I lost my father this summer after a year and a half long battle with stage 4 lung cancer. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through. The last couple of months of his life were extremely tough. It was combined with me having to relocate to an office an hour away from home for my job, so that complicated things a bit. I have learned through my experience with my dad what exactly I am capable of, how strong I can be, who I really turn to for support, and who are my most loving friends. It’s been almost five months since my father passed, but I think I’m at peace. I still get emotional and of course I miss him every single day but I feel that I am at a healthy place in my life, and I have Patrick and my wonderful friends to thank for that.

As far as the job relocation and new position… although transitioning to a new office while going through my father’s last months with him were rough, I could not have asked for a better support system at work. My new job is in a construction field office and out on a construction job site, so most of my coworkers are men. Including myself, there are 4 women in an office of 26 people, and my construction crew is made up of 17 men and 1 woman. The office guys are all great, and when I came back to work, they were exactly how you’d expect guys to be – they didn’t ask any questions, but expressed some concern and support without getting too wordy or mushy, which is exactly what I needed. And, they always were successful in making me smile. It’s like having lots of brothers. My construction crew is also pretty good. I didn’t know what to expect going from an office to a construction job site – I guess I expected a lot of male chauvinism and being treated like a little girl, but the crew has been very respectful of me, and I learn a lot about myself in my interactions with them. In the field as well as in the office, it seems as though they all accept me as “one of the guys” which makes for a fun workplace most days.

I miss my dad and I think about him all the time, but hopefully he rests well knowing that even though I can take care of myself (mostly), there are several people around me who are there for me and can take care of and protect me if need be. Patrick was there with me and for me, holding my hand even as my father took his last breath, and through the rest of that crazy week following. He was strong for me when I couldn’t be, and he dealt with all the chaos of my family flying in, the Thai community basically taking over our lives for a week, and the seemingly endless mourning ceremonies with the most grace and patience I’ve ever seen. I’m the luckiest girl alive to have a husband like him, and maybe that’s kind of gooey and all, but it’s the truth.

The holidays will be hard on all of us, especially for my mother, but I know our friends and relatives will help us get through it. There is a lot more that I’m feeling and thinking about everything in my life at the moment, but I’ll save it for the next entry, or maybe over a cup of coffee with a pal.

So I thought I would take a post to explain how to get some different looks with one camera and a single lens, and if their is interest maybe in a later post go into how to change up a look with different lenses.

When you are taking pictures with a digital SLR there are really 3 main things to focus on to alter the look of your shots.

ISO – this is the speed in which your film (make believe film in the case of digital cameras) is going to expose. For example a good shot taken at a 200 iso will look completely blown out at 1000 iso, if all you change is the iso speed. Knowing this one would assume you want to shoot at a very high iso so that you get crisp unblurred shots. While you will get faster shots at a higher ISO, you also get alot more noise as you increase the iso.


The first shot was taken at an ISO of 1000 and the second shot was taken at an ISO of 6400. Although I was able to use a much faster shutter speed for the second shot, the quality of the photo is noticeably grainy.

Shutter Speed – This is how fast the mirror in your camera opens. The faster the shutter speed the more crisp your shot will be. The only real thing this will do to the look of your picture will determine if it is under or over exposed. The shutter speed does nothing to the quality of the picture, it will always have the same grain. Also a slow shutter speed will blur your subject if you or it is moving

This is the most common thing people know to change. The slower the shutter speed the brighter the photo. These photos show shutter speeds of  1/4000, 1/1250, 1/320, and 1/125 from left to right.

Aperture – This is the third and final major variable for shooting images, and in many ways adds the most options to the look of the photo. The aperture is the opening in the lens, it determines how much light is let into the camera. Varying the amount of light let into the camera also has a direct effect on how the image looks as well though. For example on my 35mm lens if I set the aprature to f1.8, which means the lens is letting as much light in as it can, the foreground and background are going to be much more out of focus, this is refereed to as “depth of field” or DOF. But if I take the same shot with the apeture closed to f20, much more of the scene will stay in focus. here is a quick example.

both of these are taken with the exact same lens (35mm f/1.8), I just changed the aperture  to decrease my DOF on the second image.
The first image was taken at 1/2500 f/1.8 and an ISO of 1000
The second image was taken at 1/50 f/16 and an ISO of 1000
You notice that I had to change the shutter speed as well, but this change was done only to compensate for the loss of light because of my higher aperture (smaller hole in the lens).

I think this is a good amount of info to start with, and it covers the basics. I would write more but I do not get many visitors to the site, really it is more of a personal blog for Nitaya and I. However if you do come across this and find it helpful and want me to elaborate, or add more info, comment or write me and let me know.

Happy New Year everybody!

The tour was pretty good, and it was completely free! We got to learn everything we ever wanted to know about Tennessee whisky. The whole place smelled great too, no kidding.

On the last night our out of town family was here we decided to go check out the Nashville Ghost Tours. To be honest this was a bit of a let down. We had fun and made the best of it goofing off saying we saw ghosts, but it was just too cold and kind of boring. I would have liked it much better if there was some established history for the stories the tour guide was telling, but the whole tour just sounded very made up. Anyway here are some pics I took along the tour supposedly outwardly lights are supposed to show up in your photos from the tour occasionally. I did not see any.

We all got together and posed for some pictures too.

I got gobs of great stuff, like a battery grip for my Nikon, a remote controlled chanuk, Wii sports resort, and a great new camera bag. I really made out this year, and everyone seemed to have gotten each other great gifts. We decided this year to open preasents at our house on Christmas eve, just for our immediate family. It was a great idea and I had a ton of fun Having over my parents and siblings.

The next mourning on Christmas we headed over to Nitaya’s family home, and traded gifts with her family. Again fun times, I got some good schwagg and it all felt very festive.

We then headed down to Christmas at my grandparents,  and it was a great time too for the most part. You could tell though that the holiday season took its toll on everybody. Just like every other Christmas people were falling asleep sporadically all over the place. I did have time to get a couple shots there too.

By the end of the night I was done and ready to hit the bed. We had a great Christmas and wish everyone a happy holiday season.

I printed it up it pretty nice quality and stuck it in a decent frame. For some strange reason no one wanted to keep it, and it kept getting traded around. I mean honestly you put work in on something and then people just spit on your gift. Finally my coworker Jennifer decided that she would keep it. Here is the lucky winner with her awesome gift.

I made out pretty well on the game too and got this lovely dancing critter and a “fancy” pint glass. Christmas has come early, WHOOOO HOOO!

credit for the image to: lunchbreath

My mom got me to take her shopping. It doesn’t take much for her to make me feel guilty, even when I have no reason to feel that way. For example, a couple of weekends ago, Patrick and I went down to Cool Springs just to look for some item, I don’t remember what. Something fairly specific. Anyway, I didn’t want to stay long. My mom called me and asked where I was (ALWAYS the first thing that she says when I answer the phone) so I replied “I’m in Cool Springs, Patrick and I are shopping.” Her response: “Without me?” GEEZ mom, yeah, can I go shopping without you now and then? So I promised her a shopping day.

So yesterday I took her to the mall, and I was all prepared for Christmas shopping nightmares but it actually wasn’t too bad – quite pleasant, actually. I think the fact that the Tennessee Titans had a game yesterday probably helped clear out the malls a LOT. Anyway, even though it wasn’t the chaotic mess I thought it would be (and to think, in the past I would face Christmas shopping head-on!) it still seemed like my patience was being tested at every corner. Traffic, crowds, lines, just the whole thing. I wonder if it’s something that’s irritating me the older I get… last year I remember being frustrated with traffic, but not much other than that.

She was really grateful, and I did get a chance to have coffee and catch up with my mom for some quality mom-daughter bonding time I don’t get so often anymore that I’m moved out and on my own. I got her a Starbucks Gingerbread latte since I had a couple of gift cards – she wasn’t too impressed, and she DEFINITELY was not impressed when she saw that the price of two coffee drinks ended up being $7.10. “Seven dollars for two cups of coffee?” she says. Yep! Good thing I have my gift cards. So it was nice, but I did have to do some deep breathing exercises a couple of times during the day.

So I’m no longer as jolly as I used to be during this time of year. I’m not sure what it is – maybe it’s the economy, maybe it’s having dealt with some big family issues this year, I don’t know – I haven’t felt very joyful as I have in the past. I haven’t been that excited about decorating or thinking of gifts for people or anything. I have given a little more than usual this year and actually volunteered some of my time, but things still feel off this year. I’m not the only one who feels this way, too – other friends have felt the same way. My neighbors have actually hung up more lights this year than all the other years we’ve lived here – I wonder if they too are trying to get into the spirit or if they really have gotten there. Anyway, hopefully by Christmas day I will be laughing and shaking like a bowl fully of jelly instead of channeling Scrooge McDuck!

The first thing I did was install the RC Windows 7 version I had before the official launch. It is obvious to me that Windows is ripping alot from Apple. The operating system is awesome though, I rarely ever get warnings popping up at me constantly as I did in XP, and on the rare occasion that it happens I actually understand the warning. The other thing I noticed is there is no lag or hourglasses at all, this may be because I now have a great computer or the new operating system though.

The most fantastic thing about my new setup is I can play any game, with the graphics turned all the way up! I played through Half life 2 again, and man is that game freakin awesome. I also have been playing alot of Dragon Age, Borderlands, and Torchlight. My newest craze is Mirror’s Edge, I grabbed the game from Steam when they sold it for $5, and it was worth every penny. That game is so much fun, and it really gives you the feeling of running along building tops.