Happy Fall, y'all!

Did you notice that it's October? Yeah, half-way through, in fact. Tonight is our first real fall-feeling evening - today was rainy, but tonight, the air is cool and crisp, and the leaves crunch under your shoes. (No more flip flops!) Good night for a camp fire.

So, I was driving to Meijer to fetch milk. It was after 9pm, and as I was driving, I noticed the full moon, and these thick clouds moving in front of it. Very cool. Very Halloween-y. Unfortunately, the car is not the best place to be taking photos, especially night/moon photos, and I didn't have my little camera with me anyway. I didn't exactly hurry to get through Meijer (although I should have $$$), and the moon and clouds were still out there when I got home.

(A confession about that "car is not the best place to be taking photos" bit. If you saw my post about a month ago, where I was taking pictures through my rainy windshield, you'll know I have been trying to take pictures from my car. And I did it again the other day - the other morning, the sun was coming up and the bottoms of the clouds were a purpley-red. If you can tell through the blur and dirty windshield. So, aside from the whole "driving hazard" thing, my car pictures don't turn out as well anyway.)

When I got home from Meijer, I got out my little camera and my big tripod. (My other camera is a Canon Powershot S2 15, which is very fun, but the memory card slot is broken. It's on my list to have repaired in October.) My little camera is an Olympus FE-310, which I bought because it's got a small profile, but 8.0 megapixel resolution and a 5x optical zoom. Ooooh, aaaah. The intent was to have a little camera I could keep in my purse for pictures at school and at work and things, and it's really been a good camera.

My little pocket camera has some pre-set photo modes: action, portrait, through glass, sunset, candlelight and fireworks. I got a chance to try the fireworks mode at the 4th of July party this year - the photos turned out really nicely. (Here's the scene at the 4th of July - kids in lawn chairs taking it all in, husband in the field setting off the fireworks, and my Junior Camera Geek Self: on the driveway, little camera in hand, big camera mounted sideways on the tripod shooting video. Hah!) Tonight, I used candlelight mode and fireworks mode, and the pictures turned out pretty cool. Thank goodness for the tripod - the shutter on this one was open FOR-EVER. There'd be no amount of built-in image stabilization that would have covered me on this shot. Yikes!

Anyway, now I feel like I kind of know what I'm doing with these night photos. Not quite as Halloween-esque as the scene when I left for Meijer, but still pretty cool. And I NEED to get my other camera fixed, so I can play some more!