It's like having a new toy!

My friend Carissa was over here yesterday. She is talented in many crafty ways, one of them being photography. She took some great pictures of us (on her most recent post here). Stu and I have a very nice digital SLR we bought when I was pregnant with Daniel, with which we have taken literally thousands of pictures, but sadly, the manual is lost, so I haven't explored the potential of this camera as much as I could. I think I'm decent at the composition of a photo (you know, for a total amateur), but I never know what to do when the lighting sucks, as it often does in the winter months up here. I've always used the flash inside, even though it distorts color, because there's almost never enough natural light coming in the house. Either that or I hold the object I'm trying to photograph up to a grimy window and hope for the best. (Yikes.) Carissa showed me the function for manually setting over or under-exposing according to the light you've got so that you can avoid using the flash and thus getting truer color representation. Of course, this can be tricky when you have a moving target (re: child), but it sure is handy for knitting photos.

In any case, Mrs. Alloro asked for a close-up of the buttons on the sweater my mom just finished for me, so I gave my new trick a test run to do just that. (By the way, she bought the buttons at JoAnn's, I think JHB brand. They're very nice.)




I think I need to keep playing around with this, and now I'm all inspired to do so. Why not? I have plenty to photograph (when it comes to knitting and my kids) and it's not like this new hobby is costing me anything, since we already have the camera and the computer. So, be on the lookout for better pictures in the future!