More 50mm Fun

I've been playing with my camera and the new lens alot. It seems like it's getting easier, then I get a crop of bad pictures and realize I still need a lot to learn. I am trying to fix the bad ones in Aperture and I'm able to save a few...but I don't want to waste my learning time fixing bad pictures - so Im going to try to take more time to get my pictures right instead of playing so much in RAW, which I need to learn, but I need to shoot better pictures first I think!! Here's one I did right. This is taken at my mom and dad's house and it's the final result of the tree trimming party we had. I used an ISO of 200, F20 and a 20 second shutter speed on a tripod. I LOVE THIS SHOT! The wallpaper my mom chose is really quite gorgeous in person, but very distracting in this picture unfortunately. Click on the picture if you want to see the full sized version.



This next one was playing with manual and close up focus and the 50mm. I used the aperture at 5.6 and 200 ISO with a shutter speed of 1/60. It was outside but shady. I have found that outside pictures are really a crap shoot with me. It's weird - I thought it would be easier, but you turn 2 feet and need a whole new setting of aperture or shutter speed!!! Click on the picture if you want to see the full sized version.