Photo Class: Near

Have I mentioned how much I love cleaning-lady day? Well, I do. It is probably the biggest perq* of being gainfully employed. [Not just drudgingly employed as a homemaker.] As a matter of fact, the only downside is that our cleaning lady can only fit us in on weekend mornings, so we have to drag our sorry arses out of our beds. (Poor cleaning lady never gets a sleep-in!)

On the bright side, we've come to enjoy our weekend brunches. Some days we descend on McDonald's (where they now serve BLT sandwiches which are quite tasty) or Tim Hortons, but other days we go a little more luxurious. This morning, we went to Cora's, a delightful chain of restaurants in Canada that only serve breakfast and lunch, and they do it well.

This morning, I brought my camera so I could do the photo assignment for "Near." The objective was to take a picture controlling the focus so that the near subject is in focus, while the distance is not. (I'm still struggling with the settings for "manual focus points" - my camera's instruction manual is confusing. But I think the pictures turned out well anyway.)

f/4, 1/160, ISO/100
(And, yes, the coffee did slop into the saucer.
I'm just graceful like that. It comes with the name.)

Is there anything better than a deep bowl of café au lait for breakfast on a slow Saturday-ish morning? And that's the morning paper in the background with news that the Conservatives seem to be headed for a majority government! Seriously!

After brunch, we headed to the beach, for our first family visit of the season. (Steve has already gone jogging on the beach. Brrr.) Most of those pictures are landscape shots, so they don't fit the class assignment, but I did snap this one of the beautiful moss on the south side of one of the trees.

f/4, 1/800, ISO/80

I also loved this picture of the lifeguard stand, so I'm going to make you look at it, even though it doesn't meet the requirements for the class assignment.

f/5, 1/250, ISO/100

There were quite a few people at the beach - not surprisingly, since this is the first pleasant day in weeks.

When we returned home, I snapped one more shot - of the Easter wreath on our front door.

f/2.8, 1/400, ISO/100 

On that note, I will wish you all a blessed Easter/Pesach/spring.

*perq is short for perquisite, (good explanation found here) and I snootily prefer to spell it thus, rather than perk, which is what coffee does.