Different play

I took a few pictures of my kids and their friends, and I liked the sepia conversion with a little softening a bit better than the black and white conversion I did with the picture I love of Evan, not to mention I felt the black vignette was a bit heavy. I decided to re-do the picture so here it is..

A few from Park City

SS 1/125 f/9 100 ISO

SS 1/125 f/7.1 100 ISO

Not really a fan of this picture but I thought it would be fun to mess around with.
SS 1/125 f/7.1 100 ISO
before..

after..

Redundant

Thinking of deleting this blog, I always do that, I have deleted quite a few blogs in my day.

This is posted on my other blog as well of course, only here you get the settings

SS1/160 f/5 800 ISO

This is the part where I usually quit

I am a perfectionist, only in certain areas though. Cleaning the house, not a perfectionist there. I am a perfectionist when I make things. This is the reason I have taken so long to get some hobbies, because unless it turns out the way I want it to, it bothers me to no end. I have gotten better, making things and actually using them. I painted some pictures for my bedroom, and there they hang. Sometimes I look at them and get frustrated that they aren't exactly what I want.

It has been that way with photography. I think my pictures sometimes turn out a bit better, not to mention it is much easier, to shoot in auto, or on P. I have been shooting manual only though so I will get the hang of it. That is what I enjoy about it really. It is not as fun to just press the button, there is not as much thinking involved, and I feel less ownership of the picture (as strange as that sounds).

It is just that they are not where I want them to be yet. Not to mention all the thing I want to buy. A better photoshop, lighting kits, speed flash, more lenses, it goes on and on. They would be better if I only had........

It is like I do not want to put in the time, I want to be there already, good at photography. I am slowly learning to enjoy this blundering full of mistake days.

I will take peoples pictures if they ask (like my sisters) but I won't charge. I think it will be a long time before I ever feel comfortable taking pictures for money. No this is a long road ahead of me, and one day I do hope to be a photographer, until then I have a lot of learning, practicing, and not to mention spending ahead of me. I must admit though I am proud of myself for sticking with it, no matter how much being amature frustrates my (in this area) perfectionist self.

Day at the park

#1 SS 1/125 f/25 400 ISO

#2 SS 1/125 f/5.3 100 ISO

#3 SS 1/160 f/5.3 800 ISO

#4 SS 1/160 f/5.3 800 ISO

#5 SS 1/800 f/5.6 400 ISO

#6 SS 1/125 f/5 800 ISO

Woo Hoo I am a model!

I think that is a fitting caption for this picture. I went to a photography seminar today and it was fun. The models we worked with were very nice and sweet, and I have no idea how they do it. There was a crowd of people just standing around them taking pictures as they posed.

This picture was taken with speedlights which were fun and confusing to work with. The person putting on the seminar actually has another seminar dedicated to lighting, so when we went out to use speedlighting he quickly set it up, and gave us a brief 30 second run down. If you see the shadow you will understand that with out speedlighting she would have appeared VERY dark next to a bright sky. The speedlight is like a detach flash set up where ever you want to make it so your focal point is illuminated against this very very very bright sky (blinding it was killing me). We only had a small frame of time to take our picture with a line of other people waiting. I am SO bummed because I didn't get one single one I really like. If you have worked with speedlighting *which I can say I have for 2 minutes now haha* then you know your light meter is of no use at all. I set my shutter speed at about 1/125 and nothing faster or else my flash from the speed light would not be let in. So then you look on your light meter and your mind boogling overly exposed. You just have to test it out, and try again, setting the flash speed at various intensities, changing your aperture, moving your model or your speedlighting around. Now all of this I had to in a matter of minutes because there is other people waiting for a turn. I took a few and was on my way. I was focusing so much on so many other things in such a small fraction of time I didn't think too much of about my composition. Unable to move the speedlighting too far, since other students were using it at the same time, I could do nothing about the people in the background. Well I decided oh well they are there, and went on trying to figure out how to best expose my shot, and quickly at that. It didn't ever occur to me that there is a lady peaking through the models legs. It drives me crazy.

Even though none of my pictures turned out super wonderful it was really fun to play around.
There was a really nice girl there that I was talking to through the seminar. We walk up to meet everyone together and passed this lady drink coffee, we both glanced at her no big deal. I was talking to this girl and you could tell she was ignoring me. She looked at me and said "sorry I am not even really listening to you, lets go over here". We walked a bit away from the lady drinking coffee that we had casually glanced at. The girl said "did you not hear her she was totally cussing us out calling us fing b words!". I guess she was pretty mad, and screaming. Another girl walked up to us and asked us what happened why that lady was yelling profanities at us. I had to laugh that I never heard her. I think I have grown a great talent for blocking out tempter tantrums!

Flowers picture