BOREDOM FROM WINTERDOM

So the other day, another boring winter night, i decided to play with my camera (i know what else is new, right?) So i am sitting on the Lazy Boy and am thinking of the new flash i am getting for my camera this week.  I hate flash, always have, no matter what you do - it looks like flash.  Not natural, the way our reality is, but fake, bad.  So this will be my adventure with the new flash; trying to make it look real!

But anyway, i am sitting there playing with the on camera flash (which really stinks), when Maddie walks into the room.  She is eating a morsel of food for a slight snack and when this occurs in our household, a creature of some sort will not be far behind.  And in Maddie's case that evening, like many other evenings, she had the gamut of creatures: hounds, pigs and cats.  I took an image - with flash - yuck!

see? overexposed in the front, backlight too dark...ugly! (ignore mess in living room)

So i decide well, lets see what i could do - raise the ISO, play with the shutter speed:

Better lighting but then again, blurry (unintentional).
Animals move too fast for a slow  shutter speed to be effective.

But then it got me to thinking: "how fun would that be to work on some long exposure times??" Yes!  So i played for a little while and this is what i got:

Must - hold-  camera - still. try again....

 Still without a tripod - blurry but i am playing here so its ok.

Nicer - got the ghost effect i was looking for.

So i have just decided that i need to head on downtown at night and start doing some long exposure images.  But its supposed to get down to negative 10 this Monday.  Don't think that will be fun to do in the cold, darnit!  Mother nature - please bring me some warmth soon!  Snow is ok, but 20 below is not acceptable.