more Pictures!

More fun with the camera! I felt pretty good about the shots I got last weekend at the tulip festival, but flowers stay relatively still while you shoot. So, this weekend I decided to tackle a bigger challenge, and shoot a moving target: Riley. It was tougher than I thought it would be. Friday night I took a bunch of photos, but they ended up being mostly blurry (due to the low light, I think). So Saturday I pulled out the manual and read about ISO, shutter speed and apterture. I think I have a basic understanding...But even with my new found knowledge it's still tough to catch my dog sitting still, and forget about action shots! Here are a few of the better shots I caught:


Hal was holding a treat over my head and Riley is imploring Hal with his eyes to give it to him:
Profile shot (actually just bored with this already):
Hal is also bored with the picture taking:
Relaxing on the couch (Hal didn't feel well):

Just hanging out:
Here are some of the "bloopers"... first, the blurry tongue:
Next the blurry face: A little blurry all over as he gets ready for the tongue out shot:
At least the tounge is in focus on this one, right?
Blurry all over again, but the expression on his face cracks me up:
So, my "action" shot of my dog are all still mostly just sitting...not quite action. But oh well. And Riley officially became the most photographed dog in Washington this weekend.

Spring here is BEAUTIFUL with millions of flowers so I took some more flower shots....
I also tried my hand at making and decorating with fondant this weekend....It didn't go well. I made 9 3-inch cakes with the intent of layering them to decorate with the fondant that I also made from scratch. I realized half way in that I have never actually made a layer cake before, so that should have been my first clue that things might not go as I had hoped. I trimmed my cakes...but am very poor at judging if things are straight, so I figured I'd just even it out with frosting. Well, my poorly trimmed mini-cakes were also very crumbly, so the frosting was difficult and didn't help to even things out at all. The fondant portion went surpisingly well for my first attempt, but by the time I got it on the mini-cake it didn't really do much to redeem my mess. So I decided to wrap up the rest of the fondant and try it again later. I finished one of the three I planned on doing...I decorated it with an "H" for Hal, since I had already decided this mess would not be leaving the house. It looks better in this photo than it did in real life:


I made a rhubarb "country cake" too...and it turned out beautifully, but I haven't taken pictures of it yet....maybe I'll post pictures of this weekend's baking success later!