Did you ever have those days where what you did was governed by outside forces? Today, I wanted to go photograph the Sandhill Cranes–the very same cranes that have been eluding me. Well, they still are!

Here’s how the day went. With gift cards in hand, I went to Action Camera in Roseville on Friday. Now that I have two cameras, I needed a way to carry them on all-day photo meetups. I’m so glad I was using gift cards because the Yeti Slim that I bought was expensive, but durable and would hold my cameras safely. It was figuring out how the Yeti Slim worked and setting it up that closed the slim window of my being able to go to Galt and photograph the cranes.

But all wasn’t lost. I did go to nearby Dry Creek for practice with the D7100. By the time I left for my practice session it was 3:30 p.m., and a great time to shoot photos. I practiced using different exposures and close ups. The D7100 makes it easy to change the exposure, and now that I understand what the sub-command dial does, shooting on aperture priority is easy. I’m putting some of these in the gallery.

More important than the practice was my granddaughter Madison’s 19th birthday dinner. We celebrated late, her birthday was in December, because I was in Simi Valley at the time. She’s an amazing young lady and is beautiful inside and out. I don’t have too many images from the dinner to show you, but you’ll get to see all the grandkids.

Tomorrow, we are going to the U.C. Davis Arboretum. I went there with a group last year, and it is a beautiful experience. I just hope the day goes as planned!