Well time
seems to be moving spectacularly
fast this month. My new job has been picking up so I actually have
things to do. Not that I'm complaining about getting paid for hanging
around my house. All my friends are jealous! I haven't really done
much picture wise. We went to the county zoo last weekend and got some
nice pictures from that but still need
to do some touch up work on them. We're planning on going to Atlantic
City this week so I'll be bringing my camera with me. Anyway, here is a
picture that I recently took. Enjoy!
This picture pretty much embodies what I've been looking at for the past week. The weather has been so blah lately it's almost depressing. However, it does offer some interesting views. I sometimes feel like I'm in a cloud where everything is calm and peaceful. As for the photo, I really like the layered effect of the clouds. I think it adds dimension to the image. I upped the contrast of the original photo and converted it to black and white.
I caught this little guy hanging out on one of my plants a few summers ago. I was pretty amazed by the fact the it stood still long enough to get this shot. The original photo is a pretty large file so I have it here as an extra large image. When I magnified in on the fly I was pretty amazed on how much detail I was able to capture. I wish I had a macro lens back then (sigh). In Close up 1 I just tweaked the exposure and contract. In Close Up 2, I played around with it so much I'm not really sure what I used to get the effect. I think it came out pretty cool though. So there you have it, one photo became three.
So I started this last week but never got around to finishing it. I don't seem to have a lot to say this week but wanted to show that when you take a picture you really like, its OK to play around with it. Sometimes you will find that the results work and sometimes the original is perfect on its own. My advice is don't be afraid to experiment with your editing you never know what you'll get.
May I present to you Lighthouse.... a totally unoriginal idea by me :) I admit that I played around with filters on this one so purist may not like it. I think I tweaked it enough so that it brought out the best elements of the original picture without making it completely unrecognizable. I can't really say what it is about it, as you can tell it wasn't the best day to be taking serious photos, but I like it. Maybe it is the memory it brings up and isn't that what pictures are about? They remind us of our experiences and our humanity. This picture reminds me of my trip to Newport, RI with all its good times and its frustrations. So go out there and capture your moments so you can look back after a while and relive them.
Wow, what a busy couple of weeks. Besides working on my photography I've found a job! Seems like a great bunch of people and my start date is the beginning of April. This is a great opportunity as I am working from home full time. Hopefully I won't go too stir crazy. So that is my excuse for not posting last week. Lame for sure but that's what I got.
Back to pictures. My husband looks at my pictures and always asks how did you get that shot. I've been thinking about it and I think that the answer is that I'm looking for it. I look at things and think that would make a great picture. While I may not have the technical knowledge and experience to capture the shot as I see as well as I'd like, I know that as I learn that will come.
The photo above was taken in Paterson, NJ. Paterson is the third largest city in New Jersey and was established in 1792. The city was designed by Pierre Charles L'Enfant who also designed Washington, D.C. In the late 1700's the falls were harnessed for energy and they provided power to many of the factories that still surround them today. Paterson, NJ was in the heart of the Industrial Revolution and hundreds of years later it still is an urban center. So why the history lesson? Well the answer to that is personal for me. You need to know that they are located not in some serene forest or some out of the way place that you'll never be able to visit. They are in my back yard, in the center one of the most densely populated areas of the state. While they no longer power the buildings surrounding them they still power the imagination.
So that's what I offer you this week. Take a look around you with different eyes whether you have a camera or not.
Well, its been a busy week. I've gone through a bunch of photos, did some tweaking and filtering, started a deviantART account with the hopes of getting exposure and started to watch some really good video tutorials on lydia.com. The lydia.com tutorials were on a recommendation of a fellow photographer that I asked to look over the photos I posted. He's a photography hobbyist and felt that he couldn't really provide a critique but I think he is underestimating his talent. Anywhoo, he was kind enough to give me a few pointers that I hope to be able to put to use in the coming weeks. As for support on the home-front, my husband, James, thinks I have an eye for this sort of thing and encourages me which is great. He also knows a lot about photo editing which is really helpful.
Back to lydia.com... if you don't know, this is a paid membership site that provides video tutorials on various subjects, one of which is photography. Some of this may be basic concepts so for intermediate to experienced photographs this is probably not for you. But for someone who hasn't taken photography since high school it is well worth the membership for a month or two. I feel like I learned a lot in just the hour or so that I watched.
Well, there you have it. I hesitated about writing this for some reason but once I sat down to do it, voilà its done. Tune in next week and hopefully I'll feel as accomplished.
