Looking Back

Recently I've been thinking about when I started to love photography. I think in my "about me" page I said about 2 years. Which is how long I've been knowingly loving and obsessing with photography. But actually I have  loved cameras and pictures since I was a little girl. I bought my first camera at 7 years old, it was a small, cheap (I think $5 or $7) plastic film camera. I remember that the only thing I wanted was this $20 Barbie camera but I didn't have that much money and my mom said I had to pay for it myself if I wanted it. Then when I was 11 years old, right before my mom gave birth to my  5th sibling I bought my very first digital camera, I was very excited and had saved $100 to buy a Kodak point and shoot on eBay. I remember looking on eBay at expensive cameras and telling my mom "someday I'll have one of those big black cameras", I didn't know that in 4 years I would indeed have one "of those big black cameras". :)
{Two picture from my $100 Kodak p&s}

Then my mom lost my camera (she dropped it in a parking lot and forgot about it) so she had to buy me another $100 camera, but even a year a half later, the new $100 kodak camera, was better than the first.
{Two photos from my second $100 Kodak camera}
These two were some of the very first "photography" photos I took:

 Then in last year at the very end of May '10, I upgraded to a $400 Kodak point and shoot, it took great pictures if the light was great but not so great in bad lighting.
{Two photos from $400 camera}

And then this past March (2011), I finally bought a DSLR, a Canon T2i.
I've happened to take a lot of similar photos with my DSLR as I did with one of my old cameras, so I've put together Then and Now collages:

It's fun to see how my skills have grown with more practice, better editing and better equipment. Be sure to let me know if you do something similar, I'd love to see how your photography has grown!
~Mary Kate

After the Storm Comes the Calm

We lived through Hurricane Irene...yay! Actually, I live in central PA so all we got was strong winds and some flash floods (not near my house though). And we did lose power all morning. It's amazing how much we use electricity for. We have a well so when we lose power we also lose water. But it was okay, it was only out for the morning and compared to some people closer to the shore we have it pretty good.

Enough about the hurricane. Moving on, I managed to get all the items for Scavenger Hunt Sunday and am actually posting on Sunday! :)

This weeks items were: Old and New, Night Photography, Music, Cheesy and Sun.

1) Old and New

I've collected postcards since I was 8 years old, buying them where ever I go. With the result that I have bought the same postcard more than once several years apart. Like this postcard from Madison CT. I bought the "old" one (the top one) about 6 or 7 years ago and just this year on our annual visit to my Grandad's house, I bought the second "new" copy.

2) Night Photography

I wanted one picture of the lights from Baltimore that we could see while camping on the Chesapeake Bay (last Mon-Wed). I took this about an hour after sunset, right before the last bit of light left the clouds, I had to use a 30 second exposure (the longest my lens can do) to get this amount of light. Click on the picture to see it better.

3) Music

I took several different photos of music sheets and the piano, and I like this shot best.

4) Cheesy

Had to use this picture because it's such a cheesy photo! When I was showing my mom the photos from our camping trip, she commented "it looks like you're about to spear them with your giant hotdog." lol... I guess it does!

5) Sun

Oh boy, this was a hard one. Not for lack of inspiration or photos. Actually the opposite, I have way too many sun photos. The two sunsets we had on the Chesapeake Bay were spectacular with the result of an overload of sunset pictures that I can't choose from! So I'm sharing my top three favorites (which all happen to be from the first night's sunset).

I love the flock of birds that flew right in front of the sun as the sun was beginning to set.

Absolutely LOVE the clouds in this one. It was one of those cases when the photo just doesn't do the actual thing justice. This was the most amazing sunset I've ever seen and the clouds were so pretty.

I've also been diligently taking a photo a day for my 365 Challenge.

Day 33 {August 25}

My list of " Literary Classics" to read. (I think I've read 4 or 5 of the ones on the list and it's a long list)

Day 34 {Augsut 26}

I've taken several pictures of my curtains before, including using it with my earring for one of the days in my 30 Day Challenge.  But I've also taken pictures of it before with my old camera

Day 35 {August 27}

Day 36 {August 28}

Right as I was beginning my evening chores, I looked outside and noticed that the light was amazing. I grabbed my camera and ran outside to the cornfield behind our house. I'm so glad I did because the light was beautiful!

More Corn Photos:

Remember I said I had a postcard collection? (I mentioned it with my "Old and New" photo for the Scavenger Hunt). I decided to count my postcards and see how many I have. And so here are the numbers:
Vintage Postcards: 31
Postcards Given to me: 71
Postcards I've Bought: 193
Grand Total: 295
This is what 295 postcards looks like:

What can I say? I've been collection them since 8 years old, I guess even then my love for photography was showing, I loved photographs and postcards. :)

~Mary Kate

Far, Far, Away

I got to cross two more items of my bucket list (which by the way is a new page I put up), I saw three shooting stars while camping and then last night I found out that I had been picked as the winner for Mcdougall Photography's Fabulous Friday photo link-up.

Thank you very much for picking me as the winner!

I have a very busy day and so I don't have long to do this post or edit photos so I'll have to post more from camping later. But I wanted to enter {A Photo} Challenge before I forgot and it was too late. The theme for this week was "Something in the Distance". I figured I would get a good photo for that while camping what with the boats and birds and such, but I wanted it to be unique.

You know the binocular things where you put in a quarter and then you can look through? Well we went hiking on this National Wildlife Refuge island about 10 min. from where we were camping and they had those. I thought it would be cool if I could take a photo through them since I don't have a big zoom lens. It's not perfectly clear, but I really like how it turned out and I think it's perfect for something in the distance.

Also I finished my 30 Day Challenge while camping:
Day 29 {August 22}

Day 30 {August 23}

And since it's over I made a collage of all 30 Days:

 

And that means I've completed 1/12 of my 365 Challenge:

Day 30 {August 22}

Day 31 {August 23}

Day 32 {August 24}

And I'm sharing these photos in Sara's photo swap over at http://www.sweetlittlegals.com/
 

That's all for now - I hope to be able to edit and then post more photos tomorrow but we'll see :)

I have chores waiting for me so I better go, 

~Mary Kate

Singing in the Rain

I thought I wasn't going to be able to participate this week, but after a successful day, I managed to get all the items on the list.
Geometry

This was the coolest mushroom I've ever found in our yard, usually they're just the boring brown ones :)

Brushstrokes

Took this quite literally and took a picture of this oil painting that my Great-Aunt painted.

Hanging by a Thread

Not the greatest photo, but it works :)

Collage

After church I was hankering some pumpkin bread which we normally bake in the fall and winter, but we had all the ingredients and so an hour and half later I was happily eating my pumpkin bread. I took some pictures of the different baking points and then realized I could use them for this collage.

On the Dotted Line

Not very happy with this photo, it's pretty boring. But this was the hardest thing for me to find and I had a limited amount of time so it'll have to do.

Day 29 {August 21}

30 Day Challenge

Day 28 {August 21}

I'm leaving bright and early tomorrow morning to go camping for three days on the Chesapeake Bay. I will return with many pictures and (hopefully) some awesome silhouettes as the sun will be setting directly across from our tent over the Chesapeake Bay. :)

And I'll leave you with one more photo:

~Mary Kate