Today I awoke to a gray, dreary, rainy day and thought, “I think today I’ll buy a new set of tires.”

I’ve owned my Honda Element for just over three years now, and have 66,155 miles on it. I’ve been driving on the original tires, rotating them twice over the years. The tread was getting almost non-existent on the edges, so it was time to head on over to BJ’s, crack open the wallet and help the economy (and my safety) buy purchasing four new tires.

BJ’s is a great place to get tires, for as you are waiting the 35-45 minutes for your tires to be installed, you can browse around the store (and spend more money), rather than sit in a boring waiting room, reading magazines that are months old.

Tires ain’t pretty, but boy what a great feeling driving on brand new rubber. It’s at this time you realize the difference between tires with 60K miles on them, and tires that still have those little rubber spikie things still attached to them.

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Mother Nature brought us some snow on Tuesday and freezing rain on Wednesday. The roads in the morning were covered with a nice layer of ice — too bad I don’t have any ice skates any longer. I could have skated around the neighborhood. Schools were closed, many people stayed home, or went in late to work. I slid off my deck to snap a few pictures.

In looking down the fence and knowing I had my 135 f/2.0L lens on my camera, I thought I’d take a very low depth of field picture on a long fence railing — and see what sort of an image would come of it.

I focused down the fence about 4 feet away and snapped this shot. You can see very clearly what a narrow depth of field produces. The depth of field at f/2.0 from 4 feet away is only about 1/8″ in front and behind the focus point. The small area in-focus looks more like stitches rather than wood.

This narrow depth of field is really great when taking portraits, for you can focus on the eyes and have the entire background blurred out to not distract from the subject. This blurring of the image produced by the lens is called bokeh. If taking a group of people, a very narrow depth of field is not what you will want to achieve, for one person may be in focus, but the other subject will be blurry.

I just purchased a new Sigma 14mm f/2.8 lens and had it along with me, so grabbed this quick shot of Brian and his booth setup.

Brian took first place and the blue ribbon in the photographers category — Congratulations Brian!

After completing the job I decided to play with a couple strobes when taking an “After” shot. I placed one strobe on a lightstand and bounced it off the ceiling at 1/8 power. A second strobe at 1/32 power was placed on the floor with a snoot attached and aimed it to hit the lower edge of the dresser and the closet doors. I shot it from the point of view of Henry (9 months).

Painting is not one of my most favorite chores, but when the job is finished, it is rewarding.

One night before the official full-moon I ventured outside to capture the moon. Most people think you need a long exposure for this, but that’s not the way to do it. The moon is being illuminated by the sun and even though the sky is dark, the moon is quite bright. Here are the settings used for this photo:

Canon 70-200L w/1.4X
ISO 200; f/5.6; 1/800