Day 15

Elise and I went for a picnic for Valentine's Day last night.  I took the camera along to get some pictures of it for us.  I ended up taking some extra photos that are my favorite pictures I have ever shot.  We spread the blanket just after sunset so it was low lighting.  I took a couple of flash shots of the area but then went to get the tripod.  Because of the low light at dusk I selected long shutter speeds.  I took several shots going from a 3 second release up to a 15 second release.  The place where we picnic'd used to be a packing house and the posts seen in the picture are what was salvaged from that before building the park.

The shots are a selection from the different shutter speeds; I included the 3, 8 and 15 second shots.  The last one (15 s) is my favorite;  it was so dark that it was hard to see the food in front of us but the shot makes it look  like early dawn maybe.  The shadows and coloring tickle me.  I don't think that 2 weeks ago when I started that I would have been able to capture any of these shots.  I would have just done auto, point and shoot with the flash.  Venus can also be seen towards the upper right corner of these photos.

This one was taken about 20 minutes after the others at a 25 second release.  Except for the shadowing it looks like day time with the sun being to bright to capture its shape.

A shot of us during the picnic.  It also shows how dark it was outside (although this was taken after the other shots).