Summer Photography Challenge: Day 1

Just for fun, I am participating in a two-week long Summer Photography Challenge that starts today. I expect to learn a lot, and get some good practice.

I was joking with my sister on Saturday about her photography: "Wow! You must have a good camera! You get some really nice pictures!" She laughed. "Yeah. I do. It's all about the camera." She knew I was being completely facetious. "Seriously," she said, "if a person has an eye for composition, even a cheap camera can take good pictures."

I remember my first camera. I saved up my money for it when I was in about the 7th grade. It was a little Kodak Instamatic that took 110 film. It took a steady hand (which I didn't necessarily have) and even then, the pictures usually turned out grainy. Cameras have come a long way since the late 1970s. And since we don't have to pay for film or developing (Kids, go ask your grandma about that!) it's fun to just snap-snap-snap away and then play around with the results.

Today's challenge covered composition, and talked about using the "rule of thirds" for composing your subject. Even before I knew about today's challenge, I enjoyed playing with that rule yesterday with my road trip snapshots. I had forgotten my "good" camera, so I was taking pictures with my cell phone and then editing them with Instagram.

#westerncolorado #i70 #roadtrip #headedhome #ezell2k15

A photo posted by Karla Cook (@ramblinroads) on Jul 12, 2015 at 6:43pm PDT

When I'm taking pictures from a moving vehicle, it's hard to think about composition, so that's where the editing comes in handy. Here's the original of the "finished" picture above:

First, I cropped off the mirror and window frame of the car. Instagram has the "thirds" grid built in so I was able to zoom in enough to put the canyon cut at the 2/3 vertical line and the guard rail at the 2/3 horizontal line. Then I applied a neat filter and frame. I like the way it turned out.

 Here's another one I did the same way. This one also has "leading lines" with the curving highway.

#utah #i70 #roadtrip #headedhome #ezell2k15

A photo posted by Karla Cook (@ramblinroads) on Jul 12, 2015 at 3:31pm PDT

And the original:

I zoomed in and put the horizon line at the 2/3 horizontal line, and the "end" of the highway (where it goes behind the hill) at the 2/3 vertical line. And then chose a different filter. I don't filter all my photos, but I think they are fun to play around with.

I'll be practicing some more during the next two weeks. I'm not sure if I'll post all the challenges here... or on my Instagram account. We'll see.

Weekend Road Trip

We spent all day Friday and Sunday driving so we could be in Nampa, Idaho for my parents' 50th anniversary celebration on Saturday.

It took us just over 13 hours to get there. We averaged 66 mph with 5 stops on Friday, so it was a long day in the car. Lyle did all the driving. The girls were content with their earbuds in the back seat. The dog and the guinea pig went along, too, and rode in the back of our Jetta wagon. We put our car-top carrier on for luggage.

Laura and I entertained ourselves as we drove along by snapping pictures, posting them to Instagram and Facebook, and texting them to friends and family.

I love the scenery out west!

On Saturday we all gathered in my brother's yard for family pictures.

My sister is the "real" photographer in the family, and she took the portraits.

Me? I snapped a few shots of the men with their heads under the 1949 Chevy pickup...

...and one of the yard, just because I thought it was so pretty with the morning sunlight streaming through the trees.

 That afternoon we had a "party" with cake, family trivia games, and a slide-show of family pictures over the years. It was a fun day.

On Sunday morning we started home again.

We stopped to stretch our legs at Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, Idaho...

...and then headed on down the road, through the salt flats of Utah...

...and through the mountains of western Colorado...

...and made it safely home again.

It was a good trip.

On a Jet Plane

Day 1 of my Alaska trip was mostly spent in the air. Our flight out of Denver was at 6:10 a.m. It usually takes about 40 minutes to get to the airport, so allowing time to get through security and such, we left home at 3:45 a.m. Ugh!

The first leg of our trip took us to Salt Lake City. Our layover there was relatively short, and of course you can't tell much about an area just from the airport, but we did enjoy seeing the mountains.

 As we flew out from there, I was interested to see what appeared to be bright purple water below. I don't know if that was the Great Salt Lake and the purple was minerals in the water, or if it was something else entirely.

 Our next stop was at SeaTac. In a switch-around of typical weather, it was raining when we left Denver, and sunny in Seattle. And so the "mountain was out." (Mount Rainier is often hidden by cloud cover.)

 I enjoyed the clear view of Puget Sound as we headed north from there.

When we arrived in Anchorage, Judy and I decided we should snap a picture of the stuffed moose in the airport lobby in case it was the only one we would see.

Tomorrow we will be driving to Kenai. I am hopeful the weather will be nice so we can get some good pictures of the scenery.

Another Road Trip: Day 1

We're traveling again this week, driving from Idaho to Tennessee. We're taking a couple of extra days to take the "scenic route" and to visit our parents briefly. Just thought you might be interested to see our route and our travel stats for Day 1. I'll be posting about our adventures along the way, too.

Trip Tallies:
Departed Post Falls, Idaho: 10:00 p.m. PDT Friday night.
Hours driven: 16:40
Hours slept: 4
Miles driven: 1,062
Average speed: 63.7
Fuel mileage: 36.6 mpg
States: Idaho, Montana, Idaho (again), Utah, Colorado
Time zones: 2
Wildlife spotted: antelope, turkey
Other VW Jetta wagons spotted: 3 (1 red, 2 silver)
Weather: sunny and warm
Audio book: finished Forbidden by Ted Dekker
Car Talk podcast: 2 episodes
CBS Radio Mystery Theater MP3s: 2 episodes
Lum and Abner MP3s: oh... 6 or 8 episodes (they're short!)
Arrived Montrose, Colorado: 7:40 p.m. MDT Saturday evening

From the "Did she really just say that?" department:
Cashier at McDonald's drive-thru after Lyle handed her a debit card-- "Do you want me to run this as a credit card... or what's your PIN number?" (Have you ever had someone ask what your PIN number is before? That was first for us. Needless to say, Lyle told her to run it as a credit.)

Cashier at Wal-Mart to Lyle after checking out-- "Have a happy Moth... weekend!" (Nice save! LOL!)

Northern Utah

We are still enjoying the rugged scenery of the American west.
Today's pictures were taken through the windshield, as we didn't stop much.
This leg of our trip took us from Twin Falls, Idaho to Vernal, Utah.
We got to our RV park late in the afternoon and are enjoying a relaxing evening. We'll have a longer drive tomorrow.

The Lord is My Rock

[For more Word-filled Wednesday
"scripture photos" visit The 160 Acre Woods.]

Bryce Canyon National Park

We just returned from a 10-day road-trip. Part of it was vacation, and part of it was work-related (homeschool convention). I'll be posting highlights of the trip as a series. There's too much to put in one post!

Our route took us from our home in north Idaho, down through western Montana, back through the bottom of Idaho, then down through Utah, hitting the Grand Canyon as we cut across Arizona to the central coast of California, then inland to Modesto where the convention was, and finally up through Oregon and Washington home again!

This first picture is of the highway through southern Utah. I love taking pictures of roads so this is a great one for my "collection". (That's partly why I named my website "Roads to Everywhere" referring to our love of road-trips!)

Our first sight-seeing stop was on Day 2 in Bryce Canyon National Park. We had never heard of it, but were passing right by it and we have a NP annual pass so we decided to see what it was. (We got our annual pass for $50 at Glacier NP when were in Kalispell, MT on Memorial Day weekend for the Montana homeschool convention. It cost $25 for a one-time visit, or you could pay $50 for an annual pass that would get you into any NP for 12 months. We knew we were planning to go to the Grand Canyon so 2 visits would pay for it. The visit to Bryce Canyon would've cost us another $20.) It was simply spectacular!

We stopped at one scenic overlook and it was a half-mile hike to the previous one (which we had missed as we drove past). It was along the rim of the canyon so we just hiked over there. The temperature was over 100 (a dry heat, but still very hot), so I suggested we catch the (free) shuttle bus and ride back to the car. Well, the shuttle system was kinda weird. The bus didn't go directly back to where we had parked. Instead it went in the opposite direction back to the gate and visitor's center. So we had to ride it back to the gate and catch another bus going back into the park. DH was a little frustrated, but the kids thought it was great fun to ride the bus, so I thought it was time well-spent!

After we left Bryce Canyon we cut across through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument... 40 miles on a complete unimproved dirt road! DH and his brother had accidently driven over that road last fall when they went to Phoenix to pick up a printing press. The computer trip planner actually routed them that way! DH was impressed with the scenery in that area so he wanted to take me that way.