Nina's Exhilarating Life

In two weeks, I’ll be an old married hag instead of a old single hag like right now. I am excited!

In other news…. I did the swimming part of a triathlon today. It was fun! They are doing it again in September if anyone is interested. They also have a kids triathlon which is super cute.

John Curley was there too… does it get ANY better than John Curley? I think not… I wish I would have gotten a better picture but I didn’t want to bother him!

I am pretty sure that I am completely converted over to RAW + Manual only. This weekend, I reallllllly wanted to be lazy and use an automatic mode on my camera but it ended up frustrating me more than anything. I think my pictures are much better when I have completely control of the light. I just need to get faster so I can capture the action shoots a little better. I did pre-plan the lighting yesterday which did help. Even if I was off a little, I can do post processing editing pretty easy… yay RAW.

I do need to work on getting things better in focus. As an example, click for a larger version:

I would rather his face be in focus instead the window rail. If I take AF off, I can’t see clear enough to see if it’s in focus. I can zoom in on the image on the LCD screen but not that close.

Any suggestions? I know I can change the focus point but not fast enough to capture the moment.

I also wish I knew more about lightroom and photoshop. I did purchase a couple books and think that’ll help. I just need to find time to go through them more. Well, it might help if I find a reason to use the tools more.

We headed out to Northwest Trek early this morning so that we could catch the first tram of the morning. Apparently, that is the best time of the day because its food time! We had an amazing view of the animals. Tom was sure it was going to suck but he said he even enjoyed it. Here are a few shots, full set here:

This is seriously the cutest owl ever.

The guy I am marrying in 19 days.

Losing his winter coat:

This stubborn animal refused to move so we had to go around him a wee bit.

It took me a couple days but I did enjoy photographing the day. It is a very long day though… especially when your almost husband wants you to take him to the airport at 4am. My wrist hurt the next day from holding the camera too! Anyway, here are a few more of my favorites:

MOH leading to the bride to her groom

At the alter

I loved the hand on her back.

Her flowers were so beautiful!

Cake please… hurry it up!

Flying cake

Here are a few of my favorites from the day:

Grandma, do you have a belly button too??

Groom waiting for his Bride

Father and Groom

Silly Groomsmen

Bridal Party

All the family!

Full set is located here if anyone cares.

Our lovely photographer sent us a DVD of all our engagement pictures. The full set is located here or on flickr.

This is Tom’s fav -

Totally exciting!

In other news, I volunteered to do photography for a wedding on Whidbey Island next weekend. Sounds like a prefect reason to pick up a flash and a new lens. I didn’t get them frmo B & H though! Anyway, I have a week to mess with it and hope it goes well.

There are people having sex with the windows opened in the condo building. We can hear very loud moaning of a happy girl. There is also a smell of illegal substances.

And I thought just old people lived here….

Our engagement pictures came in early this morning. I think this is my fav but it’s hard to find just one….

The rest of them are located at Jenny GG’s website.

Tom likes planes…. so we took my 70-300mm to the airport on Monday and took some sunset pictures. Here are a few of my favs:

I think Blair has convinced me that my next lens should be a 28-135mm. It looks pretty sweet! Maybe in a couple weeks I can mess around with it instead.

Oh, engagement pictures went well. Hopefully I’ll post some in a couple weeks.

Since Tom has never experienced beautiful Leavenworth, we decided to head that way today with a short stop at the Reptile Zoo. Here are a few of my favorites:

Look mama, two heads!

Full set is here