Photos 101 - 103 of 365 Grapes and Bottle

I was playing around with the Artistic settings on my camera and took several shots of a bottle and some glass grapes hanging in the foreground.

The first one is with the camera set on "pinhole". This one shows a true color of the items although they are a little light.

The second photo was on the "pop art" setting. This one boosts the color so that it is more vibrant.

And the third was with the camera set on "dynamic". The dynamic setting is interesting. It makes shaded areas more shady and light areas lighter but it also adjusts the color and seems to make blurry items more blurry and focused items a little more sharp.

I think they are all interesting photos. I really had a hard time choosing a favorite to post for a contest. I ended up posting the last one. I think it works best with the theme which is selective focus. 

I haven't been taking many photos lately. But I just love my new camera. Every time I take it out of the camera bag I just smile. :) It's silly, I know, but it's just a neat camera.

Photo 100 - 365 Mushroom

I have been chasing mushrooms since photo 1 of this blog. Boy, that sounds wrong doesn't it???
Anyway, Every time I saw a mushroom I was kicking myself for not having my camera. Last week we had some come up in our yard. It was weird, a lot of houses had them out by the road. I had never seen them to prominent before and then all of the sudden they were everywhere. Well, the mushrooms in my yard were just not in the right place for a good photo so I gave up on them. This weekend my family and I went out to a local battlefield location and just off the trail was this mushroom. Perfect! Nice background, no road or tall grass to ruin the photo. I sat my camera almost to the ground and took the shot. Loved it!

Photo settings are: f/6.3, 1/200 sec., ISO 800
I think my ISO was too high. I had just taken some photos in the shadows and didn't bring it back to 400 before taking this shot. I still think it is great. The lighting is good and the focus is good. Not easy when you are basically just pointing and clicking. I couldn't even see the screen on my camera, just could see the general location of the mushroom.