Critters.

My Dad and I were working in Santa Ynez this morning and we saw some pretty cool critters (in addition to the plethora of deer and wild turkeys)!

I saw my first wild tarantula!

And we got to feed a donkey and mini horses some treats 🙂

Coastal Cleanup

Robby came home this weekend and we celebrated my Dad’s birthday early. On Saturday morning we headed to Goleta Beach to help out with the Coastal Cleanup going on. Altogether, team Nielsen collected 5 pounds of trash (including 76 cigarettes)! Go team! 
And then Robby got us hooked on the show Prison Break, we all went out for buffet lunch, and the guys got in another game of Settlers of Catan 🙂 Another nice weekend!

Think Outside the Box!

So I have this lens lovingly called the “nifty 50.” It is a great little lens for not too much money in terms of lens prices. I tried something new with it that I thought was pretty cool.

Instead of attaching the lens to the camera like normal, I flipped it around so the part that normally attaches to the camera is facing out. Since there is now no way to mount the lens to the camera, you just have to hold it up to the camera opening. What this does is change the focusing distance, so instead of a 50mm lens, I now have a macro lens and can get SUPER close to the subject.

The photos have this dream-like quality to them since they are always slightly blurred. I think the effect is super neat and you can get really abstract pictures with this method. Pretty cool!