Matthew Lau

Welcome to Urbana! (Urbana through a Lens 2015: Day 1)

Urbana Missions Conference is here. This year’s theme is “What STORY will you tell?”

I’ve been given a great privilege to be part of a Student Social Squad here at Urbana 15 to put out content into social media describing the Urbana experience 🙂

However, this is still my photography blog, so I’m calling my posts this week “Urbana Through A Lens.”

EWR->STL: Departure 12:10 PM EST, Arrival: approx. 1:30 PM CT.

In both New Jersey and St. Louis, the weather was terrible- foggy, rainy, soaking wet. However, my flight had no delays or difficulties. That’s something to be thankful for. My prayers go out to those who are still waiting to get here. Stay Strong!

This chalkboard world map Urbana set up in the convention center gives an idea of the amount of diversity there is here at this conference.

Large Group: approximately 16,000 people filed into Edward Jones Dome (the St. Louis Rams play football here!!). Everyone gathered for one purpose: to learn more about God and our mission to tell His story.

Session 1 (speaker – Patrick Fung, M.D.):

The book of Matthew “starts with worship and ends with worship.”
Matthew chapter 2 – there are three stories: the story of the Magi, the story of Herod, and the story of Joseph. However, these three stories all point to Jesus’ story.
The story of the Magi: “Jesus’ coming is of cosmic significance.”
“Jesus’ coming is of cosmic significance.” – Patrick Fung, M.D.
The story of Herod: “God’s story is always bigger than others. Man’s ambition can never circumvent God’s plan.”
The story of Joseph: “Jesus was born into a refugee family” as Joseph immediately obeyed God’s command to flee to Egypt. “The faith journey requires obedience… it is NOT a risk-free journey.”
“Our best gift to Jesus is to tell the world Immanuel – God is with us.”

A quick meet-up with members of our home church, Rutgers Community Christian Church in central Jersey.

Prayer with the church members.

Roommate huddle – time to bond and talk with our roommates about our first day at Urbana so far.

We are challenged this week to:

Be a learner.
Be a team player.
Be a story teller.

I already get a chance to do all these things by sharing what I’m learning here as well as pictures that describe my first Urbana experience on this blog!

Day 2 has already begun as I post this, so I ask you to keep on praying for all of us here at Urbana, that God will continue to reach out to us! Also, I believe the main sessions are being streamed for free on Urbana’s website: https://urbana.org/, and follow Urbana on twitter and instagram @UrbanaMissions. Also, follow me on instagram for photos 🙂 @mattlau95.

I’ll be posting updates around noon during lunch break hopefully every day!

Another New Home (+ Jr. Video BTS)

This is my first year attending Chinese Christian Fellowship (CCF) at Rutgers University, even though it’s already my third year here.

It’s not just my first time attending CCF, but also my first time attending a large-group fellowship at Rutgers. I had only gone to my church small group (shoutout to R8) my first two years. I had been stubborn or scared of mingling with and opening myself up to a larger group of people I didn’t know.

This year, R8 moved their meeting time from Tuesday to Friday night. However, I spend time on Fridays with our church middle schoolers at youth group, so I couldn’t go to R8 anymore. Even though I miss the fellowship with R8, it pushed me to go to another fellowship. That fellowship was CCF (Also, I still see my R8 friends at church every week!).

To be honest, it was the large group that fit my schedule (and ethnicity) best. Also, I had a couple of old friends from church who not only regularly attended but were serving. I had even become friends with the president that summer at a youth retreat. At first I said I would visit and stay for the semester… that I was probably only going to stay due to “schedule conflicts” and that things may change next semester. I was clouded with doubts and filled with with fear of commitment.

Then I realized something. I’ve always stood very strong in my opinion on church commitment. I think church is all about committing to fellowship, relationships, and serving, not necessarily just the music, the messages, and the programs. And there I was, scared to commit to a fellowship because I was scared of opening up to a new group of people. I was acting against my own opinion.

All Christians struggle with the same things. We struggle with sin: pride, lust, hatred, addiction… I can stand there judging others of these things while I’m guilty of the exact same sin (Matthew 7:3-5).

And as soon as I committed to regular attendance and also to making an effort to open up to others and start new relationships did I get to experience a whole new blessing of a new Christ-centered community at college.

Now I am definitely not saying that CCF is “the fellowship to be at.” All fellowships have their outward pros and cons. However, what makes fellowship so great is Christ and the love He has shown us to show each other. Prepared for ups as well as downs, I’ve found a new community- another home for my last year and a half at Rutgers University.

I’m not staying because of the wonderful speakers that we get to hear or the plethora of musical talent the praise team has during large group. I’m not staying because of the events where we get to hang out.

I’m staying because of the people I have started relationships with.

One of the most recent examples of opening up to others was filming a video with our junior class for an annual CCF Christmas Dinner. I got to share a very small snippet of this story at the end 🙂

This is the video we made. Inspired by Dude Perfect’s pick up basketball stereotypes video on youtube, we decided to make a video of a couple of college stereotypes to show how our joy in Christ is through the good, the bad, and the routine things in life.

During the summer, I was able to befriend a kid named Joey as part of a media ministry team at Rutgers. He is a praise leader and coordinator at CCF. He had also filmed and edited a very large majority of our graduating class’ videos the last two years. Joey was super cool and let me take a large part in this year’s video.

CCF Christmas 2015-73 — Joey and I at the CCF dinner.

Joey was super cool and let me take a large part in this year’s video with him. Helping with this year’s video not only gave me an opportunity film other CCF students in my grade, but get to know them more. Not just their name and their major, but also their personalities because of the extended interaction we got to have.

The following are pictures that I got to take during filming. A small behind-the-scenes of sort.

thursday-1 — Joey filming a scene for our Christmas Video with our friends Alex and Ethan.

thursday-4 — Making a video together gives us an opportunity to work together on a project and **laugh** together. For a newcomer, a project like this helps a lot when making new friends.

thursday-5 — A makeshift four-legged tripod when we didn’t have a real tripod on us.

watermark quadpod-1.jpg — Joey setting up the camera on a trash-can pretending to be a tripod.

calvinjihoonwater-1 — Calvin studying and playing his role for the movie at the same time.

calvinjihoonwater-2 — I’m pretty sure Jihoon wasn’t actually reading all these books.

LSMwater-1 — Joey filming (third floor of the Library of Science & Medicine).

LSMwater-2 — Alex as the Steve Irwin inspired “Alex the Aussie”

This year, I’m thankful… even though I cracked camera my camera screen?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

This year, I’m thankful for the camera that I own.

Just over three years ago, I purchased my first personal camera with the money I had saved up working at a children’s summer camp. I bought a Sony A57 SLT camera, which was Sony’s version of a beginner DSLR.

This can be difficult to explain. However, because of a specific “SLT” translucent mirror technology Sony used at the time, it was different than the normal mirror technology that other classic brands like Canon and Nikon use. An important part of the camera is the view finder, which allows photographers to look through a sort of scope on the top of the camera. Normal DSLR cameras use an optical viewfinder (OVF), which is essentially a periscope that looks through the lens. Sony’s new technology decided to implement an electronic viewfinder (EVF), which is essentially another small screen inside the viewfinder showing the same thing as the LCD screen on the back of the camera.

Why is this important? About a month ago, in New York City, I simply dropped my camera. The screen landed on the sidewalk concrete.

It looks like this:

This was during the same NYC trip I wrote about just two weeks ago. Check it out here! 🙂

foodventure1watermark (11 of 13) — Check out my blog post about my “food-venture” a month ago!

With the screen broken; well… it’s a broken screen. However, because of the electronic viewfinder, I’m still able to take pictures, view photos, delete photos, and use any function my camera had looking through the viewfinder. I look kind of stupid sometimes, but my camera was still MOSTLY fully functional, looking through the viewfinder.

This wouldn’t be possible with an optical viewfinder (OVF) that Nikon and Canon DSLRs have. I’m not necessarily saying that EVFs are way better than OVFs (I think it’s more of a preference), but if my camera didn’t have an OVF, it would be pretty much impossible to use with a broken screen.

Right now I’m planning to figure out a way to fix the screen, as well as saving up for a future new camera, but by being able to use my “broken-screen-camera,” I didn’t have to rush into buying a new camera, or live life camera-less for a certain amount of time.

In this one month using my broken-screen-camera, I’ve taken many pictures for many events that have occurred at school and at church. These events include the latter half of the NYC trip (burger picture above was taken with the broken screen!), a hiking trip, a church coffeehouse, a “Jesus Awareness Week” prayer and revival initiative at Rutgers University, a youth group retreat, a CCF fellowship class potluck, and so many other occasions.

The following pictures were all taken with my “broken-screen” camera. These are pictures of moments I’ll always remember, and that’s why this year, I’m thankful for my old camera for being able to capture these joyful memories.

I’m thankful for food. Who isnt’?!

I’m thankful for nature, and autumn hiking trips.

I’m thankful for my wonderful friends at Rutgers Community Christian Church, and the times of fellowship I get to spend with them. I’m thankful for the R8 college community as well as the Young Adult Fellowship.

I’m thankful for “Jesus Awareness Week,” and the unity it brought to the large christian community at Rutgers University through prayer and praise… and many all nighters.

I’m thankful for the junior high students that I get to spend every Friday with. I’m thankful for the opportunity to be their counselor, watching them grow and doing my best to guide them in the right direction through the gospel.

I’m thankful for the fellowship and companionship that I have had with various others serving alongside me for our junior high youth group.

I’m thankful for Chinese Christian Fellowship. I’m so thankful that God softened my stubborn heart and arranged my schedule so that I would attend this fellowship for the first time. Without that happening, I would not have met and befriended so many great people.

I’m thankful for the night sky. And the moon and stars.

Of course, I’m thankful for my family and friends. And lastly, I’m thankful for the opportunity God has given me to have these life experiences. However, more than that, God has given all of us the opportunity have fellowship with others through Him – a fellowship that will last forever because of the salvation that He’s given us through His son’s death and resurrection.

Have a very Happy Thanksgiving weekend everyone. I’m also so very thankful for anyone who has bothered to read about the joy I find in photography in my blog. Thank you! 🙂

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

R8 Post-Joaquin Hiking @ Point Mountain – 10/10/15

10/10/15 – Second hiking trip to Point Mountain, Washington in a month.

This time i went with my home church’s (Rutgers Community Christian Church) collegiate small group: R8. It’s named R8 after Romans 8, a chapter in the Bible. Our goal is love God, serve the church, and to impact the community with the good news of Jesus’ love.

“Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? … No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.” – Romans 8:35, 37, New Living Translation.

WARNING: Photography Jargon START

After dropping my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens off the cliff last month, I decided to invest in a refurbished lens (low budged). I went with a 30mm f/2.8 macro prime lens.

This 30mm macro lens has slower aperture than the 50mm prime, but it’s much better at close-up pictures because the macro lens has a minimum focus length of around 6 inches, compared to the 50mm prime lens, which focus length of 24 inches. This means that the “new” macro lens that I bought can focus on an object when I hold a much smaller distance than my other lenses. Do you know how when taking a picture even with your phone, once you get too close to an object it won’t focus? Exactly that. In other words, this “new” lens made look pretty funny when I was holding my camera super close to random small objects during the hike.

Being so close to an object makes it really hard to focus on a small object. Any tiny movement of the object, my camera, or my camera’s focus ring could make the image blurry. It takes a lot of patience and it takes many tries. However, when taking close-up pictures of nature, it’s so peaceful that the extended time doesn’t bother me. It does leave me far behind the rest of the hiking group though, haha!

Photography Jargon END

The following pictures were taken along the hike. I used mostly my “new” 30mm f/2.8 macro lens with my Sony a57, but I also used my 75-300mm zoom lens as well.

I took a lot of pictures that beautiful Saturday. Here’s a gallery of all the photos I took:

Food-venture @ NYC (feat. Jon Lo) – 10/25/15

My friend Jon loves finding the best spots to fine-dine in New York City. And where else to find the most scrumptious food than in the greatest city in the world?! These spots aren’t easy to find all the time; some (probably most) of the best spots are usually in non-tourist spots of the city.

(Check out Jon’s instagram: @jonlolol)

I had an amazing time walking around NYC and eating good stuff. I’m glad I got to incorporate a bit of photography into the day as well! I used my Sony a57 camera with my 30mm f/2.8 prime macro lens.

I’m no food critic; it doesn’t take much to make me happy when it comes to food. I’m going to try to describe the food.. but to be honest it was ALL super delicious.

Lunch

First, Jon took us to Motorino Pizza Napoletana in East Village. One pie was about $16. They used natural ingredients and everything tasted very “clean” and non-processed. The best way I can put it is that there was no layer of cheese that can peel off easily. My favorite part was the soppressata (pepperoni). It had some heat to it, and the meat was of very high quality.

Dessert

The Spot (also is East Village) was next. We ordered a “Chocolate Forest” cake with pistachio ice cream served with it. There was oozing molten chocolate in the center. There are so many items on the menu there and I wanna try all of them (I have a weakness for ice cream and good dessert!),

Coffee

My friend Jeff loves good coffee. We stopped by Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Greenwich Village. Coffee makes me wayyy too jittery and I crash real quick so I’m not much of a coffee drinker.

I didn’t end up taking a picture of the coffee cup because it’s just a simple white coffee cup with no words on it, haha! I guess it’s really all about the actual drink when it comes to gourmet coffee.

Jeff ended up grabbing one of these bags:

Dinner

Last, The Breslin “gastropub” inside the Ace Hotel, at16 W and 29th.

We had two appetizers: the Scotch Egg, and Crumpets.

The Scotch egg is a soft-boiled egg (boiled egg white, but the yolk still runny), inside sausage and deep fried with bread crumbs.

Crumpets are chicken fingers, but with lamb meat. So lamb fingers..? It came with a vinegar sauce. I LOVE fried chicken (chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, popcorn chicken, fried chicken.. anything related). But I really like the taste of lamb meat. So you can tell that I loved this, haha!

For the main course, Jon recommended the lamb burger, medium rare, with “thrice-cooked fries.” The fries came with “cumin mayo.” It sounds interesting.. but it was delicious.

Lastly, on the way back to the path, we passed by the Broadway Bites food “area” by Urbanspace in Koreatown. There are lots of booths with different foods. Again, I loved fried chicken so I had to get it when I saw it on the menu. It was similar to any fried boneless chicken, but this vendor used thigh meat, which added a different texture to the chicken, which I liked a lot!

It was a great night out for the boys (we all attend Rutgers Community Christian Church). Let me know if you have any questions regarding the locations we visited! Another thanks to Jon for bringing us along!

Spontaneous Hiking Trip (9/24/15)

Thursday, September 24, 2015 – Hiking at Point Mountain Reservation, Washington, NJ.

Last Thursday, I was able to go hiking at Point Mountain with my friends Jen and Dorothy. Jen and Dorothy were undergraduate seniors at Rutgers when I was a freshmen two years ago, and they’re both like older sisters to me. Jen would always invite people to go hiking, and she’s one of the reasons why hiking has become one of my favorite things to do on a nice day. I happen to have Thursday mornings and afternoons free every week this fall semester, while Jen and Dorothy both work jobs that have very sporadic schedules. Jen is a nurse at a hospital, while Dorothy tutors students in secondary education. Both happened to have Thursday off as well, and the weather was GREAT, so it all worked out perfectly!

QUICK HIKING SPOT REVIEW: It can be difficult to find nice overlooks when it comes to hiking in Central New Jersey. There are lots of nice forest areas to hike, but there just aren’t a lot of peaks to choose from. Only about a forty-five minute drive away from Rutgers New Brunswick, Point Mountain was a great surprise. This hiking spot is a part of the Musconetcong Reservation in Hunterdon County. The peak was beautiful and really high up, and the hiking trail involved lots of rock scrambling. Also, if you go on the right trail path(s), you’ll hike alongside the peaceful Musconetcong River (there’s just something peaceful about running water!). I would love to go back again soon. Jen and I both share a favorite hiking spot in NJ at Mount Tammany and Dunnfield Creek @ The Delaware Water Gap (http://www.njhiking.com/best_hikes_red_dot_mt_tammany/), which is over an hour drive away from Rutgers. However, I think that Point Mountain, much closer to my Central NJ home, in comparison to Mt. Tammany was also really great location! Difficulty: 7/10 (lots of climbing and rocky paths), Overall Rating: 8/10.

Check out Point Mountain for yourself here! http://www.njhiking.com/nj-hikes-point-mountain/

(WARNING: Photography Jargon) I have gone hiking quite a lot the last two years, and most of the pictures I’ve taken have been focusing on the wide landscapes, such as a view on the top of a mountain, or a flowing river. However, early in the hike, I saw little stinkbugs crawling around. Most of the macro (close up) photography I take outside are usually pictures of flowers. I was able to find a couple insects and take macro shots of them during this hike!

Random fact about this hike: I had taken my Sony 50mm 1.8 prime lens out to take most of these macro pictures. It was my first time using it (I have used a 35mm or the past year). On the top of the mountain, I actually dropped my 50mm prime lens off the cliff (it went CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK as it bounced down each rock) at the end of the hike… so these pictures you see here are pretty much the ONLY pictures that were ever taken by that 50mm primes lens sitting and rotting somewhere in the forest at Washington NJ.

(WARNING: MORE Photography Jargon) Using my Sony A57 DSLR camera, I carried three lenses with me: my Sony 50mm f/1.8 prime lens (for portraits and macro shots), my Sony 75-300mm f/3.5-6.5 telephoto zoom lens (for far away shots), and my Samyang (Rokinon) 14mm f/2.8 ultra-wide angle lens (for landscapes).

FIrst, the macro shots:

The first two pictures are of a caterpillar species that I saw twice during the hike. These caterpillars look super white and fuzzy… searching it up, it’s called a Hickory Tussock Moth (Lophocampa caryae). According to the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, it has poison glands on the longer lashes that causes a burning and itchy rash. Glad I didn’t touch it, haha!

50mm f/2.8 1/80 sec ISO 400

50 mm f/2.8 1/80 sec ISO 200

Stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys). 50mm f/5.6 1/160 sec ISO 800

Here’s a picture of a daddy long leg (called the “Eastern Harvestman”, Leiobunum vittatu). We saw a bunch of these on bench along the trail.

Bees! Not sure what type this is. Some sunlight bokeh in the background. 50mm f/4.5 1/1600 sec ISO 400

I believe this is a honeybee. 50mm f/4.5 1/1600 sec ISO 400

I wasn’t able to find out what animal this is… please contact me or comment if you have any clue! This worm or caterpillar would burrow itself into the leaves/dirt to protect itself. When I removed the dirt to look at it longer, it would curl into a “fetal” defensive position. 50mm f/4 1/100 sec ISO 800

50mm f/4.5 1/125 sec ISO 400

50mm f/3.5 1/200 sec ISO 400

A couple of landscape/telephoto pictures:

150mm f/8 1/250 sec ISO 200

14mm 1/125 sec ISO 100 (NOTE: the aperture is adjusted manually on the lens, so I don’t know what f-stop it ended up being!)

Mini long exposure of running water. 50mm f/13 0.4 sec ISO 200

The 0.4 second exposure allowed the shot to have a silky water movement.

14mm 1/80 sec ISO 400

Pre-sunset. 300mm f/11 1/1000 sec ISO 100

Lastly, a couple portrait/people shots:

Direct sunlight allowed for some interesting bokeh here. Thanks to Jen for standing still for me, haha! 50mm f/2.5 1/125 sec ISO 800

50mm f/3.2 1/160 sec ISO 800

Dorothy overlooking the peak of Point Mountain. 50mm f/11 1/250 sec ISO 800

Jen hopping on rocks in the middle of the river. 50mm f/2.8 1/320 sec ISO 800

50mm f/3.2 1/1000 sec ISO 1600

LASTLY, a selfie with the three of us… (no selfie sticks were used here. Actually, no selfie sticks will EVER be used for this blog… unless it’s a blog post filled with pictures of tourists and people using selfie sticks!).

14mm 1/125 sec ISO 100

Thanks again for reading 🙂 If you like these pictures, please share this blog with your friends!

Follow me on instagram (@mattlau95)! Also, follow Jen (@jenwenlee) but I think she may have her account on private, haha!

Flowers at America’s Keswick

It’s been two weeks into the school year, and it’s so exciting. So many things to do and so many people to do things with!

However, I’m already missing the free time and solidarity that I had in the summer. Summer ended perfectly this year, when my church went on a retreat at America’s Keswick Retreat Center in Whiting, NJ. It was beautiful area, and one thing I really admired about their retreat site as their gardening. They had a lot of nice flowers, and they took really good care of them. I had a blast practicing some close-up macro shots that weekend. Look at them below 🙂

(WARNING: Photography Jargon Ahead!) All of these were taken with my Sony A57 DSLR, with my 35mm f/1.8 prime lens attached. It was really bright out, so I could use a low ISO and really fast shutter speed. I wanted to keep the f-stop (aperture) lower so only the flowers were in focus. Enjoy!

35mm f/4.5 1/250 sec ISO 400

35mm f/2.8 1/320 sec ISO 200

35mm f/4.5 1/250 ISO 400

35mm f/3.2 1/500 sec ISO 400

35mm f/2.8 1/3200 sec ISO 200

35mm f/5.6 1/125 sec ISO 200

Happy Labor Day! (Post 5 of 5 in 16 Days)

NOTE: It seems I ultimately gave up on the 5 posts in 5 days… ~~but at least I did three in a row!~~ failure

For my first two years of college, Labor Day was simply the last day of summer. This year, Labor Day fell on the 9/7, and Rutgers has already started classes for just about a week. A refreshing three-day-weekend to start off the summer.

Another bonus, my older brother Tim came home this weekend from NYC! Ultimately this year’s three day weekend became a weekend with the family 🙂

My brother, my godbrother (Josh) and I have been playing tennis together for over 8 years now (since I was in middle school). Since my brother lives in the city, we don’t get to play with him as often. But we were able to get together and play this morning! Losing king of the hill = taking my camera and messing around with it.

I used my Sony A57 and my favorite 35mm F1.8 lens for these:

Same settings for the tennis pictures coming up; all were taken in 100 ISO because the sunlight was so bright today. I used a steady aperture of f/2.0 for a shallow-er depth of field (I tried to make the background as blurry as possible). 35mm, since it’s a fixed prime lens (no zoom). Lastly, because of how bright it was, I was able to use a shutter speed of 1/4000 of a second to be able to get a frozen still of the ball, as well as Josh/Tim moving around.

Josh is a fellow Rutgers student with me, but he’s a huge Tenn, Vols fan!

Also, family weekends at home means my mom’s amazing cooking! Baozi 🙂

35mm f/2.0 ISO 400 1/160 sec

Happy Labor Day everyone! 🙂

Not Photography? Badum-tschh. (Post 4 of 5 in 5 or 8 days)

NOTE: Argh! i didn’t finish my 5 in 5 days. I got sidetracked on Thursday and then went on a retreat this weekend. I’ll finish it off tonight and tomorrow. Here’s the post I wanted to make on Thursday night:

—

I guess I’m too lazy to talk about apertures, shutter speeds, etc.

I enjoy doing many different things, so even though my blog/website will focus mostly on photography, I plan to post other snippets of my life as well!

One my favorite hobbies is playing drums. It’s music, it’s exciting, and I get to HIT STUFF with STICKS 🙂

…Actually I can definitely still include camera talk in this. I’ve been trying to learn how to record musical covers and performances recently. It takes many takes and patience to have it sound good.

I covered “Wake” by Hillsong Young & Free last week. It was the theme song of an annual retreat members of my church attend called “Quest for Life.” Does anyone else think Taya Smith’s voice is simply amazing?

Recorded on my… you got it: Sony a57. Attached is my Samyang 14mm wide angle lens. I used iMovie to edit this.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy it, even though it’s not photography.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-daNvIBciY

Mom’s Home Gardening (Post 3 of 5 in 5 days)

My mom has started to work more on our home garden the last year. It might be in congruency with me go to college, haha! We live in a very deer-populated area, so it can be pretty difficult sometimes to avoid chomped petals.

My mom’s garden was the perfect opportunity for me try macro and flower photography.

I used around with my trusty Sony a57 DSLR, and I used my 75-300mm zoom lens for the first two flower picture below, and then my 35mm f/1.8 prime lens for the third picture. If anyone knows the names of these flowers these are let me know! They’re both about like 1-2 inches in diameter.210mm f/5.6 0.5 sec ISO 400

280 mm f/5.6 0.5 ISO 400

35mm f/1.8 1/500 sec ISO 200

Photography Jargon: This last picture shows a really good example of “shallow depth of field” that comes with a low aperture of f/1.8, which explains the blurry background.

I hope the deer will stay away from my mom’s garden so I might have more things to take pictures of!