Catching Up

So sorry folks, I'm way behind in posting.  You know how life sometimes intervenes, right?  Lately, I've been running in circles.  Doctor visits, kid getting ready to take his driving test, playing with the new camera, gearing up for NaNoWriMo (yes, I'm a fiction writer as well)--all take time away from my photography.

To catch you up, I received the D3100 just in time to do my very first family photo session.  Thanks to Nikon keeping their fans in mind, there isn't a big operating difference between the D40 and the D3100.  Yes, there are things that define one from the other but I haven't had the opportunity to delve that far yet.  Suffice it to say I was able to use the new camera the first time out with ease.

Since the family session, I've been learning the finesse of touching up photos.  And with many distractions around the house, it's been slow going.  But I AM learning.  I began with over 200 photos (this was a twelve person session), narrowed it down to around 30 poses I liked and now have 13 finished photos.  That's a ton of culling.  But I will say I'm getting better at framing my shots and for that, I'm thankful.  It sure saves time (as well as pixels) when you get to the editing stage.

I'll check back soon to talk more about what I learned from my first family portrait session.  Until then, keep your batteries charged and your camera handy for that impromptu shot that will appear when you least expect it.

I'm Excited!

Just put in my order at B&H Photo for the D3100 and some extras.  Everything should be in by the end of the week.  Can't wait to start taking photos with the new camera!

Upgrade?

picture from Digital Photography Review

For a while now, I've wanted to upgrade to a better camera.  "Better" in this case simply means more than the 6 megapixels I currently have.  Don't get me wrong; my D40 takes great pictures.  It would be plenty of camera for me except for the fact I want to produce artistic prints of my black and white photos and the occasional photo manipulation.  For those, more pixels means producing prints closer to painting quality which, as an admitted perfectionist, I want to attain.

Initially, the 12.3mp D90 was my "tax return purchase" goal after reading many user reviews.  It has remained a logical hobbyist upgrade but for the continued high price (@$750 for body only).  The fact that D90 owners don't seem to get rid of them keeps the demand high and thus, a D90 remains out of my budget if I want to add lenses or other gadgets to my purchase.

The next camera I considered was the 12.9mp D5000.  The lady I photographed a wedding with owns one and swears by it.  I tried the camera out at the wedding and liked the way it felt in my hands, though it is a bit heavier than my D40.  Given the greater amount of pixels and quality results, it seemed to be the camera for me at a more affordable $400-$600 price tag. 

I wanted to be sure I was making the best choice in my situation.  Life has changed for my family in the past year and I'm facing the need to help bolster our finances.  I know this seems like an oxymoron but I have a one-time opportunity to purchase equipment that can help me help my family in the long run.

So, I continued my search.

On recommendation, I explored Ken Rockwell's review site and have since discovered Digital Photography Review. Between these two websites, I have found a wealth of practical and technical information to aid my decision making.

picture from Digital Photography Review

After perusing pages of reviews and comparisons, I have decided that my next camera will be a 14.2mp D3100.  Cost-wise, it runs @$600 for the kit that includes an 18-55mm lens (not the one shown here) which will allow me to purchase a couple of extras.  The body is smaller and lighter.  It should fit my tiny hands perfectly and not tire my carpel tunneled wrists.  The extra megapixels will allow me to further my artistic projects.  And the great thing about staying in the Nikon family is I can still use all of my current lenses and filters. 

Now that I've decided on the camera I want, I would like to add another lens to my arsenal.  Check back soon to see what lens I choose and why...

"Early Morning"

Aug. 20th, 2011
Horseshoe Mountain Rd.
Paris, AR

Donating...

 

Money?  Goods?  Time? 

I enjoy spending time with my photography projects and sharing them with the public, yet I have wanted to do a bit more with my ILP blog and time.  While cruising the net looking for ideas yesterday, I ran across the FreeRice website.  I'd forgotten how much fun it is to test your knowledge and "earn" rice to donate to needy families.

How the site works:  You can choose to create an account that will keep a tally of your progress or you can play on the site without signing in.  There are six categories in which to test your knowledge: Math, English, Geography, Chemistry, Language Learning and Humanities.  My favorite is English vocabulary under Language Learning.  Questions start out simple and progressively get harder the further you go.  For each correct answer you get, ten grains of rice are donated to the World Food Programme and they can add up fast.  Play as little or as much as you want.  

Normally I’m not one to jump on the cause bandwagon nor do I push others to do so but the experience seemed to fit the bill of that something “more” I was looking for.  So I came up with a small challenge for myself that I can do each day. 

My challenge:  To donate 15 minutes of my time each morning to see how much rice I can earn and send to hungry families.  For the rest of August, I'll be participating in the English vocabulary category. 

I would love to see other bloggers and readers take up similar challenges with me but I understand if that doesn’t happen.  After all, time is precious and this cause isn’t for everyone.  I do, however, challenge you to find ways to help others that fit with your availability and beliefs.  

Check back often to follow my daily progress in the right-side FreeRice widget.  And if you have unique ideas for other avenues of donating time, goods, or skills, please share them.  I'm always looking for new ways to help.

(banner from FreeRice.com)

New Stuff

Just a quick note to let you know I've added a new page, Photo Manipulations, as well as a Guestbook to the blog.  Please check out the new art and let me know what you think.  You can also vote for your favorite manipulation in the right sidebar poll.

Thanks for stopping by!

Maria

A Little Adventure

"Abandoned?"

Back before summer temperatures got out of hand, I spent two or three mornings each week traveling farm-country highways near home. On one hand, I love getting out and driving slow through the countryside with my window rolled down.  On the other, I like finding old or abandoned buildings to photograph.

One morning, while working my way down one of these roads, the old house in the above picture caught my eye.  I parked across the road from it and hopped out with my camera.  Behind the house were two or three chicken barns, so I walked back and forth on the highway to find the best perspective in order to not include them.  Since it was mid-morning, there was no traffic.  It was peaceful.  A couple of brown mutts crawled from under a fence, saw me, and trotted out to see what I was up to. I'm glad they were friendly.

I first took some practice shots with my 55-200mm lens.  Not happy with those, I swapped back to my 18-55mm lens and crossed the road. 

One thing I want to make clear at this point is, I never go on a property without permission.  Not only was I raised to respect other people's property but there are safety issues to consider as well.  You will understand why I brought this up shortly. 

I wish I could have gotten inside the fence to work my way around the entire house to find the best shot.  But I stayed either on the road or just outside the fence to get all of my photographs.  I did walk, squat, sit and lean every which way to get the pictures I took.  Had anyone looked out their windows at the time, they probably wondered what the heck I was doing. 

I spent about 15-20 minutes photographing the old house.  Satisfied I'd done all I could to capture the essence of the building, I hopped back in my truck, tucked my equipment safely away and headed off.  As I passed what evidently was the currently inhabited house of the farm, I heard a gunshot.  That's right--GUNSHOT!

I ducked and looked back toward the farmhouse.  Remember how the brothers in Second Hand Lions prepared for 'company'?  That's what I saw when I looked toward that farmhouse:  Two older men, sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch, one with a shotgun pointed my direction.  You better believe I floored my truck to get out of there fast!

The experience serves as a reminder to always check my surroundings when out photographing.  It isn't just snakes and dogs I have to look out for, it's also making triple sure I'm not putting myself in harm's way with people either, just for the sake of a cool picture.  I don't have to have every photograph but I do have a family to take care of.

And that's exactly what I was thinking when I blew past that old house in order to get back home...

No photographers or trucks were harmed in the pursuit of cool pictures on this trip.

Wedding Day Jitters

A couple of months back, a friend asked if I would help her photograph a wedding for a co-worker.  The bride-to-be had originally planned to hire a professional photographer.  However, circumstances changed and she could no longer afford one.  So, as a favor and a present, we offered to document the wedding for her.

I have only attended three weddings that I can remember, one of which was my own.  Most of my photographic endeavors involve the outdoors.  But I wanted to help out this young lady and gain experience.  Was I scared?  Yes!  I was petrified I might mess up.  But I was excited too.

As the wedding day approached, however, I began second guessing myself.  How could I hope to do justice to such a special occasion?  I'm just an amateur outdoor photographer with big dreams.  I stressed over it.  By the eve of the wedding, I was downright dreading the whole thing and feeling like a heel for it.

I spent the next morning on the phone with my friend going over last minute details, checking my equipment and charging batteries.  Going through my mental checklist, I felt a little better, even started looking forward to the day again.  Little routines are great to stop unfounded fears in their tracks.

Once we arrived at the chapel, we realized the weather had changed the lighting inside, making everything much darker than we had originally anticipated.  Scrambling, we focused on taking practice shots as the wedding company practiced.  I can't speak for my friend but it forced me to concentrate on the subjects and not my fear.  This helped me to settle down and start having fun.

The bride was beautiful, and funny -- very easy to photograph.  Little girls twirled in and out of the dressing room in their dresses while she got ready.  Downstairs, little boys wrestled around on the floor, bored with the whole affair.  Everything ran smoothly, giving us plenty of time to take lots of candid pictures.

And then suddenly, it was Time.

I was to photograph the flower girls, ring bearers and the bride and her father walking down the aisle.  Seemed easy enough but I couldn't figure out why I had to scoot so far back to get them in the frame.  I thought my lens or camera was messing up.  But I plowed ahead and managed to get some good shots in.

My friend and I each took a side of the chapel and got the pics we could.  At this point, everything went pretty fast considering the previous easy-going pace leading up to the ceremony.

Afterward, we did the requisite posed photos of the entire wedding party.  This is where you need good communication with the other photographer.  We worked in tandem, she getting the close-ups and me working with the tripod further back.  By this time, the kids were cranky and the adults were ready to eat.  Thankfully this was a small group as it took nearly half an hour to photograph everyone.

Afterward, everyone hopped in their cars and booked over to the Holiday Inn for the reception.  We encountered a totally different, darker set of lighting 'problems' there and ended up with shadows in the cake pictures.  By this time, we were nearly 4 hours into the photo shoot and getting pretty tired.  We were also running out of space on our cards and running low on battery power.  I'm glad I thought to bring my laptop and charger, though one of us had to drive back to the other vehicle to get it.

At the end of the reception, I thought back over the day.  We were exhausted but I realized my friend and I were very lucky indeed.  Though it was a special day for the bride and groom, we were privileged to have been allowed into their circle of family and friends and to share their day with them.  I will say that it is a very different and gratifying feeling of accomplishment than I have previously encountered and one I hope to repeat often.


What did I gain from this experience?

• Don't just double-check your equipment, triple and quadruple-check it.  Remember I mentioned my lens seemed off?  It was because I had forgotten to change back to my kit lens, the 18-55mm.  I was attempting to take close-ups with a 70-200mm zoom lens. Whoops!
•  Mental checklists are good but written ones are better. 
• Always bring the laptop and the battery charger.  They WILL be needed. 
• Having to think on my feet forced me to dig in and relax.  Ultimately, I had a blast once I loosened up. 
• Spend time with the people.  Talk with them, joke with them.  Share.  It helps everyone relax and makes the experience so much more enjoyable. 
• Don't be afraid to take on new tasks. 

Pictures I Didn't Seek Initially...

All my life, I have been a perfectionist at my creative endeavors.  This has translated into my photography pursuits as well.

For instance, I may decide early in the morning that it's a great day to photograph flowers.  I'll gather my equipment, load up the truck and head to a predetermined spot to click happily away.  Some times, the results come out really nice and I'm happy with the time spent away from home.

However, other times the photos don't turn out like I remembered when I get them on the computer screen.  This is particularly true of nature photographs.  Ever have one of those days?

It's on these days I find that the unplanned pictures often turn out to be the best pictures.  The following photos are a case in point.

This guy sat on the pole singing the entire time I was photographing reflections in a pond.  Trudging back to the truck lugging my equipment, this woodpecker kept turning his head nearly upside down looking at me.  I imagine he thought the two-legged creature with the three-legged thingy and black box on it's shoulder was rather funny looking.  I say funny because his singing sounded more like laughter the closer I got to the truck.  So I stopped and got his mugshot.  :)

After downloading the pictures to my laptop, the reflections appeared uninspired looking.  The woodpecker turned out to be the best of the trip.

 

On the day I took this picture, my intention was to photograph incoming storm clouds.  It was also the first time using my 55-200mm lens.  The clouds did not turn out as well as I hoped but I did manage to get my first major in-flight picture.




So what has photography taught me that nothing else could?  I've learned it's great to have a plan and yes, definitely essential.  But I shouldn't be so focused on a picture/goal that I miss the smaller, sometimes more interesting things going on all around me.  In fact, I should at times drop the perfectionism and just have fun.  I know, it's only taken 44 years to come to that epiphany.

Getting Started

I have set for myself April 30th as a deadline to get this website started.  Now it's just five days away and I'm feeling way behind.  So much is going on at this time of the year.  Prom, Graduation, birthday, etc.  Nearly everywhere I turn, more opportunities arise to take interesting pictures, which brings up a great dilemma.  How do I choose when to stop, edit and post?

The choice actually was made for me or I would probably have continued clicking away into oblivion.  The past few days Arkansas weather has turned nastily soggy, keeping me indoors.  It forced me to sit in front of the computer and begin editing.  Of course, the fact the kids were hovering wanting their Prom pictures finished so they could post them on Facebook helped too.

This picture is from that bout of editing frenzy.  I took the original photograph a couple of weeks ago while driving home from a photo shoot in Fort Smith.  I was tired and the clouds promised I would head into a storm soon. 

I have wanted to photograph this particular tree for some time but the background never really made it stand out until that afternoon.  It just seemed to come to life against the storm clouds.  So I pulled into the edge of a driveway (hoping the land owners didn't come home just then needing to get to their house) and started shooting. 

When I got home and looked at the images on my computer, they didn't pop the way I had envisioned.  So I pulled up one of my photo editing programs and began to play.  After working with color and contrast, I finally got to a place I liked with the photograph.

I hope you like it too.