Our good friend John Louviere flew into town Thursday night from Salt Lake City.

We’ve been friends with Groovy Hair (that’s what we like to call him–kinda sounds like Louviere but focuses more on the hair :)) for over fifteen years. He knows all our dirt, and we know all his! When someone knows all your faults and still loves you, wow, you have a certain level of freedom to get silly.

I have to show you a few photos of what I mean.

First of all, Diego (the suffering guy–yeah, that’s him) comes over for dinner Thursday night. We’re having a great time eating by candlelight on the back deck.

And then I’m not sure what shifted, but with three guys and me at the dinner table…our conversation got more and more…gladiator like…

Look at this aggressiveness in his next shot. Ladies, I’m not connecting with this. Is this a guy thing? Those eyes are serious!

Then Groovy Hair has his own turn with the Lego land outfit. And Diego is mister cool man behind him. I think I was in college when I last saw someone stick out their tongue and do that hand sign in the back of a picture.

And then comes the moment in the evening when we need to take “band” shots. Guys, I know you know what I’m talking about. Girls like to get together and chit chat away, but guys like to get together and pose for possible, future CD covers.

Here comes the “angry/shouting” one. Groovy Hair doesn’t really pull it off, but we’ll give it to him for good effort.

But this one is my absolute FAVORITE!! Diego turns to try and blow the flame out and look at his lips! Then the flame almost licks Groovy Hair and Groovy Hair’s face! I’m serious, this image kills me!! And what’s Brian doing? He looks so peaceful.

It’s been a great 4th of July weekend. Totally refreshing and fun! But tomorrow, I have to tell you about the craziest thing that happened on the afternoon of the 4th. Seriously, it’s SUPER crazy! In fact, be on the watch because I have a lot of posts for this week, so you may see a new one more than once a day!

Tips or Recipes Anyone?

All these photos in today’s blog post were taken late at night. So how do you take pictures when it’s dark outside, and you prefer not to use a flash?

First, shift into Manual mode.

Next, bump up your ISO. We went all the way up to 3200 for the images above. As we illustrate in Beyond the Green Box, the higher ISO causes more graininess in the image. But the high ISO also helps you get away with not having to use a flash.

Third, go as low as you can in your aperture to let as much light in as possible. Our aperture was down at 1.4 or Fstop 1.4.

Fourth, the shutter speed was pretty slow. It was 1/8th of a second for the gladiator shots. You would almost think the one of “Diego the Gladiator” standing still would have more blur because the shutter speed was so slow. Normally the image would have more blur if it was 1/8th of a second, but we were shooting these with the Sony 300 DSLR. The new Sony DSLR cameras have an image stabilizer inside the camera body instead of on the lens, so you can go a lot slower in your shutter speed and still get a pretty clear image. It’s seriously AWESOME! No sharpening on these images, straight out of the camera.

For the “BAND” photos of the guys, I was able to go up in my shutter speed because the flame cast so much more light then the candles on the table. My shutter speed was up at 1/200th of a second. I kept my aperture and ISO at the same place.

I hope you enjoy!

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