Hutch Photo Of The Day

Ready, set, go

2009-01-07T16:32:00.001+11:00

Took this picture last week actually - but I think it fits the weeks topic so well.

POTW - Dec 29 - Jan 4 - Hats off to the new year (something to do with hats)

2009-01-02T14:21:00.002+11:00

Here are some hats for ya!!
Happy NEW YEAR!!!

I HOPE THEY CALL ME ON A MISSION...

2008-03-28T10:58:00.005+11:00

I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or as some call us the Mormons. As members of this Church we prepare our boys when they are young to go out at 19 and serve a mission and tell others about the Savior and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. My sister had taken some pictures of her boys a few weeks ago as future missionaries and I thought it would be fun to take some of my little man. Here they are! I think he looks so handsome and I can just see him as a future missionary!

New Easter clothes

2008-03-26T12:22:00.003+11:00

One of our Easter traditions is new clothes for Church. Much more difficult to find here in Australia - no pretty "princess" dresses under $200, have to admit I am too cheap for that. So we had to make do. Luckily I had brought most of the clothes with me. Not sure what we will do next year. What do you think?

Not real happy with this leather case in the background. I thought I would try and use it for a prop and it just didn't work out as I had hoped. Then when I went to look through all of the pictures of all the kids together this was the only good one - out of over 100 :( Guess you just have to make do and live and learn.

I can sing a rainbow....

2008-03-20T12:52:00.006+11:00

I love these birds in Australia - Rainbow Lorikeet - they are my favorite ones and they are so colorful. We have this beautiful tree in our backyard and I was surprised and delighted to find out that in the fall it blossoms. Since then the birds have been flocking to it in order to get the necture that collects in the flowers. I have been trying really hard for several weeks to get a good picture of the Rainbow Lorikeets when they come to get necture - yesterday I think I got some good ones. The first picture is actually one I took several months ago - it is so that you can see what it really looks like.

While outside taking pictures of the birds my son and I decided to look for 4-leaf clovers in our front yard. The grass there is really just a big clover patch. We should have done this on St. Patty's Day - but it never happened. Better late than never. Although he isn't patient enough to find any - so no success this time.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-18T15:48:00.003+11:00

Thought we would have a little fun with dinner last night for St. Patty's Day. My little boy didn't want to try it - he is a bit picky. It took him 10 minutes just to try the lemonade and realize that it was the same taste. Oh, the magic of food color!!

Cool old house...

2008-03-12T13:33:00.005+11:00

We had an architecture challenge for photochallenge last week and I got so many shots. I thought I would share. I took them a few days ago - so I guess they aren't really a shot of today, but oh well, life has been crazy.

We have this old, run down house that I see often and I wanted to go and take pictures of it. I would have loved to get really close, but it had so many weeds and so many spider webs around. I didn't want to go venturing in the weeds and possibly get bitten by a poisionous snake or a bad spider. This is Australia after all - the 10 most deadly animals all seem to live here.

I also took pictures of a Church near our home as well - I can't remember what religion it was. I just really liked the stain glass windows and the details.

There was a gate near our home that I saw on a walk with my kids one day. I had to sneak into their yard to take the picture. I really like it, but didn't think that it fit the requirements for the challenge.

I finally decided on this picture of the Sydney, Australia LDS Temple. I love the lighting behind the temple. I would have loved to have gotten closer, but the gates were closed.

Here are some other pictures of the temple that I took as well.

Photo Challenge water

2008-02-02T11:31:00.000+11:00

Did this picture for Photography Challenge (http://photochallenge.forumotion.com/index.htm). The theme was water. The flowers and lili pads are growing in the pond. I tried to get the reflection of the leaves off of the water. CC welcome

HORIZONTAL VS VERTICAL

2008-01-30T20:45:00.000+11:00

First day of school in the land down under!!! Today I took "first day of school" pictures of my dd1 and was surprised when I looked at them and they were mostly vertical. I don't usually shoot pictures vertically - so this is my contribution to the theme for today!!!

HORIZONTAL VS VERTICAL

2008-01-29T13:50:00.000+11:00

Went to the Sydney Olympic Park last night for a little fun before school starts tomorrow. We found the fountains and the kids had a blast and were soaked within three seconds. Good thing I thought ahead and brought a change of clothes. These pics are all of my dd1 - enjoy. cc welcome.

words

2008-01-26T21:42:00.001+11:00

My family and I are currently living in Australia and since today is Australia Day I took pictures of my son's hat. CC welcome.

Jan 21-27 - words

2008-01-25T12:11:00.001+11:00

I am new at this and don't have a real fancy camera (Cannon Power Shot A610) but would love to play anyway. Any CC would be welcome. I thought it would be fun to give my 7 month old some books and take some pictures. Here is one of the best ones. I think it is so sweet because I just love little baby hands.

For those who care - 1/60 sec f3.5

composition assignment #3

2008-01-11T13:37:00.000+11:00

This assignment was a lot of fun - but hard as well. It is hard for me to think how I can do a shot bad and good by just changing a few things. Great practice though, and thanks for the opportunity to learn more about photography!

SIMPLICITY -

BAD - In the first picture there is obviously too much going on. There are too many ducks and not one main focal point.

GOOD - In the second picture the focus is on one duck. Although I wish it was up in one of the corners a bit more to follow the rule of 3rds better and give it a bit more character. It is a bit too centered.

RULE OF THIRDS -

BAD - This concept I need much more practice on. I know it because I use it in scrapbooking all the time, but when taking pictures to capture the rule of 3rds I had a hard time. In the first picture the kids are in the center of the path. GOOD - Just by changing my point of view I captured them off to the side and gave them a place to go. LINES -

BAD - In the first picture the lines take you right to a red brick building. There is also a house in the picture on the left hand side. GOOD - Just by changing my perspective, walking down the fence line and turning around, there is nothing in the way. The fence line takes your attention down to the cluster of trees. BALANCE -

BAD - The circle is not a full circle so the picture doesn't seem complete. Plus there is a lot of "noise" in the background.

GOOD - Here one of the kids is on either side which makes me feel more balanced and you can see the entire circle.

FRAMING -

BAD - I think I had to stretch here a bit - framing is a hard one. Although a really cute picture of Madi there is nothing to center the picture and give it any sense of where she is and there isn't much character.

GOOD - The bars frame her face nicely and give it more sense of character. Plus, what a cute picture and shows her personality a bit more as well.

MERGERS - I cut off the top of Madi's head - always a bad idea.

Assignment #3 - Getting more difficult Trav!

2008-01-10T22:16:00.001+11:00

OK, here is assignment number three! I admit that I thought it was hard getting some of the bad shots. Not because I am good at taking pictures but just thinking, what would make a bad shot! There is one that I think I stretched it a bit, so lets see if you think it is the same one that I do! Be careful though, if you don't pick the right one you might hurt my feelings!!!!! Ha ha ha...

1) Simplicity Bad

Simplicity Good (I guess I should have had her brush her hair!)

2) Rule of Thirds Bad (With my explaination - you can see that the focus points, or the kids, are not in the circles or on the lines.)

Rule of Thirds Good (With my explaination shot)

Lines Bad (With my explaination - It is amazing how the road seems to pull you away from Coop when it doesn't lead to him, in my opinion anyway.)

Lines Good (I like this one!)

Balance Bad

Balance Good (Don't look at Stacy and Rylee in the background. I really should have had them move, but really, how rude would that have been!?!)

Another Balance Bad (It looks like she doesn't have any room to stand up straight, doesn't it!)
Another Balance Good

Framing Bad (With my explaination - I just like the red line down the middle of her face that ends on her nose!)

Framing Good

Mergers Bad (Our little space man! If you start to see photos where our kids aren't looking so happy it is because they are getting sick of us asking them to pose for shots. "Just a little more to the left." "Back more to the right now." "Could you please smile." "Just one more." "Ok, one more." "I really mean it this time, just one more picture." So really this is the perfect picture to end with!)

POV assignment - Stacy

2008-01-04T21:16:00.000+11:00

I went to the park for my assignment and while Kev played with the kids I took pictures!! There are two trees there that I am fascinated by so I took pictures of both. Since I couldn't decide between the two of them you get pictures of both - hope you don't mind.

TREE #1 (camphor laurel - I think)

TREE #2 (gum tree)

Thomas the Tank Engine's POV - Kev

2008-01-03T20:46:00.000+11:00

Here is my second assignment; shots from different points of view. I figured that Cooper has spent so much time on his Thomas Track that I should honor him and use his creativity as my subject (especially since he wants me to play trains with him every single day).

Sorry but I could only narrow it down to about nine from the 50 to 100 photos that I took. Good thing for digital cameras huh!

2nd attempt at assignment #1

2008-01-01T21:03:00.000+11:00

TV - 1/15 sec
TV - 1.0 sec
AV - 8.0
AV - 4.1 (that is as low as it would allow me to go - it was dusk)

OKAY, HERE ARE MINE....

2007-12-31T14:05:00.000+11:00

TV - the first one I think was at 1/20 and the second one was at 0"1 (Like Kev I forgot - I will have to write the numbers down next time)

Aperture (F-stop) first one was at 2.8 the second one was at 8. I was balancing the camera on a piece of bark on top of a table to get the right angle and to try and keep it still. Thus the bit of blurriness - we really should get a tripod.

I like these ones too the first one was at 2.8 and the second at 8 (that is as high and low as we go). I moved the camera a bit when changing the settings, so it isn't in the exact spot - but close. I think it looks cool.

Kevin's First Photo Assignment

2007-12-30T21:41:00.000+11:00

Travis has a photo tutorial page and Stace and I are going to force ourselves to find the time to do these assignments (no promises on how quick we will do them though). Here is my first assignement. (Travis I have some questions as well so please let me know the answers.)

First of all, you need to remember that we probably have the cheapest camera out of all of the Cooper clan. So Travis, just so you know here are the ranges that we can do on our camera.

Tv = 15 seconds to 1/25000 of a second

Av = 2.8 (widest aperture / smallest DOF) to 8 (smalles aperture / widest DOF)

ISO = 50 (Lowest / Less Sensitive) to 400 (Highest / Most Sensitive)

And Secondly, you need to realize that we don't have a tripod so it is hard for us to keep the camera really still when the lense is open longer. So give us a break on that kind of stuff. We will have to work on getting a tripod.

Here is my assignment on shutter speed (Tv). I realize now that I need to remember what settings I took these at but I didn't for this exercise. I think the first one was taken around 1/10, since anything slower than that was bringing in way to much light. The second was around 1/100 or 1/125 as anything faster than that was too dark.

Here is the second part of the assignment on aperture. The first one is taken with the smallest aperture and largest DOF (8 on our camera). Here is my question, is that correct? Or do I have that backwards. I got a little confused on your site. Tell me if this statement is accurate. If I want to have the flower in focus and the back groud fuzzy then I will have a smaller aperture and largest DOF (which is the larger number on the camera -- 8 in our case -- since they are fractions), is that right???

The second one is taken with the widest aperture (2.8 on our camera) and the smallest DOF.

Let me know what you think and how I can improve!

Thanks for the fun!