Cleaning up Shop - Vacation

Hi my Internet, blog-loving friends. This post is just a little cleaning up shop before I lock the doors and take a little "vay-cay". I'll be out of the Internet world for the next week without access to email or Internet. Please feel free to email any inquiries to snapshotsbystacy@gmail.com, just please be aware that you won't get a response until I return and then I will do my best once I get settled to respond.

I do apologize to any of you who inquire through my website. You won't receive my automatic 'out of office' message. That message keeps going back to my web hosting provider and not to the inquirer's email and I will be honest, I wasn't savvy enough to find a quick solution. I hope you got curious as to why I was lame and didn't write you back and checked out the blog only to find I am not totally lame, just not IT department awesome. =)

See you all on the flipside with vacation photos to boot! Enjoy some pretty flower photos from Luhty Botanical Gardens in Peoria until then.

Happy 4th of July (Photographing Fireworks)

Hey guys! I hope you are all ready for a fun weekend of grilling, family, outdoor games, pool parties, sparklers and of course fireworks!

I'll be riding my bicycle a crazy 120 miles this weekend with my hubby, my parents, and some bike friends. It should be lots of fun. I won't have a chance to photograph any fireworks this weekend, but for any of you photo buffs out there who want to try it, here are some settings to try.

• Tripod - you will want a tripod so that you can use slow enough shutter speeds to capture the firework trails.
  
• You will either want a cable release or remote trigger so that you don't bump the camera during your long exposure. Don't have one of those? Some camera have a 2 second delay so that when you push the shutter button you have 2 seconds before the shutter releases or if you don't have that you can always put your camera on the self-timer (this is a little slower and more random, but it will work.) Bulb mode works great if you have that as well.


• Think about what lens you want and how you want to frame your shots. I like mine zoomed in without the crowd around me, but you if you want to capture the surroundings, then you may want to shoot a wide angle.


• Shoot in Manual at a low ISO if you can. Too high of an ISO and all those black areas of the night sky can really show noise.
• Focus at infinity and turn your auto focus off. Auto focus is not your friend in the dark. It is just going to hunt for a focus point. (Personal note - I'm not a fast manual focuser, so I kept my autofocus on, and since it needs something to focus on, I would focus on the fading previous burst, but I wouldn't release the shutter until the next burst started so that I had a full 4 seconds on the burst I was photographing.)


• A good starting combo is somewhere around f/11 and a 3-4 second shutter speed. (If 4 seconds looks over exposed, back off to 3 seconds, etc.) Remember, you want long enough to capture the full burst of the firework, so if you need longer time, then you will need to increase your f-stop.


• Practice the timing. You want to catch the firework at the beginning of the burst for the best effect. I've learned that shooting when the first set of fireworks goes off is the best. Toward the end of a series, there is so much smoke in the sky, it really shows up in your shots. I wait until it clears again and then resume shooting.


• Don't forget you can make fun long exposures and light paint with sparklers as well.


• Be SAFE!!! (Especially with those sparklers, peeps!)
  

Here are shots I took at last year's fireworks display in Peoria. These were all taken at ISO 100, f/11, and 4 seconds.

July Desktop Calendar

Is it really July already?! Where is this year going? Seriously, time is just flying by.
Well, July is a busy month with fireworks, cookouts, and vacations. I've got all those things coming up, plus a little bike riding to boot.

This month's image was shot just a few weeks ago along the Peoria riverfront. If you are in the area, you will surely recognize the Murray Baker Bridge and downtown Peoria in the background. It was a moody evening with fast moving clouds and water as a storm was rolling in. This is one of my favorites this year and I thought the mood was perfect with all of the summer storms we get here in the Midwest.

Truth be told, on rare occasion I will actually print my own work just to see what it looks like printed. I printed this 12x24 on metallic paper and let me say it is gorgeous! If anyone wants a print, email me at snapshotsbystacy@gmail.com and I can arrange a special price just for you, my blog readers.


To get your own, simply click the size you want below and set as your background however you do Mac and PC people. I have 4 widths for you this month.

• 1280x850
• 1200x796
• 1024x680
• 800x531

Enjoy!

Chicago: Photowalking the Windy City

This is like sharing day in kindergarten and I'm sharing some fun I have with some other local photographers when I am not shooting fabulous couples. I usually hang with this fun and motley crew known as the "Peoria Flickr Group". We get wild ideas sometimes to attack an area with our shenanigans and take lots of photos in the process. We've made the rounds around Peoria before so we decided to take this trip on the road. Yep, we hit the rails and choo-choo'd our way up to Chi-Town for a day of fun and photography.

There were 10 of us in total: Dave, Tim, Connie, Lynn, Lily, Bill, Laura, Maria, and Ivan, and yours truly. There are actually some fun shots of everyone from the group that Dave took, you can see them here. Here is Lily, Dave, and Lynn below.

We started off the day at Union Station. It has some fantastic architecture (duh! It's Chicago, after all!)

Then we hit the streets around the Board of Trade area. The morning sky was still grey and threatened rain drops on us. We had the companions of hungry pigeons when we visited Federal Plaza and just one of Chicago's lovely sculptures. This is "Flamingo" by Alexander Calder, which was installed in 1974.

We stopped for a quick lunch break and then made a few of us made a mad dash for a sweet camera shop, Central Camera. I was on a mission to buy 620 film for a gifted Argoflex 75. After playing in the camera store and a quick lesson on how to properly load my new 620 film. We headed out to see Buckingham Fountain. After some shots with both my digital camera and the Argo, we all posed for silly "jumping" group shots. Then Bill got kissed by "Big D" the horse. Ha!

We meandered on to the Chicago Institue of Art on our way to Millennium Park. Here is a front view and a little pretty nook on the side of the building with a fountain.

Then we stopped at a more modern Sculpture at Millenium Park. This is "Cloud Gate"by Anish Kapoor, also loving referred to as "The Bean" for it's shape. The sculpture was completed in 2005.

And a quick shot taken with the Argo 75.

We spent a lot of time here taking silly photos of ourselves in the reflective surface both on the outside and underneath the bean. Then we got together again for a group "phoon". It was fun to watch all the people taking silly photos of themselves in the bean. We even saw a wedding party. I'm sure it is a popular photo op spot. I took a few more downtown building shots from here and then we wandered on again. As you can see that blah morning sky turned into gorgeous blue skies with big white, puffy clouds! I loved it!

One more Argo shot. =)

We stopped over by Wacker Drive and the Chicago River again. Here is a very cool clock on 35 East Wacker Dr. Followed by a view of the Wrigley Building and Chicago Tribune simply by turning around 360 degrees.

One of the last shots I got before we finished up the day at P.F. Chang's for some good food and conversation was this shot looking down the Chicago River. Chicago is such a cool city.

It was a really fun time and a great place to photowalk. I hope we do it again soon, maybe even at night. I'd love to capture the skyline at night and visit Buckingham Fountain again at night! I, of course, have many more photos, and if I get a chance, I will upload a few more to share.