Week 10:: Hands

This weeks photography challenge theme is HANDS, and I thought I’d share a couple of pictures of hands with you from the past week that make me smile.

Camera: Nikon D7000
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/100
Focal Length: 32mm
Lens: 18-200 f/3.5/5.6

The preschooler and her preschool class went on a firehouse tour.  Doesn’t matter what firehouse we go to, they always do an amazing job of helping kids learn about what happens at the firehouse, what firefighters do, how to be fire safe, and what firefighters look like all dressed up in their gear.  They have fun while learning important lessons, they hopefully never have to put in action.  One of the preschool teachers made these cute graham cracker firetrucks for the kids snack.  So cute.  She said the original idea came from Family Fun a few years ago.  She put the very thinnest layer of icing on the cracker possible and still have things stick.  Amazing, and of course the kids loved this special treat at the end of their tour.

Camera: Nikon D7000
Aperture: f/5.3
Shutter Speed: 1/60
Focal Length: 95mm
Lens: 18-200 f/3.5/5.6

Our house is surrounded by black walnut trees and this year we have a bumper crop!  We’ve never harvested them before, but I’ve always wondered what it entailed.  I found this great video on YouTube and sent the little ones out to collect them.  Armed with gardening gloves, some of the older kids and I got started.  It is a time intensive process.  I had grand thoughts of possibly giving family jars of black walnuts for Christmas this year … we’re only a third of the way through the process and it’s unlikely I will yield enough for more than one or two recipes.  We’ll see, I might be up to husking more in a couple days.  It is seriously MESSY work (see how I just slipped Week 9’s challenge in there) and even wearing disposable rubber gloves under my rubberized garden gloves, my left hand has a faint black stain on the fingertips.  Black Walnut dye is strong, strong stuff.  I have a couple dozen walnuts drying and in about two weeks we’ll start cracking the shells and see what kind of yield we’ll have.  I’m really excited to see this project through.

Camera: Nikon D7000
Aperture: f/7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200
Focal Length: 24mm
Lens: 18-200 f/3.5/5.6

One of my first manual mode pictures taken a few hours after the photography class I took back in August … the preschooler swinging at the park, shrieking with delight as her uncle perfectly times his lunge!