Macro Fun!

Soooo, for my birthday I received money from my parents & grandparents. With $200 of it, Nathan & I found a BOB double jogging stroller in EXCELLENT condition on the Ansbach Classifieds-- it's PCS season, so lots of families are moving & selling bigger items since the Army has a weight limit on your household goods depending on rank & family size. We scored pretty great because this is the heavy duty double jogging stroller that retails for about $600. We're dying to use it but can't because we're waiting on our Chicco infant carseat adaptor to arrive so that Miss Ellie can enjoy the smooth ride. It should be here any day. The rest of the money I was able to use to purchase things that I wanted, one being a Macro lens!

It's just a very basic macro lens since I'm very new into photography-- in fact I bought it used off Amazon!  It's Canon's 50mm 2.5 Compact Macro. I found one for $175, about $100 cheaper than a new lens (I did this because I don't plan on keeping this lens forever & because I wanted to use part of the birthday money for other things). It's in pretty good condition, the glass is fine which is what counts. Anyways, it's compact because it doesn't focus 1:1 (lifesize); it focuses down to 1/2 lifesize, which is still pretty close up. There is a lifesize converter for about the price of the lens so eventually *maybe* I'll get that. I'm thinking though, that once I upgrade my camera, I'll purchase Canon's 100mm 2.8 Macro, so I probably won't waste my money on the lifesize converter. As well as being a pretty nifty little macro, it also works pretty well as a 50mm prime for portraits & whatnot. Although I must say, I still prefer my 50mm 1.4 for portraits by a long shot because the picture quality is better & it focuses much faster & more quietly than the macro, but this compact macro is a fun little lens to have for the time being.

Since John doesn't hold still very much, Ellie has been my main model along with the beautiful gardens we have in the yard.

Some photos are edited, some are not. 

you can see the piece of lint in between her pointer finger & thumb....

I love little baby feet & hands-- you will see a lot of them =)

So wrinkly & perfect!

I could just kiss these all day long! 

Faster shutter speed than the previous picture....

I'm not sure what kind of flowers these are, but I'm obsessed with them! I think they are just gorgeous!

Everything here is so, so green. It's stunning!