This little man’s baby blues and giggles fill his parent’s hearts with unspeakable joy. Their love for each other is so evident…
It had been 6 months since I walked through the door. And as it swung open you looked at me and gave me the biggest two-toothed smile an Aunt could ask for…
Cassie…you have captured such amazing expressions of your adorable nephew! He certainly is a cutie! You are right~ his eyelashes are amazing! Great work! What a thrilled it must to be able to create such beautiful pictures for your family!
OOOOooo have I found a good recipe for you: Pumpkin Magic Bars! Yup you read correctly…ooey gooey magic bars. You know the ones with a buttery-graham cracker crust, chocolatey middle, and toasted coconut topping…now just add pumpkin and shredded apple.
I didn’t tweak this recipe at all…so I am going to just send you right on over to Baker’s Royal for the baker that first invented this great idea.
Kid Notes: I have helped my mom make the traditional magic bars since I was a very little girl. Here are some notes so your little one can help you bake some sweetness.
To make the crust: Toss whole graham crackers in a ziplock bag. Let out the air. And let your little one smash and squish and pulverise. Just check on the bag every once in a while…every now and then you may spring a leak from all of the smashing.
Let your little one help you compress the graham cracker and butter mixture into the pan.
For the layers: Let your older ones measure, stir, and pour out the pumpkin layer. Let your younger ones sprinkle the chocolate chips, nuts and coconut.
My voice began to shake as I heard him on the other end of the line.
Can you come home?
Yeah, what’s up? he replied.
I was sitting in the basement working when I think I heard someone run through the upstairs and then down half a flight of stairs and jump to the first floor! So I quietly grabbed a pair of shoes and the keys and went out the back door.
Where are you now? Matt said with concern.
I am outside… I don’t understand how someone could have gotten inside. The front and back door are bulted with the deadlocks…Matty it was so loud and the whole apartment shook.
Was it the neighbors maybe…are they home? Matt said.
I don’t think so. There are no lights on.
Alright, I will be there in 20 minutes. And Matt was on his way.
I then for the next 20 minutes sat locked in the car…watching the apartment…because to my knowledge no one exited except me.
During that time I prayed, tested the camera on my phone…ya know to see if I could take a picture of the robber from a block away…and I waited.
As Matt arrived home, he peared through the window and then went around to the backdoor. I tagged behind him like a completely clueless sidekick. I mentally played through usless movie-ninja like moves…just in case. And then we entered.
I sounded like Steve Erkle as we walked through our untidy apartment…” I did that…I did that too…yup that was me.”
We searched every closet, and the scariest of them all…behind the shower curtain, only to find a robberless house and all of our valuables still in place.
Completely puzzled I finally sat back down at my computer and there I found my “robber.”
That night I called Matt at 7:16pm after I had exited out of our home and down the dark alleyway beside our apartment. And it was reported last night that at 7:12pm there was an earthquake!
That’s Crazy! I have to admit, I skipped to the end because I was so concerned
Ha! I can’t believe you felt the earthquake! Also, I would have been terrified, thank God you have such a superhero husband 
No way! I was so worried! Andy just spoke to Matt, and I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t have told him about a robbery! LOL.
Previously we talked about why turning your camera setting from Auto to Manual is the first step to taking beautiful pictures.
And you now know that you need the right combination of three things: aperture, speed, and ISO to take a correct exposure. Can’t remember what those three things are? Just click here. We will be talking about each of these three more in depth in the next weeks. And you will be given some fun homework to get you jump started in learning your camera one step at a time! But before we move on, first we need to talk about the light meter within your camera.
What is the light meter?
The light meter is a device in your camera that knows your aperture, speed, and ISO settings at all times. Your light meter will tell you if the settings you chose will give you a correct exposure!
Where is the light meter?
If you look through your viewfinder (like you are going to take a picture), you will see something that looks similar to this:
That little ticker line with the plus and minus signs on opposing ends, that is your light meter…it’s your new best friend!
The light meter will tell you if your picture you are about to take will be a correct exposure or if it will be under or overexposed.
Let’s step away from the camera for a second and think about it this way… (Bryan Peterson explains it all so well in his book: Understanding Exposure)
Imagine your lens opening (aperture), is open to lets say f /11, is the same diameter as your kitchen faucet opening. Now imagine that your faucet handle is your shutter speed dial and that waiting in the sink below are 200 worker bees, each with an empty bucket. The water coming through the faucet will be the light. It’s the job of the camera’s light meter to indicate how long the faucet stays open to fill up all the buckets of the waiting worker bees below. The light meter knows that there are 200 worker bees and that the opening of the faucet is f /11. So with this information, the camera’s light meter can now tell you how long to leave the faucet open, and assuming you turn on the faucet for this correctly indicated amount of time, you will record a correct exposure. In effect, each worker bee’s bucket is filled with the exact amount of water necessary to record a correct photographic exposure.
What happens if the water (the light) is allowed to flow longer than the meter says? The buckets become overfilled with water (too much light). In photographic terms, this is called an overexposure. If you’ve ever taken an overexposed image, you’ve undoubtedly commented that the colors look “washed out.” Conversely, what happens if the water (the light) coming through the faucet is not allowed to flow as long as the light meter says? The buckets get but a few drops (not enough light). In photographic terms this is called underexposure. If you have ever taken and underexposed photo, you’ve found yourself saying, “ It’s hard to see what’s there, since it’s so dark.”
So your light meter will help you record a correct exposure. If we look back at the image above, you will notice that a correctly exposed picture is indicated when the dots below the ticker are right in the middle (underneath the “O”) between the plus and minus signs.
So far it is pretty simple, all you have to do is find a combination of aperture + shutter speed +ISO= that equals a correct exposure on your light meter. That being said is it safe to say that you can record a perfect exposure every time? Not quite, but you are a whole lot closer…
Now it is time to talk about how to choose the best aperture, speed, and ISO for each picture opportunity. So you not only have a correct exposure, but the perfect exposure.
Next week: How to Choose the Best Aperture
P.S. Your viewfinder and light meter may look a little different than the image above. If so and you are having trouble, your camera manual will be of great help