Photo Blog: Day 18

It is the homey touches that make the place you stay your home. I have lived in a number of places over the past few years: my parents' house, my dorm room[s], my first apartment, my current apartment, a teepee, a tent, and even a three bedroom house shared with 12 other guys. While my parents' house was nice, it became harder to consider that my home after living [relatively] on my own at college. My first apartment was nice - I shared it with my brother - but it was more of a place to keep our stuff. My current apartment is the only place that really feels like "home".

While decorating is certainly not the only reason my apartment feels like home, it goes a long way. In Day 3 and Day I took pictures of my wife's balcony garden; In Day 4 I showed off my wife and my chalk message board, and keys holder; and today I show off one of our bookshelf niches. One of our joint hobbies is reading, so we have a lot of books. Unfortunately, books can become quite unsightly if you allow them to be, so to combat the inevitable, we bought a few extra bookcases, and we have determined not to fill a number of the shelves.

This picture was taken with my Canon XSi, and my 18-55mm kit lens.

Photo Blog: Day 15

I have always found photography lighting absolutely fascinating. There are a lot of ways to change the essence of a picture, but lighting is one of the essentials. I am finding more and more often that I am setting my camera up to ISO 800 or 1600, rather than sticking with the safety of an ISO 200 shot with a flash unit.

Part of why I often sit at ISO 200 and use a flash unit is because I absolutely love my flash unit. The drawback of a flash unit is that it eliminates all of the lighting. You don't have to worry about that obnoxious tungsten light bulb, but you don't capture those neat red LEDs either. More importantly, flash units remove most of the shadowing which can create great depth to pictures.

This picture was taken with my Canon XSi, and a 100mm f2.8 macro.