My brother was slicing some pepperoni this afternoon so that we could put it on our left over pizza for lunch.  I thought there was an interesting picture there somewhere.  I used the 50mm lens with the widest aperture possible in so that I did not have to use flash.

Today was my future nephew-in-law’s birthday party at the baseball camp.  They played all kinds of throwing and running type games to improve their core baseball skills.  I tried to capture the action as best as I could with the low light conditions.  I tried high ISO’s, direct and bounce flash, and tiny apertures to get the best lighting and motion blur for each type of shot.  I think I was pretty successful with today’s photography in getting the light to an acceptable level.  Unfortunately, the Canon 7D noise monster bit me on this one.

I took another photowalk around the lobby of the Mount Laurel Marriott tonight hoping to stumble upon something to shoot for today’s picture.  When I reached the side entrance, I spotted a couple of men smoking cigars outside.  The smoke was drifting back towards the building and under the awning where the high hat lights would shine through it.  This event made for some spectacular looking smoke swirls dancing in the beams of light.  I tried my best to capture the moment in still form.

My fiancee and I went to the driving range tonight so that I could prepare for my round of eighteen tomorrow.  We brought the Leica with us just in case there was something worth taking a picture of.  While taking a short break, I thought it would be fun to capture some action shots.  This is one of the best from the night.

I decided to try and catch a water drop mid fall from the deck above on our back patio.  I used a 430EXII flash in the hot shoe of the 7D to stop the action of the drop in the dark lighting conditions.  Since I did not want to go out into the rain with the equipment, I stood in the doorway.  According to the meta data on the photograph, I was zoomed in at 121mm.  Why I was not at the full 200mm is beyond me.  Today’s photograph needed to be heavily cropped to bring the drops front and center as the subjects.

I read a blog post several weeks ago about a fun type of photo which lends itself to being taken in hotels.  The best way to describe these types of photographs is “bed jump” pictures.  It all sounds so simple: set the camera on the timer setting and then time jump on or onto the bed to coincide with the shutter releasing.  This is exactly what I tried to do tonight.  I set the camera up on a tripod and used a bare-bulb flash bounced off of the ceiling.  After each of my first few jumps, I took the time to remake the bed as best as I could.  It did not take me long to grow tired of this routine.  I settled on just touching up the sheets between attempts going forward.  It took me about twenty-five to thirty attempts until I was certain that I had a useable shot in camera.  My 50mm f/1.8 lens limited how much of the scene I could fit into the frame.  However, I like the end result.  I named the photo “Bed Jump: Attempt 1″ because I know, for certain, this will not be the last time I attempt a bed jump type photograph.  As soon as I have a wider lens with me during an overnight hotel stay, I will be bed jumping once again.