There is a park near the house we went on a walk through.

You’ve gotta be careful though– the alligators could get you. Even the ones on the signs bite. Yep, they are that fierce.

The landscape was unique. It was desolate– sand dunes and trees– but in a way that made it beautiful.

Self-portrait. I am freckly… geez! I never see my face like this!

The park has a natural freshwater lake in it, which is quite unusual, since it is right next to the ocean. Here is a panoramic I shot. If you have Photoshop, panos are a breeze! You take several shots (making sure to overlap the shots about 1/3 of the way, so the computer has some material to work with when it stitches it together). Then, you open the files in PS and go to File>Automate>Photomerge  and let the magic happen!

If you click on it, you can see it bigger.. in all its glory

I sent Mom and Dad a special Easter present. What could it be?

Ooooh… its a Lagomarcino’s dark chocolate Easter egg! Filled with 20 assorted chocolates!

Dear old Dad. He’s happy about the chocolate.

Speaking of Easter– Mom decided that we should take a photo in our “Easter clothes” after church. Here we are!

But, I’ll have you know, the above shot didn’t just happen. I had to get my gear set up and ready to go… so while I was getting everything ready and testing the lighting, my parents were “modeling” (sometimes knowingly and sometimes not so knowingly.) These pictures were too hilarious not to post!! (I can do this. They are my parents

These next few pictures are just to show you a fun little trick that my friend Amy Turner taught me. The room below was completely dark. The photo was taken at ISO 400, f10 at 24mm with a 30 second exposure. I then walked around in the room, flash in hand, and hit the “test” button (making the flash fire) at different places in the room. Amazing, huh?

This next one is kinda awesome. Look at the shadows on the walls– its me! I was walking around the room firing the flash, just like in the last picture. You can’t see me since the exposure is so long, but the flash firing in a smaller space made a shadow on the wall that showed up!

Since I switched to a full-frame camera, my lenses capture scenes 1.6 times wider– so I love seeing how much of a scene I can now capture at 24mm! It feels soooo much wider! Here is Dad in his study. This was on a tripod with a 1.3 second exposure, which is why Dad is blurred.

This post doesn’t look very “Destin-ish,” does it? I promise we went to the beach, ate lots of seafood, fished, rode jet skis and the boat, hung out with the dolphins etc! Maybe I’ll put up some pics from my point and shoot once I get them uploaded.

It poses a bit of a challenge, however, to take family photos when you need to be *in* the family photos. So, all the photos that I am in either Lee or my mom had to take for us. Usually I would set up a shot, get everything fixed in the camera, tell Lee what I was envisioning for the shot, and have him click it. However, it was really hard for me to know how to arrange people when I had to stick myself in the mix as well.

I made everybody get *under* the boardwalk for individual/couple shots. It was the only shade around that I could find! They were great sports and climbed on under!

Isn’t my brother so cute??

This is our attempt at a serious, sassy family pic. Pretty ridiculous.

It’s kinda next to impossible to get *everybody* acting normal at the same time. We are only halfway there in the pic below.

Oh, Amy Rebecca.

My siblings. I love them.

This is what I mean about the group arranging thing. Eeeeh… awkward.

We are walking and swinging our hands. This prolly looks kinda funny if you don’t know that. Ha.

The Outtakes: Okay, because this is my family, I can do this. We are all pretty ridiculous, and this is reflected in some of the “outtakes” that were captured.

So, the day we shot… I thought the sun was going to be perfect. It was cloudy and was being diffused nicely. And then, as soon as we got ready to shoot, it came out again. Sun + the glare off the white sand= not ideal for pictures. It was reaaallly bright. Check out our faces in the next few pics (especially my sister– haha!)

I have no excuse for the ugly face. I dunno.

This next series is totally my dad being my dad… and my mom saying “Bob, quit it!”

I promise you, Adam’s eyes are probably crossed. This is his standard “make a face” face.