We are each given twenty-four hours in a day.  During that time, it is up to each individual to decide how much time he or she will spend sleeping, eating, working, exercising…well, you get the idea.  Since January, I have found a new consumer of my time: school.  I started work on my MBA in January, and it has become like a pet that follows me everywhere I go.  Just like you can’t give a pet enough of your time to satisfy it for a length of time, I can’t seem to give my schoolwork enough time to get ahead where I can focus on other things for a while.

Thankfully, I am getting a break starting Monday.  I have a month until my next class starts.  Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up on most of the things I’ve neglected the past few months.

Some of the books I have for school

I saw this lovely sunset as I was traveling between Athens, AL, and my house.  I was going over a small bridge and noticed the beautiful colors.  Being the avid photographer that I am, I decided that I must try to capture the beauty in a photo.  But it wasn’t enough for me just to stop the car and take the picture from the bridge.  No, I needed to get under the bridge for the best shot.  So I stopped the car and waded through knee-high water, walking across slick rocks while holding my camera, praying the whole time that I didn’t slip.  Oh, and I took this on January 28.  The water temperature was probably under 40 degrees.  Looking back, what I did will probably rank pretty high on the “Stupid things I’ve done” list, but at least I got the shot I wanted.

This is one of my all time favorite pictures.  I love the way the light brings out the texture in the building and how the stairwell runs through the picture.  The dark sky contrasts with the bright reflection on the building as well.  And I shot this at about 4:30 in the afternoon in January.  The sun was probably an hour from setting, and it reflected off of the building.  This is how the image looked straight out of the camera; no photoshop was done.

Photograph literally means “light painting” or “painting by light,” so it’s easy to see why light is so important when taking pictures.  Light really is the key element in any picture, and learning to master how to light a scene or subject is vital to becoming a good photographer.

EXIF data: Nikon D80 with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens set at 18mm, f/16, at 1/1000 second, ISO 1000.

These were the first senior pictures I took.  I was very pleased with the way they turned out, and I really liked the location I found.  These were shot on a couldy day, so the lighting was very soft.  I love shooting on cloudy days!  Clouds make it possible to get soft light in areas that are normally too sunny for good pictures.  A scrim could be used to get the same effect, but they cost money.

This is one of my favorite photos.  I took this from the top parking deck of the Baptist Hospital in Nashville, TN, on the night my niece was born.  As we drove in looking for a parking spot, I noticed this great view, but it was still light outside.  I knew at that point I wanted to go and get this shot once it got dark.  The original shot had the moon in it, but it was too high in the sky to include after I cropped the photo down.  This is only one photo that I cropped to be 5×20.

I sat my camera on the ledge of the parking deck and used a manual focus 50mm lens set to infinity focus.  I took a multiple shots ranging from 3 seconds to 30 seconds.  I think this one was about a 15 second exposure.

This picture was taken at the Disney World Magic Kingdom on July 3 in the morning.  Early morning light is softer than light later in the day.  This makes shadows softer or even non-existent.  It was somewhat cloudy this morning as well, further softening the shadows.

Tip of the day: The best light for shooting outdoors will come in the first hour or so before sunrise and the last hour before sunset.  The hour before sunset is often referred to as the “golden hour” because the light from the sun tends to give a golden hue to photos taken during that time.  Clouds will also help to soften sunlight, so shooting during cloudy periods is advisable.

Bonus tip: Try not to include much (if any) of the sky in your photo on a cloudy day to avoid a drab gray or dull white sky.

She has the darkest blue eyes...

I’m interrupting my normal posting to bring a few pictures of my daughter, Mary Elizabeth McKnight, who was born on September 18, 2008.  She surprised my wife and I by arriving three weeks early, but she still weighed in at 6 lbs, 1 oz and was 17 1/2 inches long.  If you see me, you’ll see one very proud daddy.

Is she wrapped around my finger, or am I wrapped around hers?

What is bokeh?  According to Webster’s New Millenium dictionary, bokeh is “a Japanese term for the subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of a photographic image.”  For the common person, it simply means the the part of the picture that is not in focus.  Usually, bokeh occurs in the background, as in the image above.  The subject (rose) is in the foreground, and you are left with a pleasing wash of colors in the background.  Bokeh can also occur in the foreground, and you can even notice it in both the foreground and background of some images, especially when dealing with macro (close-up) photography.

Bokeh is commonly found in portraits because the resulting background helps the subject to stand out in the image.  A background will become more blurred the further the subject is from the background.

To create bokeh, try using a lower f-stop number.  It will narrow the focal plane of the photo, allowing more of the image to blur.

I took this photo at Disney World on our vacation last year.  I couldn’t get to my Nikon D80, so I just grabbed my little Minolta DiMage 5MP point-and-shoot to get the photo.  I would have liked to have more depth of field in this shot, but that’s the trade-off for a point-and-shoot vs and SLR.

From taking this photo I learned that it is better to have any camera with you than no camera at all when you find “the shot.”

Meet Hercules, an American bulldog. We had to put him up for adoption when we moved last year. We still miss him.  Yes, he is sitting in the chair. It’s one of the tricks we taught him.

For technical info, this was taken with a Nikon EM camera with a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 E series lens.  Shutter priority, f/1.8.  Kodak High Definition 400 film, I think.