Learning Something New

Last week I took a photography class. I learned so much. Like how to go from a shot that looks like this

to this. This is going to come in handy!

Our teacher was Mary. There were ten of us in this five hour class, and we all came away excited to use what we've learned.

Today I spotted a little baby goldfinch perched upon a branch on our big tree out back. Can you see it? Click on the photo to see it up close. And, I already had the camera's telephoto lense on and it was set to aperature priority, and voila - as easy as shooting in Auto. Love that! I learned that telephoto is also the lense to use when taking portraits. Good to know.

Sadly, while I was learning new things, Littlebuddy also learned a few things - the hard way! That poor knee! Everyone else was bike riding, and he wiped out on a downhill turn on the trail, going too fast. When I was thirteen I thought it would be fun to dance in the middle of a four lane road with cars flying by on both sides. I was lucky to have escaped injury, but sometimes when we're thirteen, we think we're invincible.              

The day I took Cowgirl back to the airport reminded me how Un-invincible I really am. The whole way there and back there were tornado warnings and watches. The journey back home found me getting pummeled with hail, the tornado sirens sounding behind me, and clouds that looked like this. You just never know what's around the corner literally. Poor Cowgirl ended up spending the night in the airport with a broken plane and then the replacement plane damaged by the weather. But, we all eventually got home safely and now I know when I see clouds that look like cow udders - these are mammatus clouds - the air is actually sinking, and it means we're on the back side of a tornado cell. Lesson learned, and grateful once again to have more lessons still to learn.