July 2015 – Page 2 – Amanda Tero Books

Psalm 119:38-40

(38) Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear.

As God’s servant, am I eager and ready for every word He might give me? am I looking and waiting for when He might show me more of His word so that I can abide in it? Am I willing to be stablished – settled – in God’s Word? Devoted to Him?

(39) Turn away my reproach which I fear: for thy judgments are good.

God is a just judge, and yet He is merciful. But, will He turn away our reproach just because we ask Him? I think this verse is connected to the verse before: if we are stablished in God’s Word and devoted to His fear, God will extend greater mercy than if we are stiffnecked towards God’s Word and resistant towards Him.

In a way, it makes me think of Psalm 19:9, “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

(40) Behold, I have longed after thy precepts: quicken me in thy righteousness.

Not only does God’s Word quicken (Psalm 119:25), but His righteousness quickens us as well.

In these few verses, we see that God is able to:

– Stablish His Word

– Turn away my reproach

– Quicken me in righteousness

However, we must also acknowledge our part:

– Devoted to God’s fear

– Longing for God’s precepts

I know, I know… “Don’t play with fire.” But…I’ve gotta admit, I had a ton of fun playing with fire the other night. Don’t worry, I kept my distance!

For those of you who aren’t interested in all the technical details of shutter speed, ISO, and f-stop (aperture), I’ll start you off with one of my favorite pictures of the night (it really was hard to choose!).

ISO 800 | Shutter Speed 1/4000 | f-stop 2.8 (IMG_3383)

There are three important elements in shooting with DSLR cameras: ISO, shutter speed, and aperture (f-stop). I don’t have these mastered, but I have fun playing with them.

One night, we had a fire going and I decided to play around with shutter speed (aka Mom called me outside to take some pictures because something in the fire looked neat and I got distracted — like 137-pictures-later-distracted).

The best teacher, for me, is example. So I will just post some of the pictures that I took and give you the details at which settings they were taken. A quick observation: the slower the shutter speed (as in 1/30), the more “blurred” the flames were. The faster the shutter speed (as in 1/4000), the more translucent and “separated” the flames were.

(ALL IMAGES ARE COMPLETELY UNEDITED – I just changed them from RAW format to JPEG and added my watermark)

ISO 800 | f-stop 2.8
800 is the highest ISO I chose (the general rule for ISO is “the darker the lighting, the higher the ISO” – but here I was dealing with bright fire in dark night). I swapped between using f-stop 2.8 and 5.0 but will keep those pictures separated.

ISO 800 | Shutter Speed 1/160 | f-stop 2.8 (IMG_3379)

ISO 800 | Shutter Speed 1/800 | f-stop 2.8 (IMG_3382)

ISO 800 | Shutter Speed 1/1000 | f-stop 2.8 (IMG_3381)

ISO 800 | Shutter Speed 1/4000 | f-stop 2.8 (IMG_3383)

ISO 800 | f-stop 5.0

ISO 800 | Shutter Speed 1/2000 | f-stop 5.0 (IMG_3415)

I’ll admit, I got hung up a how cool (ha!) the flames looked with the super fast shutter speed of 1/4000…

ISO 800 | Shutter Speed 1/4000 | f-stop 2.8 (IMG_3416)

ISO 800 | Shutter Speed 1/4000 | f-stop 2.8 (IMG_341)

ISO 800 | Shutter Speed 1/4000 | f-stop 2.8 (IMG_3420)

ISO 100 | f-stop 5.0
And the lowest ISO I played with: 100.
These are listed in order from slowest shutter speed to fastest.

ISO 100 | Shutter Speed 1/10 | f-stop 5.0 (IMG_3399)

ISO 100 | Shutter Speed 1/25 | f-stop 5.0 (IMG_3390)

ISO 100 | Shutter Speed 1/25 | f-stop 5.0 (IMG_3403)

ISO 100 | Shutter Speed 1/60| f-stop 5.0 (IMG_3404)

ISO 100 | Shutter Speed 1/400 | f-stop 5.0 (IMG_3405)

ISO 100 | Shutter Speed 1/800 | f-stop 5.0 (IMG_3385)

ISO 100 | Shutter Speed 1/1000 | f-stop 5.0 (IMG_3406)

ISO 100 | Shutter Speed 1/4000 | f-stop 5.0 (IMG_3408)

ISO 200 | f-stop 5.0
And here is where I had to really work through my pictures. ISO 200 is where I settled and took the most shots. Hence, I had to narrow down which ones I was going to post. 🙂 As in, my first “narrowing down” left 31 pictures.

I’ll start with one angle and the different shutter speeds I used (slowest to fastest).