Category Archives: The Homestead

Images taken of my living space.

100th post

I’ve been in a funk since I got back from the Canada trip. The same old same old isn’t inspiring me to get out there and shoot. Which, I guess, begs the question: what do people do when they have nothing else to talk about? Here’s a weather report from my backyard.

Petaluma dark and stormy

Canon G11 focusing on the weather.

Changing lenses

A couple of months ago I bought a Canon T2i. The G11 is a great point ‘n shoot camera and perfect for the commute, but I wanted to add the ability to change lenses to my new found addiction. The T2i seemed like the way to go. To start, I bought the body and a Canon 15-85mm IS USM (instead of a kit lens). The 15-85mm is a nice lens! It’s a bit big and stubby on the smallish T2i body, but that’s irrelevant. It’s good glass and will be my main “walk around” lens. The next lens I got was a Canon 28mm f/2.8 prime. I got this one for low light situations and for a general purpose equivalent (more or less) to the old film SLR with a 50mm lens days. 28mm on the crop frame (APS-C) T2i equals about 45mm on a full frame camera. Anyway, I’m busting it out for the upcoming 10,000 mile train trip–I’ll be blogging about the trip here. So far, most of the shots I’ve taken with the T2i have been around the house (I’m still in the “dialing it in” phase). Here’s a “macro” shot I recently took of a potted geranium out on our patio.

Geranium up close

I shot this through the 28mm at f/2.8, ISO 200, and 1/160 shutter speed.

Canon T2i on the loose.

Backyard impressionism

We’re having a lazy weekend–no driving, no have tos. After cleaning up the patio, Maggie did some watering and I thought, “Chasing Reflections.” Here are two shots of reflections off the wet concrete I liked enough to post.

Petaluma Bridge

Petaluma Bridge

Both shots are straight from the camera (I did boost the contrast a tiny bit on the top image, and both got the usual “Smart Sharpen” of 50% at 0.4 pixels). Other than that, no Photoshop trickery applied.

Canon G11 chasing reflections.