Just in case I didn’t convince you to at least give manual shooting a shot with your DSLR two weeks ago, here’s one last attempt.

I shot this first photo in Auto mode on my camera (which, honestly, was probably the first time my camera has been switched to that setting). I did turn off the on-camera flash (so it wasn’t completely in Auto mode) because I am not a fan of on-camera flashes and prefer using natural light as long as it’s available – which it was.

F 3.3, 1/45, ISO 800

What a blurry mess!

This second photo was taken in Manual mode; the way I take all my photos. I manually adjusted the Shutter Speed, the Aperture, and the ISO to create the photo the way I wanted.

F 1.8, 1/90, ISO 640

Much better, huh?

Now on to the technical stuff. Notice the camera settings that were chosen by my camera while in Auto mode in the first photo, and compare them to the second. If you need a quick refresher on what all the numbers mean, this post may help you.

ISO: The camera choose a higher ISO than I did. Because it was the afternoon and my living room only has north and east facing windows, there wasn’t a ton of light to work with, but I knew I could still make it work without upping my ISO too much by fiddling with the aperture and shutter speed. The camera choose 800 for the ISO to make up for the lack of natural light, but I typically like to keep my ISO below 640 to avoid too much graininess in my photos.

Aperture: I shoot with small apertures for a large majority of my photos. I can’t tell you why the camera choose to raise the aperture so high (F 3.3), but in my opinion, it wasn’t necessary. I wanted a shallow depth of field and by lowering the aperture, I didn’t need to choose such a high ISO. Win, win.

Finally, Shutter Speed: Due to the high aperture setting the camera chose in Auto mode, it had to choose a slow shutter speed in order create a correctly exposed photo. As you can see, 1/45 of a second captured quite a bit of motion in the photo. Normally, I wouldn’t go longer than 1/125 of a second for my shutter speed when shooting my always-moving toddler, but I took a risk and dropped it to 1/90 of a second since he was actually sitting still for once.

I definitely wouldn’t have gone any longer than 1/90 of a second though, and if my photos were looking underexposed, I would have gone back and raised the ISO rather than lengthening the time my shutter was open any further. Sure, I still captured a little bit of motion in my nieces hand, but not nearly as much as when I put the camera in Auto mode.

Now, I’m definitely not saying that every time you take a picture in Auto Mode, it will be horrible. That’s simply not true. But there are numerous situations where you can be smarter than your camera, and choose the right settings for the photo you are hoping to capture. Sometimes, a blurred image is exactly what you want! But don’t you want to be the person deciding that rather than leaving it up to a piece of equipment? Just something to ponder.

Next week: My Favorite Focusing Technique

Thursday Photo Thoughts is a series focusing on bettering your photography. I’d be more than happy to answer any photography questions you have, just email me. View all my Thursday Photo Thoughts posts here.

1. Today’s Ten on Tuesday is not exciting. You’ve been given fair warning.

2. I’m deep in the search for a daycare to bring Ephram to. At the beginning of my search, I was so focused on finding someone who would be flexible with a crazy-rotating-shift-meteorologist schedule that I didn’t even consider that I might not like the daycare providers. Nor did I think I’d start Facebook searching them to get an inside look at them. Suffice it to say, there have been some that I am not fans of.

3. The good news is that I have a really good feeling about one I’m meeting with next week. Cross your fingers for me that she’s as good as she seemed on the phone (and on Facebook ;) ).

4. In addition to all this searching, it’s one of those fantastic weeks where I work 10pm-6am and then stay up with Ephram all day until Beau comes home (or in this week’s case, I bring Ephram to Beau’s mom’s for a bit) so I can sleep before I work again at 10pm.

5. Ephram has lengthened his morning naps from 1 hour to 1 hour 45 minutes the past two days. This may be the highlight of my week. The fact that all three of us are fighting off a head cold is definitely not.

6. Beau is liking his new job, but is still getting used to always having real weekends off and commuting to work in actual traffic.

7. Shopping this past weekend was a rude awakening into what a “normal” job brings. We used to have a rule about not shopping at the Mall of America on weekends since we could easily wait for a weekday we had off instead. But with Beau’s new job, we ended up visiting Ikea this past Saturday. We could barely find a parking spot, the whole way around the showrooms we felt like a heard of cows, and never really got to stop and look at stuff. Probably the reason I only spent $10! But really, people do that every weekend? I guess I won’t fuss too much about having random weekdays off anymore. (at least until I’m stuck working the weekend while Beau and Ephram visit the cabin without me… *sad face* )

7. Goals for the week (other than getting a sufficient amount of sleep and finding an awesome daycare provider): new business cards from moo.com, seriously order Ephram’s ’10 Reasons I Love You’ book (finally), and eating as many fruit smoothies as possible!

8. Ephram has been just the sweetest boy this week (picture below is proof).

He also just laid down for an afternoon nap, which is my cue to go catch a couple hours of sleep myself. Later!

Dear Ephram,

I started signing to you when you were just shy of 7 months old. And for a long time I didn’t think you’d ever catch on. Even though you are starting to understand us more and more each day, we still have a hard time understanding you, so I have kept trying. (The only words you currently know are Kitty and Ball.) But you are finally getting it. It was just a couple of weeks ago that I caught you signing ‘milk’ to me. I was overjoyed. No more whining and crying and arching your back in order to communicate a desire for your sippy cup. Hooray!

Though you have yet to pick up any more signs typically taught to babies/toddlers, you’ve learned a different one that I’m so very in love with. You now sign “Where did it go?” by raising your arms up whenever you’ve hidden a toy or are looking for something. It’s the cutest thing you’ve ever done. (At least in the past 7 days.) I’ll admit I didn’t realize how much I’d love this stage in your development, but it’s becoming a fast favorite. Every smile, every giggle, every discovery you make. It makes my day. Well, except for the very out of character bedtime tantrum you decided was necessary last night… those are not my favorite, just fyi.

Love you,
Mama

I mentioned yesterday that we’ve become a bit obsessed with smoothies lately. Well, here is the evidence.

I’m not sure why Ephram has entered the phase he’s currently in, but for whatever reason, he isn’t too fond of solid foods anymore. Pieces of lunch meat, string cheese, bits of bread, canned peas. He used to munch on all of these like no tomorrow. He’d eat, and eat, and eat. I haven’t been too worried about his lack of eating actual food since he nibbles enough to not starve. And I’m fairly confident that it’s yet another phase that will pass in 2-3 weeks time. Not to mention, he’s still looking pretty healthy (aka chubby) these days.

What hasn’t changed is his love for beverages. He has an undeniable desire to drink from any cup he sees. Coffee cups, regular cups, colored cups, beer bottles, pop bottles, pop cans, water bottles, wine glasses, glasses with straws, etc. If he sees a cup, he shows immediate interest. So when I stumbled upon our smoothie maker, the idea instantly sparked in my head that I could get Ephram to “eat” a bunch of nutritious food by blending it into drink form. And I was right. We devoured two smoothies yesterday (and another one this morning), which overall consisted of vanilla yogurt, half of a container of strawberries, frozen blueberries, 2-3 bananas, and spinach!

Now I need to find some great smoothie recipes that incorporate veggies and I’ll be all set. This afternoon, I may try this one since I’ve got some carrots laying around that I know Ephram won’t eat whole. What smoothie recipes have you tried?

Life has kept us busy this week and I wasn’t able to put together a Thursday Photo Thoughts post. But stay tuned next week, for sure.
To keep you up to speed on our ever changing lives, here’s just a few of the highlights:

* Ephram learned to say ‘ball’ and he says it over and over and over.  It makes me smile every time.

* He also has a bit of a runny nose and has decided he’d no longer enjoys food. But give him something to drink and he’s a happy boy.

* The runny/stuff nose he’s got kept everyone in the house awake until around 2am last night.

* I stumbled upon our Rocket blender (given to us as a wedding gift three years ago) that I had forgotten about until yesterday.

* In the past 24 hours I’ve already made two smoothies and plan to make another when I finish this post.

* Luckily, Ephram loves smoothies because you drink them.

* Beau got a new job!  It’s with the same company, just a new department.  As a result, he’s now working Monday-Friday.

* This is the most normalcy we’ve had in our work schedules since we’ve been together.  But it also means I’m now searching for daycare for Ephram.

* We went storm chasing in Iowa on Tuesday. We saw a tornado. Full chase log here.

* Spring showed her face last week, but then she left and it snowed yesterday. I’m boycotting the outdoors until she returns again.