like, Totally" and yes – there was a DVD. However the DVD was never released in the States. I found it on Amazon.co.uk but by the time the price conversion was complete I'd be paying well over $30 for an hour DVD. Plus I wasn't sure if any of our systems were region free players – the one I found from the UK was was region 2 and the one I found on eBay from Australia/New Zealand was region 4. To get my fix now though, I found the show on YouTube broken into 7 parts, and it was in good quality. The clip below is the 5th portion – so if you can watch it from the beginning

It was just as good as I remember! Here's a bit of an excert where he talks about flying:

"If you have a family, if you're with your children, and you get to see the young person you used to be sitting a few rows ahead of you who always obliges you by turning around and giving you that scowling look 'cause your child reacting to air pressure is expressing themselves by going, [loud gobbly-gook] and they look around disapprovingly as though you're going to clock that look and go, "Oh sorry, I'll slit their throat." [pauses for laughter] "After all, you paid for business and you're a busy busy guy…"

I just love this bit because it makes me realize how much I need to grow up because I fully admit that I do
that – I scowl at parents expecting them to just snap their fingers and
make my dining experience better. Sure, sometimes the parents are just being inconsiderate, but most times not. Kids are kids and I'm so glad I'm
going to be on the receiving end of this whole thing soon so I can get all I deserve in payback scowls.

The whole show is pretty funny and fully recommend it to anyone.

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Give me something to do…

Today's going to be boring I think. Work is probably going to be slow and the only thing I have to look forward to is lunch with a co-worker, though we're meeting at this place that I don't want to eat at since I got sick the last two times I have eaten there (because of the pregnancy – not the food).

I think I'm going to work on my Scotland blog some, its amazing that I was so committed to it before I left and I've really done nothing with it since. I'm starting day by day entries and I haven't even finished our first day. I'm trying to remember all the thoughts and feelings running through me at the time though, so it's taking some reflection.

Speaking of Scotland, I miss their traffic lights. Here in the US we have a yellow light only for moving traffic – but in Scotland they had a yellow light for stopped traffic too so you were aware of when it would be your turn. Some might think it silly, but it seemed like traffic moved so much better over there. Almost too good at times though When you're lost its nice to occasionally have a moment to think and find where you are.

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Hairy like a beast!

Well, I didn't take a nap last night before my sister came over – mainly because I was working on getting the pictures from the Scotland trip off of my laptop and onto Flickr. You can see them now – however I warn that I haven't "edited" them so there are a lot of apparent repeats due to exposure tests.

America's Next Top Model was good! I was so glad that Whitney – the plus size model in the competition – has not only survived again, but she also wasn't in the bottom two as I suspected she would be. With the remaining three chosen – and one of them being a plus size model – I really wonder what kind of runway show they're going to do. It may not even matter of course, if Whitney is cut before, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. If anything, I just hope that this gives the next plus size contestant more confidence that you can make it far in the competition if you just keep trying. Whitney said it best in her interview reel – the last plus size contestants all gave up eventually and it had very little to do with their ability to be a model. I'll be happy if Anya wins though, because I'm not a big fan of Fatima. Its surprising that I say that now because when I first began watching I hated Anya because of her accent – I fear that's going to hold her back when they do their Cover Girl commercials next week.

Tonight I've made no plans and I'm just going to relax! I'm going to go home, get some stuff together for my lunch tomorrow because I'm determined to try and bring a Bento box, take a quick bath as I'm hairy like a beast, and then hit the hay early…

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I’m home!

I don't know if I'm going to dive into posting about the trip straight away – but I wanted to let everyone know that we're home and all four flights were successful We actually got home last night and I was falling asleep at 9:15pm! When I woke up this morning, bright eyed & bushy tailed at 5:20am I was happy to realize that I think we didn't mess up our internal clock too much and I just hope I'll be able to fall asleep & wake up so easily indefinitely.

Here's a short list of what I'm going to miss and what I'm not going to miss from Scotland…

I'm NOT going to miss:

• The smell of gas on all the streets. It appears that despite all of their commercials about saving the environment they don't have very strong smog regulations in place, at least not in comparison to California that has some of the strictest. I know that everyone complains about smog checks and all that, but I'm now very grateful. Being able to walk down the street – or be in the vicinity of cars without gagging on fumes – is nice.
• Lack of toilet seat covers, and toilets that flush the first time. Before everyone starts in about the toilet seat covers, I know that there have been studies that prove them next to worthless – but that doesn't matter to my piece of mind and I'm just glad to have them back in public restrooms.
• Driving. Enough said.
• Banking hours – for EVERY business. I'm an American and a Californian, the fact that I can't find hot food at 1am is appalling and was very frustrating as we couldn't adjust to the time change despite waking at the crack of dawn for our included breakfast everyday.

I'm going to miss, very very much:

• The sky. I'm going to miss those thick sweeping clouds that moved faster than us and spotted the hills with shadows. Playing peek-a-boo with the sun was a big game that we never get to play here.
• The wet weather. Everywhere we went, people were apologizing about the weather – and everywhere we went we said, "This is what we came for!" I'd like to point out that it was in the high 90s (° Fahrenheit) with a chance of burning alive while we were gone from our home area.
• The sight of livestock everywhere. I was telling my dad when he asked if we saw sheep, "We saw them everywhere – and up to the very end I shouted 'SHEEP' or 'COWS' every time we saw some!" I don't know much about sheep, so I'm just going to assume it's our luck, but there were lambs everywhere. I felt like I was browsing cute overload 24/7!
• The easy access to fresh, affordable produce. The reason I don't eat as many fruits and veggies as I'd like is because everything that looks good and fresh, is so expensive! Since we had to feed ourselves a lot because we missed the open hours of so many places, I began to rely on these stores. I <3 Sainsbury!
• The open, open landscape. I'm going to miss this one the most I think. Everyone had boundaries to their properties – it just wasn't as loud and foreboding as it is here. Short rock walls and tree lines seemed to be all they needed – and that's what I'm going to miss. If I never saw another chain link fence again – I'd be ecstatic.

Anyhow… So I'm home. I was really home sick towards the end but now that I'm here I feel like I just left and I'm so sad it's all over so soon

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At last, a bit of class in this joint

My camera filters are here!!!

I bought these books (which have given me some really simple but great suggestions though on a whole the book is for photography newbies) and I ordered some filters for my camera based on their suggestion. I bought a UV filter (which I know is a bit pointless to some – but I find a lot of use in it), a circular polarizing filter, and an ND filter.

While hunting for the filters I found out a lot about my camera which is both good and bad. The good is that it really does have almost every feature a DSLR has – if I'm willing to work for it. The bad is that it has almost all of them for the same price as an DSLR camera. I'm not going to dwell on it though. I'm only just beginning to understand my camera and ergo fall in love with it again – I'm not about to ruin that love with second guesses.

Back to the filters! I'm excited that I bought them because most of them were suggested in the books landscape section and I'm really looking forward to photographing the landscape. I just hope that I'm able to make use of them all at least once, and come back with some amazing pictures.

Four and half days!!!

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A dab of this – a dash of that.

I'm feeling better today – so far as my mood and my outlook. Though I'm having some problems at my job right now, I'm going to go on vacation and come back with a clean slate and just keep working and trying my best as I was before. I'm not going to let one incident – that was blown completely out of proportion to the actual situation – ruin this job for me right now. However, I'm still determined to look for other jobs or perhaps become Paul's person job hunter. But that's all for another post.

My knee is feeling better. I'm not free from pain all the time – but most of the time I am and that's the important thing. I'm still taking ibuprofen in the mornings though, as it seems to be after I wake up that it hurts the most. I'm just glad that the terrible pain went away as I really didn't want it to ruin our Scotland trip.

I went to JoAnns on Monday night and bought some straps and small buckles to put inside of my carry-on bag for Linnet. Last night I put one strap in but it took me awhile and I wasn't able to get the other two in. I'm hoping that tonight I can work on it some more if not Thursday. She fits well in the bag – however I find that I have to remove her wig so that it doesn't get muffled. I'm sure if it was a normal synthetic wig it wouldn't be so bad but the mohair gets teased and tangled so easily. However, I'm still very much in love with the wig and am considering buying a second one so have as a back up for when this one falls to pieces from my constant attention

I joined two group orders recently – both for Dollmore – and I'm frustrated by how slow they've progressed compared to my very first one. The first of the two, the organizer said that she wouldn't take any money orders unless they were sent three days before the order closed – but she didn't keep up on the orders coming in and so the order closed long before she realized we'd reached our max. Therefore people who were sending money orders sent them long after we'd closed the order and so she didn't place the order for a good week after it closed. Very frustrating considering I'd joined the group in order to bypass the fraking money order wait. To top it off, by the time she made the order a bunch of stuff was sold out – luckily I wasn't effected – but I feel bad for the others who were. The second of the two was much quicker and more efficient in regards to the organizer, but then Dollmore didn't respond to our order for two weeks! I was hoping to have the order before I left – but that's not going to happen as Dollmore is sending it out tomorrow and it can take three days to get it from them and then three days to get it from the organizer. The money I save using a group order is wonderful – however the process is frustrating more often than not. Once I get back – I'm doing my own group order so that I don't have to wait on others and I get the store credit!

Anyhow – this was just a bunch of little stuff that would have been pointless to put in their own post

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