The sky After I started to become more interested in taking manual photos, I started to look at the sky a lot more than I use to. At least I feel that way. The colors as the sky is changing from day to night are really pretty and the bursts from the sun through the clouds are fun to try to capture. Nightime photos of the moon and stars are not coming out well at all though. Not ready to invest in a nice tripod yet, so sky photos are all I'm going to get now. The first one is over the hill at Miller Outdoor Theater, waiting for Little Shop of Horrors to start. The second one is on the drive home from a fun afternoon in Conroe at a friend's house. I'm glad only the trees came out blurry and not the sky!

-Cancun- Ryan and I spent 4 days in Cancun at an all inclusive resort trying to soak up some sun and enjoy the beach. I didn't use my G11 much while I was there and traveled with my smaller point and shoot for the most part. Here are a few I took on our last day there.

I need to work on trying to do multiple spot metering. One picture is focusing on properly exposing the bottom portion of the photo and the other is focusing on the sky. Either way, I didn't get the picture I wanted on manual, but still nice.


This is me playing with the camera while laying out along the lazy river.


I liked the symmetry in this one.


And finally, I loved the view we had from our last lunch at the resort. We had a great time there.

-Kham & Sok's wedding- My family grew up with Kham's family so our families have known each other for a very long time. He was my brother's best man and my brother was his best man. It was a beautiful wedding! I kept switching back and forth from manual to auto when other people would take pictures, but I think all of these were in manual mode. The one of the kids might not be because it was at the reception and it was a bit too dark in there. Here are some of my favorites though:

Had a lunch date with Marisa and cute baby Violet. Asked if I could practice and take some photos of her. I need to try to see what would be better pictures and learn how to change settings faster with a moving baby and upclose photos! Violet was such a cute model though. Thanks Marisa!! ISO-100, f/3.5, and 1/25 or 1/30 sec.

The Dock Dogs competition at Discovery Green. Tried lots of shots and this was my favorite one. I know the sky is too bright and probably was blinking at me telling me that I didn't expose it correctly but I like it anyways. Timing and trying to figure out where the dogs would be were the hardest thing about getting some of the photos I took there. This one was on: f/4.5, ISO 200, and 1/800sec. I tried 1/250 and 1/500 and some kept turning out blurry. These dogs were moving fast!

I have to admit that these are two more photos taken on automatic with the G11. I am a novice with these manual settings! With such a big event (my brother's wedding) and a big group of people in this wonderful Houston heat, I couldn't make anyone wait around as I fiddled with my manual controls. I still think these photos came out great and I really love them. I am more shocked at the timing I had on the jumping shot and how nice it turned out. It was such a beautiful wedding and I'm glad I got to capture some great memories for them. I will hopefully get better with taking photos faster and be able to feel more confident about them for big events, but until then auto will have to do in a pinch. Congrats Nam & Tina!

These are two photos I took of a restaurant a little outside of the loop when I had lunch with Ryan and Jonathan. I love how you can see the sky reflected in the window and wish I could have gotten a better angle or more of a straight on photo but there was nothing for me to stand or climb on. The owner was giving me weird looks walking around trying to take photos of random things, but I didn't care- we were the only ones there. On the door, there was this small fox that Ryan didn't even notice until I showed him the picture at home. It is small, but I really liked how it photographed.
These were taken with f/8, ISO at 100, and around 1/40-1/50sec.

This photo isn't one that I took on manual settings or with the Canon G11. This was with my old camera the day after Ryan and I got married. I tried to take an artsy photo in my bouquet with our rings with my small point and shoot Canon PowerShot SD850 IS. I think the only thing I ever did before I got the G11 was change to macro for up close photos. Although I am not as proud of this photo because I didn't use manual settings, I still really like it.



p.s. I tried to find a cool template for the blog and only wanted one column. A lot of the templates I found were too busy so I'm going to keep it simple. Let me know if you find a better one for me. I also tried to watermark my photos because... well just because I think it looks cool. :) I used the name "Kiman" because it was a name given to Ryan and me by our friends a long time ago.