Work-Your-Camera Contest

My new bloggy friend Michelle is hosting a contest that I want to win! Regardless of the fact that it is FRUSTRATING to me. She is encouraging everyone to try new things with their cameras. Yesterday, I was inspired and took Penny (my camera) outside to try and play with the depth of field.

I quickly got annoyed. I printed Michelle's blog post to guide me "out in the field," but was still annoyed at how I couldn't get Penny to do what I know she can do... but I know I'm just not experienced enough to make it work. It's a frustrating feeling.

But I kept trying and plugging away. I got some of the following photos. Remember, I'm trying to make the depth of field very shallow, meaning things in the background should be fuzzy. I probably took a good 30 photos of the same freaking rain drop on a bush, and got this one:

I also tried to be creative with fireworks:

And then I moved on to sidewalk chalk.

When those didn't get me as hopeful as I wanted, I defaulted to Katie's eyelashes (which is cheating because Michelle used eyelashes as an example in her post):

Grrr. I'm still annoyed because the photos aren't quite what I had in mind. Back to the drawing board.