WiseArts

(crummy cell phone photo!)

On Tuesday I saw Chicago (the band!) with my mom and grandma. Sort of girls night out, I guess. We had a bite to eat and a few drinks before the concert, and had a lovely evening. Here’s a crappy video I took with my cell phone!

Mom brought over this special gift which she purchased for me at a yard sale for $30! It’s a fun retro Minolta XE-5 35mm camera! It came in this super heavy-duty metal case with lots of extra goodies. I got electronic flash, cleaning kit, polarizing filter, remote shutter release, and telephoto and wide-angle lenses, as well as the original manuals. I have some old film in the fridge just waiting to get loaded into this baby.

I’m working on cleaning up my craft room today! As I was returning some fabric to the guest room closet (fabric closet!), I happened to glance out the window and see this under the eave:

This carefully-built nest appears to have four fluffy baby robins in it! I pulled the screen out and perched my camera on the edge of the window. I sat there for an eternity waiting for the mama to return. She sat in the big locust tree, flicking her tail, obviously a bit perturbed about my presence. I remained, as still as possible, one eye on her, and one looking through the viewfinder. Finally, she must’ve decided I wasn’t a threat, and allowed me a few photos.

Blast! I wish I had purchased a nice zoom lens already! I’d love to get right in there, and see more of the textures. These photos had to be cropped in quite a bit. Click on either for a larger view!

I didn’t get a chance to get outside and take photos, but I wanted to play with the new camera this evening, so I wandered around the house and took shots of random stuff. Bad lighting at night… I’m anti-flash. I’ll have to buy a nice lighting kit sometime. I have to say I am in love with this camera. It is so nice to be able to crop a photo quite a bit and still be able to print at a large size in high resolution. Such a difference compared to my previous camera.

And now I’m going to sleeeep. Good night internet!