Haven't blogged in a bit

This month has been, well, dull. At least the first couple of weeks.

This weekend was a little more fun because Friday was our five year anniversary, and as a gift (not that I deserved one; that's what our trip was!), I got a Canon 430EX II Speedlite! For those, like me six months ago, who don't know what a speedlight is, it's basically an external flash for the camera. It's a pretty good one, too! Right now I don't have any kind of trigger for putting the flash somewhere other than the top of the camera, but that's okay.

I've been playing with it to bounce light into the room by aiming it upward. It should really help my indoor pictures. And then tonight we played with the tripod and a long shutter speed (5 seconds), low ISO and medium aperture, and a half-powered flash (due to distance), and some glow sticks.

And here's one where the flash failed to fire:

Not really sure why, but the result was pretty cool. I am aware those pictures aren't great or anything, and aren't even technically correct yet (overexposed mainly) but I'm posting them because they were 100% manual. Manual camera, manual flash. I'm still totally learning but I can actually DO THIS. Six months ago the idea of taking a manual shot in daytime without flash petrified me, and now at least half my pictures are full manual and another fourth are at least in aperture-priority or shutter-priority mode (i.e. half manual, roughly). And now I can make the camera work for me with a manual flash on top! Wheeeeee!

And P.S. Charlotte picked the outfit in its entirety. We even went to the science museum like that today. Oy!