Rita and Aubrey visit from Michigan

It's summertime and a great time to be a school teacher! Who wouldn't enjoy summers off from work? Rita and Aubrey came out from Michigan to see how Theresa's doing and to hang out.

Aubrey has been doing babysitting jobs, running summer camps, and other jobs to save money to buy her first DSLR camera. Good girl! It's a fun hobby to get into! Finally after saving enough, she ordered everything and had it shipped here.

I picked Rita and Aubrey up from the airport and after dropping off their luggage at home, we all went to one of our favorite places to eat lunch, a Korean place called the Shilla Restaurant in Gardena. T and I go so often they already know our order and special requests.

Aubrey wanted lettuce wraps and got nearly a whole head of lettuce. After only eating one and a half leaves, it looks like we're taking most of it home.

And the rest of the meal as well. 

Before Aubrey even got here, I suggested she read two books, and even if she didn't understand everything she'd start learning some of the terms.
The first is Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson.  It's a great resource for learning what your camera really sees and what each of the settings do to affect that.

The second is The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby. In it, Scott takes you along with him on a photo shoot and tells you his settings on his camera and why.

Armed with a little bit of knowledge, we spent the afternoon going through camera basics. The relationships between shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Aubrey was a really quick learner and did great answering all the questions I posed. Duffy was the perfect subject.

We used the zoom lens to learn about macro mode.

Then went outside to look at flowers.

And learned how to use the self timer feature.

Using macro on the flowers out front.

After dinner at Chick-Fil-A, we came back and learned all about the 50mm low light lens. With this lens, you can focus on something close and really blur the background.  All of these pictures were taken by Aubrey. I'd ask her what her settings were before she clicked the shutter, and she'd tell me and then ask if something was okay. I think she did really well!

Flowers are a fun thing to photograph since they're beautiful and colorful.

Theresa's lemon tree is growing well.

Next, we walked around the neighborhood looking for new things to photograph.

What's the best angle for shooting this flower?

Very nice.

A leaf on a telephone pole.

While taking photos of flowers in someone's yard, a friendly neighborhood kitty showed up.

Her camera even has live-view and a flip-out screen so she can see what it's pointing at even when she's holding it high above her head.

Not bad at all....

I think she's going to enjoy her new camera!