Last night at the Glacier

Darwin and I went out to the glacier last night to do some homework for my photography class.  This week we are working on taking pictures in the dark and light painting.  There was nearly a full moon last night, so it wasn't  as dark as it could have been, but the pictures turned out pretty amazing.

I learned a little bit about taking pictures of the moon.  There is a rule called something like "Sunny 16"  Basically, you set your aperture to 16, your ISO to 100 and then leave the shutter open for a long time (I left the shutter open for a full minute for this shot).  I had to take several shots to get it to not look like a shining blob. =)

There was some event going on at the visitor's center and it was all lit up, so I turned the camera on it's side and got the moon and it in the same shot.  I wasn't as successful at getting the moon in focus on these, but if you notice, there was some fog last night, and it made a big ring of light around the moon...breath taking.  I don't have a wide enough angle lens (my widest angle lens is an 18-200 mm) to get the whole ring, but believe me, it was really pretty.

This is a shot I took before we started light painting.  We went out to photo point and set up the tripod.  This was taken at 9:31 pm.  I left the shutter open for 30 seconds at f/16 ISO 800.  If you click on the picture you will notice several red, blue, and green dots in the photo.  I learned last week that these spots are called "dead pixels" and are spots on my sensor that are sort of broken.  Interesting...I never knew that individual pixels could just go out.  The only way to "fix" them is to use photoshop to clone them out, or get a new camera! =)  From looking at this picture, I have a lot of dead pixels!

 

We got out the light sabers and a few flashlights and then had some fun.  I think if it would have been darker, the light sabers would have turned out cooler, but the LED bar flashlight (used to write Alaska), and the LED key chain light (used to write Juneau) we brought turned out really good!  I had fun spelling out words and then seeing if we could read them.

It was getting to be about 10:30 pm, so we decided to pack up and go get dessert before going home.  I thought I would try a few shots while walking of the sidewalk lights.  I took two long exposure shots of the lights and they both turned out black!  I was bummed because I thought they would turn out pretty neat.  Then Darwin casually says to me, "Is it because the lens cap is on?"   OH MY GOODNESS!  It was on!  No wonder the pictures were black!  hahahaha!!!

This is what I was hoping for!  We were already in the parking lot, so I just opened the shutter and waved the camera around.  You can see the sidewalk lights all in a row right on the left/center edge of the photo.  I wish I could have gone back and tried again running past them, but we were getting pretty cold.  We had been out for an hour and a half. =)  Maybe I will go back again soon.

Well, other than homework (which even I am sick of hearing about)...we are all doing good.  We got our new mattress delivered on Thursday.  We bought a Tempur-Pedic Cloud Supreme mattress last month, and it finally got here.  We've slept on it for two nights now, and I've slept like a log.  It is still a little weird...I think it feels like laying down in play-doh...hahaha...but it is very comfortable and I don't wake up at night because my hips or shoulders are numb.

We also found out on the 16th that we MIGHT be moving to Oahu THIS summer!  We should have orders by Monday or Tuesday.  We knew it might be a possibility that we'd have to move, but we had really hoped we could stay in Juneau for another year (or more).  Darwin and I both feel really good about the move...almost peaceful.  It is hard to describe, but I felt like I should be mad or angry or more stressed out, but I'm not.  I am really pretty excited...which I did not anticipate.  I always said I wouldn't ever want to live in Oahu, because it is a big city, and I like living in smaller places, so that is why I can't figure out why I am so excited.

There are two things that we are REALLY excited about for sure though.  We get to live by a temple!  How cool is that!  The last time we lived in a place that we could drive to a temple was in 2000 when we lived in Washington DC!  Ever since then, it has been a plane ride to go to one.  We are super excited that we will be able to drive to this one...and be able to go more than once a year!

The other cool thing about moving to Oahu, is that our amazing adoption worker, Sally Lee, is in Oahu.  She really is the sweetest lady and has kept in contact with us and presented us with options, even when we weren't her clients anymore...which is way more than our agency here did.  We are excited to call her after we get orders, and tell her we are coming!  She always says to us, every time we talk to her, "Oh!  I really want to do your placement!"  I was seriously thinking that if we had to move, there wasn't anyone who could convince me to go through another homestudy with LDSFS and pay another $500...I was ready to give up, seriously.  This is the only situation (that I totally didn't think was even a possibility) that I would continue with LDSFS.  I was pretty sure that we were just going to have to re-evaluate and try another way to find our missing baby.  I'm hoping that this time (the third time's the charm??) we can be done waiting to meet our child.

Well, I think that is all I can think of right now.  I'll blog at you all later! =)