Day 165 - Conquering the camera

No, I don't mean my DSLR, because that obeys my commands - well, most of the time!  But right now I'm talking about my phone camera that has caused me grief on numerous occasions.  I never seem to be able to get the right focus, the right settings - well, nothing goes right.  But today I spent a few minutes, albeit in a light drizzling rain, to check out why my camera misbehaves.  I can't admit to finding anything wrong with it, per se, but I did manage to get a somewhat decent shot.  Ok, a few decent shots.

This shot is almost straight out of the camera, except I added a little bit of vibrance and saturation to it because it was missing those.

Last night I downloaded Photoshop CS5 to try it out after hearing a lot of people rave about it.  I am exhausted after my project submission today, but I still spent a little time to play around with it.  Other than slowing my computer down terribly, I think it's a great tool.  It's got a ton of features that I could use for my daily photos, but the price is prohibitive.  And, ideally, I would like to keep Lightroom as well.  But I can no way spend a grand on photo editing tools right now.  If I spend that kind of money, I'd rather buy the new lens I've been wanting for so long by adding a few more hundred bucks.  Or, buy myself the Canon EOS 7D, which I have been wanting to do for so long!  

Anyway, more on that later.  I have to hit the hay now because I have a ton of stuff to do, besides office work over the weekend.  No Thanksgiving weekend for me!

Day 159 - When will the rains stop?

I got caught in a huge downpour just as I left work.  My umbrella flew off and turned inside out in the most awkward ways and I was sopping wet long before I got to the bus stop.  I didn't get a seat as usual, and I think it was a good thing today - I saw how beautiful the rain-slicked streets looked from the reflections of the colours in the puddles.

So, once off the bus (this time I wasn't impatient enough to jump off it) I rushed home, shed my wet coat (and did I tell you I bought it thinking it was waterproof and then realized I think too much?), didn't bother getting out of my wet shoes, had my son hand me my camera, and I ran out.  Although the rains had held up for a bit, it was still much too dark.  So, I bumped up the ISO and started shooting.  I tried looking for the puddles, and saw one that had nice reflections, but somehow couldn't get a shot I liked.  I am certain there will be more rain in the next few days, so I am going to take a shot at reflections again.  Here's one I got from this evening:

Noting that the light was getting feebler by the minute, I left that alone and walked over to where I saw a couple of red maple leaves amidst some yellow and brown against a nice grassy, green background.  And for the first time, I saw these yellow leaves all curled up into a ring!  Amazing little things - trying to figure out what they are.  Any idea?

Here's the little leaf ring!

The shot below could have been much better if I weren't hand-holding the camera at 1/10s.  I was finding it hard to focus (even after I turned the AF off, so I could focus manually) in the extremely low light but finally managed to get a somewhat clear shot.  I've cropped it in post to emphasize the droplet.  You can click on it for a larger view.