April 12 - 102/365

75-300mm lens @ 300mm, f/5.6, 1/160, ISO 1600

This bunny has adopted us. Well maybe not us, but it has certainly adopted our backyard as its new home. Every day I see him/her in our yard and as long as he/she doesn't eat any of my flowers or herbs, I think we can remain on good terms. Today when I spotted the bunny in our yard, it seemed pretty relaxed and settled in for a bit, so I crept around to the back yard and laid down to get as close up of a s hot as I could. The shot would have definitely been better and crisper with a tripod, but I needed to stick with minimal equipment so as not to scare the bunny. And I'm happy to say that my new friend did sit perfectly still for our whole "session". :-)

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March 22 - 81/365

75-300mm lens @ 75mm, f/4.0, 1/125, ISO 1600

My husband has two passions - guitar and soccer. He has always played, and excelled, at both as long as I've known him. While he used to play on up to four soccer leagues per week, busy work schedules and such have cause him to limit himself to only two teams a week, both of which play games on the same night. It had been a while since I had attended one of his games, and since he was only playing in one game tonight, I decided to tag along and try my hand at some sports action shots for my picture of the day. Let me just say that while I never thought sports photography was easy, I definitely have a new-found respect for the photographers that do such an amazing job and capturing all those amazing action shots at sporting events. Of course I realize that part of my difficulty in obtaining "perfect" images tonight was the indoor lighting, my use of a telephoto lens that only has a maximum aperture of 4.0, and the fast movement of the players. Even with upping my ISO setting to 1600 and taking the photos at a shutter speed a bit faster than the lighting allowed for, hence the grainy quality and slight blur of the photo, it still wasn't good enough to fully freeze the action. But I made the best of what equipment I had to work with, and did manage to get a couple shots I was decently pleased with, including this shot of my husband making a dash for the goal [which he did score on, by the way :-)].

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March 20 - 79/365

75-300mm lens @ 300mm, f/5.6, 1/250, ISO 800

The photography guild that I recently joined had their first group outing for 2010 on Saturday. Our destination - the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. It was a great day, not just because the weather was gorgeous and it was the first official day of Spring, but also because I got to spend a few hours focusing on my photography. And the animals were so much fun to watch. I had such a tough time choosing one photo for the day, but this monkey was just too irresistible. I will try to post a few more photos from the day on Flickr soon. 

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March 11 - 70/365

75-300mm lens @ 205mm, f/5.0, 1/40, ISO 400

While I still didn't feel well today, I did manage to take some photos from my window at home. I had a few frustrations with getting a clear shot with the telephoto lens, even with using a tripod. Obviously the problem was my shutter speed, and I think the base of my tripod wasn't wide enough to provide enough stability when the mirror flipped in the camera. I could have used a higher ISO and a faster shutter speed, but I didn't want too much noise in the image. Luckily, I got it to work!

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