Girl Band Weekend

We just wrapped up what we've affectionately been referring to as "Girl Band Weekend."  We went to three female led band concerts in four days.  (Jason actually snuck off to Austin Thursday night to see one more.) 

Our first show of the weekend was Wild Belle and Tennis Friday night at Fitzgerald's.  We were actually more interested in watching Wild Belle, who opened for Tennis, than staying for the entire main set.

     

Wild Belle only has a EP with two songs out, so hearing some of their new music was fun.  We only stuck around for a few of the Tennis songs since I hadn't been feeling too great the past week and since we knew we had a long weekend ahead.

The next day we drove to Dallas to see First Aid Kit at the Kessler Theater.  It was our first time to watch a show at the venue.  I was kinda bummed that the concert was seated, but it was a very good show nonetheless.  One of the top ten shows I've been to, I'd say.  I learned that the way you make a folksy girl band more rock and roll is to add head banging into the performance.  Instantly works.  

One of the highlights of the night (other than the head banging) was when they stepped away from the microphones, had the lights turned on, and asked the audience to join in on singing an acoustic version of their song Ghost Town.       

The grand finale of Girl Band Weekend was Metric last night at House of Blues.  Metric has been one of my favorite bands since the release of their second album Live It Out in 2005.  I've been trying to make a Metric concert every time they've gone on tour, but I never seem to be in the right place at the right time.  Needless to say, I've been looking forward to this concert for awhile.

Going into this concert I assumed that since I was the biggest Metric fan out of everyone I personally knew, then I would probably be in the top 5% of most dedicated Metric fans.  Boy was I wrong.  After seeing how extremely hardcore the audience was at this concert, I don't even think I make the top quartile.

It was a great show though.  Emily Haines is such a rock star and an amazing performer.  I'm glad I finally had the chance to watch her, even if it's been four albums in the making.

To see more pictures from the concerts, check out my Flickr page here.

Santigold Concert

Last night we watched Santigold perform at the House of Blues.  When we last watched her three years ago, it had been one of the best concerts we had ever attended (and we've been to a bunch).  This year didn't disappoint either. 

She sang a good mix of songs from her two albums - Santogold (released in 2008) and Master of My Make-Believe (released last month).  Her interaction with the crowd was amazing.  She even pulled a Girl Talk move and invited people from the audience to dance on stage during her song Creator.  Her two dancers (originally from Houston) were awesome. 

This was the first time I had taken my new camera to a concert.  It took me awhile to figure out decent settings for the venue, but I think I ended up getting some pretty good shots.  Enjoy...

 

For more pictures of the concert, click here.

Christmas Bokeh

Our Christmas decorations have been up since the weekend after Thanksgiving.  Since we can't put up outdoor lights (because our old house doesn't have outdoor outlets), I like putting up our tree in our reading room so you can see it through the front windows.

A few days ago I finally used my Amazon gift cards from last Christmas to buy myself a new camera lens.  I was looking forward to capturing some nice bokeh from the Christmas lights, but couldn't quite figure out how to do it.  

So today I read this tutorial and it seemed to really help. 

This evening I grabbed my willing (or not-so-willing) model and got to it.  On my first attempt, Radar stood about 5 feet from the tree.  I got a little bokeh.  Too bad my camera focused on the floor to the left of Radar.  You would think I wouldn't have a hard time focusing on that huge tongue of his.

On my second try, I moved Radar to about 8 feet from the tree to get a bit more bokeh.

Then I just moved around to play with different angles.

I'm looking forward to experimenting with my new lens over the next few days to see if I can get even better shots.

Variations of a Sleeping Baby Boy

My Christmas present to myself = totally worth it. 

Seriously, I can't imagine being able to capture pictures like this with a point-and-shoot camera.  These are straight out of the camera (no editing) and were taken at night in a dimly lit hospital room without a flash.  It amazes me that they came out so clear.  I've only had the camera 3 months and use probably 20% of its capabilities.  I can't wait to learn more about my camera and further develop my photography skills.  It's turning out to be a really fun hobby.  Plus, I have the best new photography subject to play with.  :)

P.S.  The Rebel T3i recently came out.  Who loves me?

I Have a Thing for Fences, Apparently

Despite battling a cold, Jason and I took a day trip to Chappell Hill (up Hwy. 290 towards Austin) yesterday so he could bike the hills around Washington County and I could test some of the features on my camera. I can take only so many pictures of Radar and the plants in our garden.

The tiny town had a cute little Main Street, but unfortunately many of the storefronts had no-picture policies. They claimed it was for insurance purposes, but who knows. So, I ended up with a lot of pictures of fences. Unless they were particularly protective about their fences, I figured I was okay.

Country fence.

Wrought iron fence.

White picket fence.

I drove up to the Chappell Hill Lavender farm. They had a quaint little gift shop, and they said I could "most certainly" take pictures of the lavender.

Sign from the street.

Rows of lavender.

My last stop was the historic Masonic Cemetery. I figured the deceased wouldn't object to my picture taking. It was actually a very peaceful and serene cemetery. The fence theme carried out here as well.

Old wrought iron fence.

Gate into one of the family plots.


One of the ole Chappell's themselves.

I first took this picture because I thought it was interesting how the stone had broken. When I was later going through my pictures, I realized how sad this was. The grave is of a baby who just reached their 2nd birthday. The engravings read "Oh how can we render so soon to God the precious gift he gave." Sad.

More headstones.

After our stop in Chappell Hill, we headed to Brenham to have lunch with Jason's youngest brother. It was a nice day trip, but I wish I would have felt better. I'm still battling this dang cold. The crazy wind & cold doesn't help today either.

Focus is Hard to Achieve

Oh, the title of this post could relate to so many things, but I'm actually referring to focus in terms of photography. So I've spent a lot, probably too much, time over the past two days reading about aperture, shutter speeds, exposure, focus, composition, etc.

With a fancy camera now, I almost feel like it is cheating if I use the auto settings, so I've spent the last two days exploring the manual functions on my camera, especially in terms of aperture vs. shutter speeds. My lenses typically only achieve a 3.5 on the aperture side of things, and I would love to add a lens that gets down to at least 1.8. (The lower the aperture setting, the more shallow depth of field you can achieve - in layman terms, that means you can more easily blur the backgrounds.)

Also, I'm finding that you have to be ridiculously steady to achieve good focus. Seriously, the minutest movement ruins the whole picture.

It's kinda funny... usually when you shop for digital cameras, you focus on mega pixels and zoom capabilities. With an SLR, it's all about aperture and shutter speeds. And really, it's the lenses that achieve that, not the camera itself. Looks like I'll need to put myself on a lens budget.

So I came across this blog today and I have to say, I love her photography style. So whimsical. I was seriously intrigued for hours reading about her and her husband adventures and admiring her photography. I would love to achieve photos half as good as hers.

Anyhoo, here are a couple shots from today I'm halfway pleased with. All straight out of the camera for now.

This is probably my best shot of the day. I like how the tree lights reflect in the window.

This shot would be more interesting if the ornament wasn't in the middle of the pic.

Radar's cute, but this picture needs brighter exposure.

No, I didn't mean to focus in on "The Act of Marriage," but I'm overall pleased with the exposure and composition of this picture.

Oh goodness, this hobby is going to take a long time to perfect. I guess, in the end, what I really want is to be able to take decent photos to preserve family memories. This journey should be interesting.

New Camera :)

Merry Christmas to me! So I bought myself a new camera for Christmas. I've been toying with the idea for a while, mostly because I've been thinking that I need a hobby. Jason has his soccer, biking, a now darts, and I haven't really had a hobby for awhile. Plus, I need a creative outlet to help balance my stressful work life.

I went with the Canon Rebel T1i with both an 18-55mm lens and a 55-250mm lens. It's one of the nicer entry level DSLR cameras, and I think it will be a good compromise between auto settings and enough manual "creative" functions for me to grow into. I'm looking into local photography courses to get me up to speed with some photography basics.

Here are a few pictures I took this afternoon. These are all straight out of the camera pictures with no editing.

Jason as a Photography Subject

Views from Ferryn & Steve's Backyard