Everyone: "How slim is it?"

Well I found out it’s nice and slim enough to fit perfectly between the seat and center console of my car. Oops. But came out unscathed, when I finally managed to fish it out, slippery little sucker. Not really meant for the squeeze between your ear and shoulder conversation, which is good, because I only do that when I’m driving and need both hands, and if you need both hands you shouldn’t be talking on the phone, so ya, that’s going to stop. Anyway Let’s check out some pictures shall we? I have a photography motto: know thy camera. I’m getting use to take pictures with the iPhone. I haven’t had a camera where you have to use the screen as the viewfinder before, and it’s throwing me a bit. I find it really disorientating to compose the shot, with all the other stuff around the camera, just focusing on the screen is a bit hard. Especially because with out any settings you have to be quick with when to push the capture button.


My cousin’s little girl with Daisy the puppy. Two really fast moving things that I couldn’t really place in correct light fast enough. But still decent.


I tend to do better in the evenings anyway but this was next to an open door, so good lighting.


Bj took this of grandpa and I back lit a bit but we hold still better than kids.

So for those of you who use fully automatic cameras with a fixed lens (no zoom)  and don’t use flash (or those of you really clever with your camera phones) any tips? Or any tips in general about using a screen to compose shots? I’d love to feel adapt enough at using this to take snapshots and leave the D50 at home occasionally. I mean I love the D50, but it’s not always fesable to carry, and since I’ll have the iPhone with me everywhere (:>)… 

This morning my neighbor came over and knocked on my door. When I answer he was like, "come here, come here, you have to see this… don’t be scared." To which I replied, "Morris what it is?" in the calmest tone possible, "Just come look!" He started to lead me across the street while describing a scene he had just witnessed (because if anything happens in our neighborhood he witnesses it). "Well I was sitting out here when this cloud came over, like a funnel, I’m not kidding," Okay… "And thousands of bees descended on that tree" Which was now a mere 100 feet from me. "What? Bees? Oh, no way Morris, no way," and I flee back inside, "But Amber they’re just honey bees, it’s so cool, they are going to call a bee keeper and everything." But I wasn’t having any of that so I high tailed it back into my house. Fast forward a couple hours:


He had to cut it out of the tree, trying to get the queen so the rest would follow. In Oregon we are having a problem with declining honey bee populations, so you don’t want to just kill them, you need to pick them up and put them somewhere else, like not in a front yard. So he started to move that branch, which was my cue to move across the street:


Then he said he had to sake them off the branch, which was my cue to get the telephoto lens and shoot from even further away (at this point he had already gotten stung once, and the neighboy and I had already had to do a mad run up the street):


And after that there were a lot of bees in that bucket:


Again, that was taken from VERY far away. But there were still this many in the hive:


Crazy right? I mean hours ago there were NO bees, it’s like nature is so weird I just can’t get over it. And that’s the report from the Garrison’s neighborhood for this Sunday, July 1st.