Due to accidental mishap, I was forced to shop for a new lens for my camera. I dropped my 18 – 55mm “kit” lens that came with my Canon XSi. It was a great little lens that met it’s maker too soon. To replace the lens I started on amazon.com and b&h.com but didn’t see anything in my price range. Fortunately, I found a nice lady on Craigslist who was selling her gently used Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Standard Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras. This is a super convenient “walking around lens” giving both zoom and wide-angle possibilities.

She also sold me a nice Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens which is great for “available light” photos and very clear shots (it doesn’t zoom so the lens is much simpler).

My wife and I also took advantage of the nice weather to take my my son to the park nearby. Yesterday was one of the first days since mid-december that it has been warm enough to go outside and play. Here are some of the photos from the park. You can see the whole set here.

Parker is very close to walking. Here is him on the track pushing his new car he got for Christmas.

We (me included) crawled all over the field playing soccer and taking pictures

We also got to play with sand. The first time since Parker was very small.

Today it was pretty cloudy, and I got a late start, so I didn’t want to venture too far from home. I shot these at the Charles Pickney National Park on Long Point Road. I didn’t have much sunlight, and I have a bad habit of blowing out the skies when I shoot near dusk. Once I get better, I think this would be a great place to shoot spooky photos.

Here are some of my favorites. If you’d like to see the whole set, visit it at Flickr. You can see all of my pictures by visiting my Flickr site.

For photowalk number three I went to Isle of Palms and Breach Inlet.

I learned a lot today about my camera and taking pictures at the beach. I took probably 250 pictures over the course of an hour or so, of that, about 230 were over exposed. I used the aperture priority mode on the camera, but I think I had it too low (or high?) and the shutter couldn’t fire fast enough. I was able to save some of the pictures (see below), and I enjoyed the 74 degree weather we are having in the middle of January.

You can see the whole set here. My favorites are below.

This is my favorite from the set. It is the rust that has formed below the spout at the shower beside Coconut Joe’s.

Me and this guy danced around for quite a few minutes. This is the best one that came out.

This picture got blown out, but I got a nice shot after playing with it in iPhoto.

This week’s set was taken at the Mount Pleasant Memorial Waterfront Park. It was REAL cold, so I didn’t stay very long. The further out the pier I went, the stronger and colder the air got.

Below are my two favorite. You can see this set, and all of my other travel pictures on my Flickr site: