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.

Dreaming of Spring

January can be a tough month for me.  The rush of the holidays is over, it's cold, and there's not enough daylight to suit me.  So as my seratonin levels plunge, I start dreaming of Spring.  One way I cope is by photographing flowers indoors.  Yesterday and today I played around with tulips.  They were so droopy yesterday that I got frustrated, but today they seemed a bit perkier so I gave it another go.  Here's what I came up with.  It's far from perfect, but it was fun.  The texture is from the Florabella textures set II (I forget which one).

Playing

I can't believe it took me this long to get my first prime lens.  I've always been a zoomer -- I thought they were way more practical than a fixed focal length lens, and in certain situations they definitely are.  But I thought this year I'd delve into another realm in my photography and give the fixed focal length lens a try.  Since my pockets are not deep and my list of wants is great, I went with a 50mm f1.8. It only cost me $125 and I'm having a blast playing with it. 

New Year's Resolution

One of my New Year's resolutions is to carry my camera with me more.  I'm tired of missing shots as I'm out and about carting kids here and there, running errands, etc.  So today I threw my case in the car as I headed out to drive my son to school.  We had just gotten about 4 inches of fresh snow and I figured there might be some pretty scenics just waiting for me to arrive and capture them. I was right, but this is the only picture I got on that drive.  The little dot in front of the temperature reading is a minus sign.

Finishing My Griping From December

Two posts in one day!  A vast improvement over last year.  Ok, I know it's only January 6th and I have a whopping 3 posts from all of last year, but I'm in the mood to celebrate small accomplishments.  Anyways, I realized I never finished my post from December when I was griping about the cost of persuing photography.  Here's the gist of it -- it's expensive and I don't have unlimited funds. That's all. Enough griping.

Winter Blahs

It's snowing here.  The wind is blowing.  It's cold.  I'm so over winter and it's only January 6th.  Not good.  January has always been a tough month for me.  The holidays are over, the days are short, and it's cold.  And dreary.  Did I mention cold?  Today I'm rethinking my decision to live in Colorado.  Florida sounds good today, but I know Florida won't sound nearly as good come summer.  Sigh....

On to happier things.  I changed the look of my blog today.  Maybe it's because it's January and Florida's sounding good, but the whole black scheme, which earlier to me looked clean and classic, today looked depressing.  So I brightened it up. I'd like for this year to be brighter and happier for me than last year,  so I'm helping it along by brightening up my blog.  I may even add some flowers.  They'd be a nice counter to what I'm seeing out my window.