Julie Rideout's photostream

Julie Rideout's photostream on Flickr.

Chia Seeds

Chia Seeds, a photo by Julie Rideout on Flickr.

I did this shot yesterday with my favorite lens for food photography, the 105mm macro (or micro, as Nikon puts it). I set it up on a portable table in front of a North facing bay window. I had light coming in from behind the spoon and from the left, but the right side was a bit dark so I used a large piece of white foam core board to fill in the shadows. Camera settings were f5.6, 1/15 sec at iso 200. Camera was tripod mounted. Post-processing was done in Lightroom

Grab Shots

Funny how, despite all the preparation, planning, composing, and post-processing some of my favorite shots are spur-of-the-moment grab shots.  There's something about the candid moment....

"Glamour" shot or soft porn?

I was astounded to come across a set of the latest "glamour" shots of the Miss USA contestants (here's the link: http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/entertainment/2010/05/10/miss-usa-topless-lingerie/#slide=1).

We used to call this type of shot soft porn.

I suck at blogging

I'm not good at this.  For sure.  But other people are.  Recently I got hooked up with Elizabeth Harford's blog and it's turned into one of my favorites.  I love photographers who freely share their knowledge and Elizabeth is one of them.  She's at elizabethhalford.com.

Another good one is John Lund.  He is a wealth of information about the stock photography business and an encouraging person as well. You can find him on Blogger.

Portrait practice

We're in between seasons here; the snow's gone, but nothing's green yet.  So while I wait for mother nature to bring on Spring, I decided to practice some portraits.  I used my front porch for the location because it has open shade and a nice brick wall.  I also wanted to try out some of the Florabella actions I recently purchased.  It was fun.

In this picture I used Florabella's Vintage Wine action, cropped it square (I'm on a square crop kick lately), and added a vinette.

There's a discussion leftover from last week and continuing today over on Scott Kelby's blog about HDR (for or against).  I'm bored with these "discussions." Mac vs PC, film vs digital (I can't BELIEVE I still encounter this one!), to photoshop or not photoshop (I read this one over the weekend on Flickr.  Some woman was pontificating on how everyone should ease off on the photoshop because it was too fake).

My take on it all is this: who the heck cares others think about what you should or shouldn't do with your photos?  After all, who are you taking and making photos for, everyone else? Unless you're working for a client, you only have to please yourself.  Others don't have to like what you do, but in my book, that's ok.  It's my life, my photos, my technique and if others don't like it -- it's ok by me.