Photography

Pictures

I was scrolling through Facebook this morning. In fact, I sat down to write a blog post and came up blank. I have so many things I want to say, but gosh. Okay, so let’s get the elephant out of the room… no, I’m not sick… I lost someone extremely important to me. No, I’m not ready to talk about it… Jalapeño. (I’ll explain that someday, too) Anyway, back to the procrastination. 

Two ladies pop up with ads constantly, but there are more ads related to photography. The two ladies I’m referring to always talk about polished photos wherever you go. No one around to take your photo, no problem, etc. I look at these polished photos and wish I had photos of myself like that. Come on, that’s what they want. They want to inspire you to buy their book or their course, or their Lightroom presets, so “You can look this good, too.” Here’s the thing… I’ll never look that good, both in real life or in photos, I don’t really want to spend the money on crap I already know (I’ve spent a lot of years studying photography), and three… well… I’m a goofball.

Circa 1998

Growing up, my mom hated photos. She hated being in them. She hated taking them. She hated them. When she and my dad got married, she wasn’t even going to have wedding photos done, but my grandma said that she was paying for it, she was getting her photos too, so my mom bought the smallest, cheapest photo package offered. Then, throughout the years, she’d hide them in the house. Mom and Dad’s marriage license was in between the pages, and when Dad would need the marriage license, he’d grumble. She wouldn’t give him the photos, and I’d be sent out to find them hidden in the house. Usually, I knew where they were, I just never said so because then she’d move them on me. (more…)

What Camera Lens Should I Use?

Once upon a time back in September 2009, I bought my first dSLR. I didn’t have a friggin clue what a dSLR was. A couple of friends of mine and I decided we were going to take a photography class at a local technical school. Honestly, I hate to say it, but it was a pretty worthless class. The teacher threw a lot of information at us in a very short amount of time. And instead of encouraging us to learn to take better photos, we just took random photos and moved on with life. The only thing I learned from the class was there was something called a dSLR. Said dSLR was different than a point and shoot camera. Bam, now you learned what I learned and it was a lot cheaper.

That first class I came home and had to do some research on what a dSLR camera even was. Now, here we are a little over 10 years later and I’ve owned a Canon Rebel XS, (2) Nikon D5000, a Nikon D90, a Nikon D7100, a Nikon D610, and recently upgraded to a Nikon D850. To say I like Nikon cameras might be obvious. However I keep up-to-date on Canon’s as well so if someone is looking for suggestions on what to buy, I know both models. I’m not so good at Olympus or Sony although I did own a semi dSLR Olympus for underwater photography. I didn’t own it long enough to do anything with it though.

A Kit lens vs body alone

There is a lot of controversies when buying a new camera. Do you buy just the body and then buy a lens or do you buy a kit lens with the body? There are a few things to consider before you totally make up your mind. First, if you look at the lens itself, it has a lot of information that looks like jumbled letters and numbers. What do they all mean? (more…)

Guided 365 – January 2019

I decided to tackle the Guided 365 project that Digital Photography for Mom’s does. This is a paid class. It was a lesson that we received every day (about 5 am). There were times I got behind. It just happened, but as long as I caught up, did it really matter? 

We submitted our photos through Instagram. Now… my biggest complaint was I didn’t feel like I got as much feedback as I would have liked. Maybe that’s a good sign. My photos were just so outstanding that… or maybe I was just behind. Who knows why.

The first month she spent teaching people how to shoot in manual mode. That’s awesome, but I’ve been shooting in Manual since 2011. I was a little bored and contemplating why I did this class, but I stuck through it and I’m glad I did. Now, people can start and stop and restart if they want. You paid monthly. No, I’m not getting anything for talking about this, I just wanted somewhere else for these photos to live. I’m going to break it up into 12 posts, otherwise, there would be 400+ photos on this blog post alone. I’ll break them down by month.

Note, I got started late. I’ll tack on the last 3 photos that were done in January 2020 onto that last post so there will be a few more days there.

January 2019

Day 1 objective: Connect to what you want to photograph.

It has one of my kids and cake… I love photographing both! P.S. Happy Birthday Tbug.

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20 Photography Blog Post Ideas

1. A day in the life post – These are always fun because it allows people to get a feel for your day.

2. What’s in your Camera Bag – Sometimes this is helpful for other people. It allows them to get ideas for their own bag, especially if they are newer to photography.

3. What camera you use – I always love these. It allows me to see what other people use and I’m nosey like that. I devour camera reviews.

4. Speaking of Camera bag – What camera bag do you have and what features do you like?

5. Start a 365 project – It is time consuming but oh so worth it. I’m about to wrap up my second year of doing this. Yup, 2 years now. I think I’m going for a 3rd, but changing it up a bit. Either focusing solely on photos from my dSLR or maybe Black and White Photos. I haven’t decided yet.

6. Show some behind the scenes in setting up a picture – Not everyone knows what goes on behind the scenes of a photoshoot.

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365 – May – Photos 244-274 – Take 2

I don’t typically post on weekends, every once in a while I do… this just so happens to be one of those days…. trying to get through all these posts I have waiting to be posted :). Happy Saturday! I’m off to take pictures at NCHA day!

 244/365 – Sigh, this kid. I just love her!

245/365 – It’s puppy time. 8 puppies and they were all male… 

246/365 – this is my kind of final!

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