I've always had a fascination with street photography. This curiosity has been mostly satisfied by viewing the works of my friends who focus on street photography and the work of photographers like Bill Cunningham, who is known for his work with the NY Times and his "trending" photos. Still, in recent years, my curiosity has grown and I have wanted to try my own hand at the art, but there are many problems to overcome. Thus, I have spent time researching as well as thinking on my own terms about my problems in direct relation to shooting in the "streets" and I'm going to share what I've learned or come up with in this post.

Problem #1: I live in a fairly rural area, more than an hour's driving time away from any true "urban" shooting grounds. How can I compensate and shoot where I live? How can I get "true street" shots in my own environment?

Problem #2: I'm timid and I don't want to invade anyone's privacy. What are the laws or "rules" for shooting street photos? How can I approach someone I really want to get a shot of? How can I deal with rejection?

Problem #3: What kind of equipment is best for street photography? Would a telephoto lens help me capture people with more shadiness or does that defeat the purpose? Would a point-and-shoot work best since there's a wider range to shoot with that type of camera? How about my iPhone? I'm really into iPhone photography, but would I seem less "serious" about what I'm doing if I were using such a tool, or would it actually be helpful since most people in my area aren't used to seeing giant SLRs and long lenses being sported around and that might make them more nervous about the whole situation?

Problem #4: I'm a stay at home Mom. I always have my toddler with me and it's tough to take a two year old on a shoot. There are safety concerns, as shooting requires almost as much attention as my child, and there are obstacles like diaper changes and baby boredom. How can I deal with these issues, from a mom point of view?

As you can see, I have some major questions to answer before I really try to head out and give street shooting a real shot. I have some ducks to get in a row and some marbles to get in a jar. These are serious questions for me - not just off the wall, I don't know what I'm doing, questions. Here are the answers I've come up with for myself. Perhaps they can be of use to you.

Problem #1: Rural vs Urban street photography. Bottom line first:

“As crowding increases, people’s personal space requirement decreases. Also, the space one needs and expects is culturally dependent. In some countries people naturally stand, talk and touch each other in public to a closer degree than in others. But there are general unspoken rules. Get too close, “In your face” — as the saying goes, and people get nervous, even if they don’t know exactly why.”

“At a fair, a midway at a carnival, a sports event, parade, concert or public ceremony, people’s need for personal space and therefore privacy is reduced. The level of sensory stimulation is also usually high at these events, which tends to reduce the need for space. As well, in most of these situations people are having fun so they are more relaxed.” Michael Reichmann

This is the crux of my problem. There's never "crowding" where I spend most of my time, and I avoid crowds as much as possible. I tend to stay in more open spaces, and limit myself to a certain number of people around me or I freak out (so the rural thing kind of works for me in that way). Back to the problem: is it even possible to shoot street photography in such an environment?

As it turns out, "Rural Street Photography" is a fairly new concept and is picking up some major attention in the art world. There are no true tips to be found for this, so I decided to create my own for what I think rural street photography could be:

• Street photography is generally about people, but it doesn't have to be about people. Shoot the landscape as much as the people. Buildings, lights, signs, autos - the big picture and the story you want to tell is, in my opinion, more about the environment than the person in a photo - even when you do have a person in a photo.
  
• If the first bullet made any sense to you, perhaps this one will, too. Even though the standard definition of street photography includes and revolves around people, my thoughts always go back to the story being told - what are the people doing? So, I think, for rural street photography, capturing the man on the tractor doesn't mean the man has to be the primary focus of the shot.
• Capture any and every thing that catches your attention. If it's industrial and of some use, it should count. Screws in a pile by the curb. Hay fields and the designs the bailed hay make as they await their relocation to a barn somewhere. The barn itself. Any of these things can help tell the story in the really rural scene.

As I consider more things of interest in this area, I will update (or perhaps blog about this in it's own right) this section.

Problem #2: The Self-Consciousness Issue. Chris Weeks, a well-known street photographer and artist, has answered my question in short: "You’d be better off studying the art of shadowing and surveillance than photography to be a successful street photographer [...] Not some pussy with a scope up in a tree waiting for some hapless f**king deer with no chance against a 30.06." His number one tip? "Street work has more to do with how you blend in to the scene, and less about how good you are with a telephoto lens waiting for your prey." That kind of takes care of the rest of the questions in Problem #2, as well. Blend in. Become part of the landscape. Become part of the environment. Become invisible to the people you are shooting.

Problem #3: The Equipment Problem. The classic technique for "professional" street photography consists of fitting awide (20mm on a full-frame camera) or moderately wide-angle (35mm)lens to a camera, setting the ISO to a moderate high speed (400 or800), and pre-focusing the lens. Not likely to happen for me. I don't shoot film because I can't afford it. I don't have a wide angle lens for my film or dSLR, and I certainly don't have money to buy one. So, for what I have to work with, this is the best solution:

• Start out with a cell phone or a point-and-shoot. Using low profile equipment forces me to be closer to my subjects, therefore forcing me to face my fears of offending or breaking the "space rule" up front. It also forces me to get more familiar with blending in, thus becoming one with my environment and seeing good shots to take.
  
• Another benefit? Back to Problem #1 - the culture I live in will be less like to freak out or find it out of place to see someone shooting "random" photographs with a cell phone or small point-and-shoot camera vs. a great, big, conspicuous dSLR or film camera with a giant lens (wide angle or not, to them any removable lens is going to seem massive - it's their mindset).
  
• And, finally, this method will work well in helping solve Problem #4 - the kid problem. Easy to manage equipment - no worrying about winding/changing film or the hassle of a large camera to work with, I can stuff my phone or small camera into the bag or my pocket for those random diaper changes or snack stops...or even get some fun shots with ease for those, "I'm bored and want to play/walk," moments.

Problem #4: The Kid Problem.  Taking a toddler anywhere is a pain in the butt. Grocery shopping, out for lunch, yes - EVEN to the park. You have to haul a lot of crap, from the diaper bag with half your kid's room in it to the snack bag to the cooler with a wide variety of juice and milk when you go on a farily long-planned outing. Then there's the issue of boredom. Sometimes, especially in this case, the kid has to stay in the stroller a good bit. I can't let him run around the streets at this age - it's not only an irresponsible plan but a stupid plan, and I can't shoot and keep him safe out of the stroller. Just not happening. So, what is the solution?

• Use the big stroller. It's more comfy for baby and has the basket underneath to haul those never-ending supplies.
• Keep a few of baby's favorite small toys/books in the basket for emergencies.
• BE FLEXIBLE. Be willing to miss a few great shots in order to keep baby happy - stop and play, let baby walk and run when we get to the park...
  
• Use baby as a conversation piece to help with the previous discussion of self-confidence. Keep that in mind to stay positive and less frustrated about baby's needs while I'm trying to "accomplish" something for myself.
• Bottom line? Baby always comes first, so this shouldn't be that hard. It's not hard to keep my eye on my son in public - it's almost a natural reaction when he's "loose" to be ever aware of his location and safety status. So, leave the worry at home and have FUN.
• Plan the outing to include specific, preshceduled breaks for diaper changes. I'm pretty aware of my son's potty behaviors and frequencies, so I'd never plan to go try shooting with him before he's had his morning poop, for example. That would just be silly.

More to come on this topic, including photos once I get the chance (who knows exactly when that will be?) to get out and give it a real shot with my kiddo. I'll be sure to take notes (even if it's just in my head) to let you know how the experience was and what I learned. I'm excited to consider getting out and shooting again - in a different environment than the nature I love and am so used to!

Happy shooting!

This past Saturday I was asked by my good friend to attend the homecoming of the 214th MP Company. Her husband is a soldier and MP in that company, and she wanted me to be her paparazzi. I had plans to attend a couple of other events but decided to change those plans and complied with her request at the last minute. After all, how many times would this opportunity present itself for me? Hopefully not many!

I took over 700 shots during the one hour wait/homecoming and after going through them all I ended up with only about 100 that I felt were decent. I will, of course, make a disc for my friend that contains all the images, but I have taken the ones I have selected as "decent" and processed them to meet my own approval. The sunlight was harsh (the time of day was between 12:30PM and 1:30PM) and the clouds weren't hanging around to help me out. Because I was doing burst shots at different angles and in different locations throughout this "shoot at will" event, I decided to set my camera up with a few settings that I like to use under most any circumstances and let Aperture help me fix any that might come out completely "blown out."

The odds were NOT in my favor, but I did manage to get those few good shots and after applying some really handsome filters to a few of them I thought I got some great memories recorded. Here are a few of the unedited images that I thought were decent:

Here are a few of the images that I thought looked especially nice with the PX 100 filter applied (Aperture 3):

Here are a few images that I really liked seeing in black and white:

Orbs are a serious hot topic amongst those of us who are interested in the paranormal - so hot, in fact, I've seen people get into arguments that very nearly turned to fist fights. There are the "amateur ghost hunters" who find an orb in every photo they take at one extreme, and at the other there are the one hundred percent non-believers. The "amateur ghost hunter" really does seem to find an orb everywhere they look - and, sure, they may be seeing what could technically be called an "orb." They see something round, something with substance, something that moves through the frames. The serious non-believers would say that ten thousand times out of ten thousand it's going to be something of the natural, physical world. Those are the extremes. Then there is the middle ground, and that's the camp I tend to fall into - at least, now I do.

People who straddle the fence on the subject do so because they're serious about paranormal issues - they believe that the paranormal phenomenon we hear about so often these days is real, and generally they've had their own experiences to take them from one of the extremes back to the middle. it seems to be a backwards kind of transition, really. Instead of going from the middle and saying, "I'm not sure...," to saying, "yes," or, "no," we tend to go from either extremely over-sensitive or extremely serious and bound to the physical world TO the middle.

Alas, people in this "camp" would probably say that nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine times out of ten thousand it's not going to be something paranormal causing these phenomena to appear on film - it's going to be dust or it's going to be a bug or it's going to be lens flare or it's going to be something one hundred percent of the natural, physical world. These people tend to be cautious yet open-minded. That said, I'll move into the real meat of this post:

I was a person who never believed in "orbs." I was Jason from Ghost Hunters. I was never willing to look at an image and say, "that's paranormal," at least not from a "spiritual" standpoint of what "paranormal" means. I took hundreds of photos that had these "orbs" in them, but upon investigating very closely the detail of the image and looking at notes of when the image was taken and what was going on during that time frame I could ALWAYS find a flaw in the "orb" theory. I would be able to SEE wings or movement in the image, indicating a bug of some sort, or I would be able to see and use common sense to incur that the rest of the images contained dust particles that had reflected flash from the camera (these "orbs" would be much to solid, have a definite and solid color, and tend to be very bright and cast something of a shadow when magnified).

The photos that I am going to post here changed my mind about "orbs." I respect those people who believe that the traditional "orbs" do not exist, and I appreciate those people out there who have such an affinity for them that they believe that every round, front-lit object in every photograph is an orb. This is not about debating whether they exist, although I'm not going to say I'm not interested in opinions (courteous ones, at least). I've debated with myself about whether to post this photoblog for a few weeks now because I really don't feel like taking part in any arguments about the topic or reading comments where people bash each other's opinions. LOL This post is about what changed MY mind. I took the following photos at a cemetery that we have frequented for years. I've taken photos there at night before and gotten plenty of mosquitoes and dust, but I've never seen an image come out of my camera like the ones I'm about to insert into this post. The images below are the handful of images that had these...things...in them - these few out of more than one hundred photos taken. The rest of the photos taken showed no sign of anything at all (bugs or dust included).

As a little background, this was a very still evening in the very early spring. In this area, at this time of year, there are very few if any insects or bugs flying around at night aside from moths (big enough to pinpoint without even zooming in) or lightening bugs (which would show themselves obviously in a photo should they light up during the shutter's activity). This particular night there was no dust being stirred as it had rained earlier in the day, dew had started to form on surfaces (including the ground, obviously), and there's also the fact that I was walking around in grass when I was walking and standing still when I was taking the photos.

Now that I have made some explanation about this environment and shared some information about the photos, here are the photos themselves. While I randomly question myself, deep down I truly believe these are "orbs" of the supernatural sense because of my own personal experiences during this "walk" and because I almost fell out of my chair when I compared these images to other images I'd taken on this night and other nights in the past. I can find no other explanation than that these images contain representations of "some form of electrostatic energy, either being part of or an entire spirit entity. This would mean that these objects are in essence globules of energy and/or light particles (in the case of ‘visible’ orbs)" (Ken Summers giving a definition of the paranormal orb in his own words). I don't go out looking for this sort of thing - I go to cemeteries because they're peaceful and they have really interesting and derelicte things to take photos of (and shooting at night is generally when you get the best effect of this scenery). I actively participated in the paranormal side of this outing this time, and I got what I guess could be considered results. LMAO...

Asked if anyone was there who wanted their photo taken...

Similar object above fresh grave...

Turned around from fresh grave, took several shots of this area (the benefactor of the cemetery) and got this pronounced anomaly...

Anomaly from above photo fades out...

...appears above my friend when I say, "let me take your picture with Kate."

Anomaly appears again when asked, about 9 photos later (took about 15 photos in the same spot without moving, in burst procession).

Anomaly fades out again in fourth of burst photos (of previously mentioned burst groups)...

Explanation below...

So. There are my few photos of the unexplained phenomena that continued to follow me throughout my evening journey through the cemetery at Holly Springs. In the last image, I asked if any entity that had been visible in my photos wanted to take another photo as I was leaving. I had about 25 photos between this image and the previous image with the similar "object" showing up in it. This was the last photo I took. As soon as the flash went of my battery drained completely (I took about 100 photos and had a fully charged battery that I changed to another fully charged battery about 3/4 of the way into this outing. When we were about 3 minutes away from the church/cemetery (on our way home) my camera battery was suddenly had two out of three bars on the charge indicator. THAT is what convinced me that this was something out of the ordinary - something not of this physical world - after I put it together with the fact that I couldn't reconcile these images to any others and the anomaly looks the same throughout the images, even though it's appearance is random throughout the images.

If someone can tell me and prove to me this is something other than what I believe it is, I would welcome that proof gladly. I am not sure how to feel about this. It has really rocked my whole, "orbs are bs" foundation not to be able to reconcile what's in these images. Opinions welcome; not that I'll respond either way. I'm still stuck on this - though my gut says, "paranormal."

It's been a while since I blogged about any photography apps for iPhone; there are a few reasons for that. The first and most obvious (for people who know anything about the iPhone) is that some of the newer apps that will work with my phone and the newer iPhone 4 will not work with the 3G or older generation iPhones because of the iOS features that are required for some of the newer apps (most specifically, the multitasking thing).

I really haven't felt like (or had time to get into) doing the research as to whether apps will work for any iPhone and I don't want to mislead my readers about an app and then have them buy or download it only to find out that it won't work with their phone. HOWEVER, now that the app store has undergone a bit of an overhaul, from what I understand any app that is put in the app store for sale requires the developer to include PRECISE information about what devices, iOS's, etc., the app requires. That being the case, I figure that since you must be able to read if you're reading this entry, you can read about the apps for yourself and determine whether they will work for your phone, should you be interested in any of the apps I am about to discuss.

My Most Recent Purchase

100 Cameras in 1

I don't really need to write very much about this app because the information from the developer's website pretty much covers it in a few bullets, but before I paste that in, I will say this: this app is BEAUTIFUL, USEFUL, FUN, AWESOME, and ADDICTING. This app goes for $1.99 in the iTunes app store, on sale today for $.99 (purchase or get more info about this app via the link above or the link below). Now for some serious facts from the developer's website:

Feel happy and creative! 100 Cameras in 1 (iTunes link) is a new camera app that I designed to be unique, fast, and fun. I hope it unleashes a creative side of you that’s been lurking about!

Unexpected Accolades:

➤ #1 App for Photography -See Pic

➤ Top 10 Apps Overall -See Pic

➤ Featured by Apple -See Pic

➤ Top 10 in 45 Different Countries for Photography -See Stats

Other Recent Photo/Processing Purchases/Downloads

Diptic

“A simple, elegant way to use pictures to tell your story”

macworld.com

“Diptic’s well-designed interface, simplicity, and thoughtful balance of features make it a delightful app to use.”

tuaw.com

“Diptic really ups the ante for avid photo nerds”

appsafari.com

What is it? Diptic is an app that lets you quickly and easily combine multiple photos to create a new image.

Who is it for? People who want to tell a story with their photos. With Diptic you can quickly and easily:

Create a before-and-after sequence

Produce a photographic series

Juxtapose contrasting images

Create photo collages

How does it work? Just choose a layout, select your photos, place the photos in position and save to your camera roll or email to a friend.

(all info copied from Diptic's website, linked in heading)

Current Price: $1.99

PhotoFactory

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW.com) says:

There's a large collection of preset filters you can modify to taste and see the results instantly. You also get the ability to create a variety of frames. Effects are additive, so you could create a frame, vary the color and add a soft matte with color control of the frame and the matte effect. I was most impressed with some of the black and white filters.

Features include:

- Select predefined color effects from Favorites.

- Add your own combination of color effects to Favorites by pressing the + button in the top bar. Deleting of Custom Favorites will be available soon.

- Each effect icon shows your photo with the effect applied.

- Same user interface for all effects: press the + button to increase the effect, press the - button to decrease.

- Tap the number button on an effects icon and a slider appears for a more accurate effects value. Double tap the number to set the value back to 0.

- All effect values can be changed at any time.

- Effects are immediately merged together in the background and continuously update on screen while you change them.

- Contains many color effects and transformations, including perspective, shadow and reflection.

- A single tap on the photo shows/hides the effects icons (full screen), a double tap zooms in/out and a 2 finger tap shows the original/changed photo.

- Multiple undo and redo. Reset button clears all effects at once (can be undone).

- Mark often used effects for quick access or view only the effects that are currently in use.

- Import photo: Camera, Photo Library, Previous Session, Paste from clipboard.

- Export photo: Save to Photo Library, Copy to clipboard, Email, Print with AirPrint, Print to EFI software RIPs like EFI eXpress, EFI Colorproof XF and EFI Fiery XF. Multiple resolutions supported up to the original photo size.

For all iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices with iOS 3.0 or newer.

(info copied from iTunes app store description of app)

Current Price: $3.99 (randomly on sale for as little as $.99

iResize

If you need to RESIZE photos and do it fast, this app is the one for you. This is the only app on the app store that allows you to resize many photos quickly. You simply set up some initial settings and then you're off. Any photo you tap will instantly be resized and saved into your "Saved Documents" folder. You can also resize individual photos, pinch to zoom, drag to scroll, and double-tap to re-center your image. Lastly, you can e-mail your resized images making sharing those large images on your iPad with your friends a snap!

Features:

-Resize Individual photos

-Resize many photos using "Quick Resize" mode

-Rotate your photos

-View your image with pinch, drag, and double-tap gestures

-E-mail the images to your friends

-New features coming… (crop, effects, etc.)

Don't pass up this limited time offer. The price will increase once more features are added! Buying now ensures free unlimited upgrades.

(info copied from iTunes app store description of app)

Current Price: $.99

ToonCamera

Selected by Apple for Rewind 2010 Hot Trends In Apps.

"Best toon app out there, and totally worth the price!" - Robin Rhys, AppAdvice Daily

"An amazing piece of technology." - Terry White, www.bestappsite.com

Give your life a toon up with ToonCamera, a fun camera and photography app that turns your world into a live cartoon. Record live video, snap pictures, or load existing photos from your albums. You can then save your photos and videos, email them, or share them with others on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, all from within ToonCamera.

Cartoon and other art style effects are applied to your device's live camera feed through a form of automatic rotoscoping, a technique used in animated films that involves tracing over frames of live-action video with artistic strokes.

Features:

* 9 combinations of cartoon and art effects live on your camera.

* Cartoon, sketch, and stipple styles.

* Options for thick, thin, or solid lines.

* Take snaps and record videos in portrait or landscape.

* Load photos from your albums.

* Save your snaps to the photo album, email them, or share them on Twitter and Facebook.

* Save your videos to the photo album, email them, or share them on Twitter and YouTube.

* Switch between the front and back facing camera on the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4.

* Toggle on and off the flash on the iPhone 4.

ToonCamera supports the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPod Touch 4.

(info copied from iTunes app store description of app)

Current Price: $.99

As I have more time, I will share some photoblogs using photos from each of these apps (except iResize! I already share photos resized with that app!). Keep an eye out for those posts!

Recently, a fan of my site asked me for some tips about photography. Specifically, she wanted to know about camera types, programs that I like, and wondered if I ever took any photography classes. I was going to respond to her at that page, but I thought these were such good things to wonder about (especially if you're just getting into photography or are wanting to move forward with photography) that I would just write a whole bloomin' blog! Or, maybe it was also because I was so excited to have someone ask my opinion about such things - the teacher in me, you know...


CAMERA TYPES

So, I'll start with camera types. Technically, the bigger and more expensive the camera, the better quality pictures you get. I believe this with my whole heart. The reason I do is because bigger and more expensive cameras have better processors, sensors, more megapixels, etc. HOWEVER, when it comes to photography and good pictures, you don't have to have all those things or the best of the best to take (or better yet, create) amazing and beautiful works of photographic art. Sure, it's nice to have more megapixels, especially if you want to create and sell large prints, but guess what? There does come a point where it DOESN'T really matter. If I'm not mistaken, anything above around 12mp only serves the photographer better LARGE prints.

I can break my thoughts on camera types into three easy categories: camera phones, point and shoot cameras, and dSLR cameras. I use all of these types of cameras, depending on what kind of shooting I am doing. But, surprise surprise - guess which one I use the most (and by the most I mean everyday, numerous times a day) and get perfectly acceptable quality photos from? My CELL PHONE CAMERA!! I have an iPhone 3Gs, which has just over 2mp and a built in autofocus (the only way to focus it...lol). Because of the apps (which I will discuss when I talk about software), you can do millions of things with photos that leave them still being PHOTOS and not true manipulations (which is another issue I will blog about soon *making self note*). The point and shoot camera I have is the Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, and I love it. It has something like 12.1mp (how pathetic that I can't remember - but that tells you how important that was to me when I bought it - I just wanted something above 6mp). The only reason I actually bought this camera is that it was on sale for $90. A $300 camera for $90? Heck yeah! It's an amazing little camera, does pretty good close-up shots and does amazing things with kids (kids are hard to shoot, especially babies, because they move so quickly).

My other camera (which is accompanied by so many pieces and parts and add ons and lenses that I have to lug a 50lb backpack around when I take it out) is a Pentax K110D that I got by trading a laptop with friend. This camera is just above 6mp, but it offers me a lot of options I don't have with the other cameras I own/use. The dSLR (Pentax) allows me to choose between a number of lenses, which is great for certain situations - like when I'm TRYING to get that "perfect" shot, or when I'm shooting people or nature (especially nature). You never know what you'll see or how close to or far away from you it will be - so having the option to choose a tele-macro lens or a few macro filters on a 55mm kit lens or any variety in between - as well as other commonly used filters like polarizers and UV filters - allows a lot more room for getting the shot you want to get. It also requires a lot of time - a lot of time changing things and swapping this and that and fiddling with settings, and when I'm shooting nature that's often a downside because hey - nature is sometimes fast (OK, MOST of the time fast) and I can't keep up if I'm having to do all those things/settings...so I miss a lot of good shots, too.

Alas, the truth of the matter - what I feel in my heart - is that the camera doesn't make the photos a person takes good. It's the PERSON. Any photo, whether taken with an expensive camera (which, btw, my SLR was only about $600 and the accessories I have added to that probably only add up to about $1000 total - so that's pretty cheap in the camera world) or a cell phone camera or even a toy camera, is a mixture of two things: the way the camera molds the light into some image the naked eye can visualize and a representation of what the person who shot the photo actually saw.  After all, what IS a photograph, technically? It is just painting with light - capturing light and shadows and making a tangible image out of the cosmic debris around you. That's why I always refer to my "stuff" as pieces of cosmic debris!

PROGRAMS

Programs. Now that is a tough thing to talk about. Why? Because there are SO MANY programs out there for working with your digital photos. A lot of people, even professional photographers, go on and on about how any photo shot with a digital camera and then "reworked" in any software program is basically like cheating - it's manipulation and it's not the actual photograph and it's not the "real thing." I DISAGREE OPENLY.Why? Because, while there are certain things you can do with a photograph in software that cross the line of what the "original image" was, generally speaking you have to be REALLY good at digital art to do those things. Because, while you can do a LOT of things with software, 75% of them are only the new age equivalent to photo processing that was done with chemicals and paper and dark rooms, etc., minus the need for time, waiting, well - err, chemicals... It's clean, it's fun, and it's definitely NOT the easy way out. Processing photos in software can be very challenging and difficult and mind-boggling at times - until you learn the program, just like "getting with program" with traditional processing. Once you know what you're doing, it's like anything else in life - it flows through you like your urine when you go pee.

Programs I like are Adobe Photoshop CS3 - haven't been able to afford any recent updates, but why bother? For the little bit of processing I do, it suffices and THEN some. I also used Lightroom for some time - I really loved that program, but I moved away from it when I realized I was spending more time seeing flaws in my pictures because of that program than seeing my pictures for the beauty they held (in my eyes) on their own. Currently, I use Photoshop CS3 to do the following things, all except one of which (digital watermarking) are normal post processing procedures that can be done with traditional processing.

*cropping and resizing images - especially for web posting
*sharpening images for web purposes (not the originals)
*vignetting
*contrast and curve adjustments
*watermarking

I kid you not - this is the extent of my "post" processing repertoire, and I am unashamed to say that I have no desire to learn more as far as Photoshop is concerned. I DO want to continue working towards taking better photographs with the camera, and I'll let you know when I get there.

As for apps, which I mentioned above, for the iPhone - wow. It's the same kind of deal as what I've just written about Photoshop - general effects and procedures that can easily be done traditionally, therefore NOT "cheating," and for oh so cheap (in most cases, and aside from the cost of the iPhone itself, which weighs itself out for me because of the fact that I use if for phoning, texting, iPoding, gaming AND shooting. So. Yeah. An all in one device that I'm addicted to for only $199? Yeah - that's right, I bought it. Most apps are between FREE and $5 (that I have, and only one was $5). I have a blog post HERE that discusses some of the apps I have and have had in the past, which I need to update as I've gotten some new ones recently.

I have, in the past, done some posts about Photoshop and tips/tricks, that sort of thing, and I will do some more of those (and link back at my fan page some of the older ones) with specific tips/tricks - most of which can be done in any other program, like the FREE gimp, though perhaps not in the same way or same steps.

CLASSES

No, I've never taken any photography classes. Everything I know about photography I have taught myself or learned from my dear friend and mentor JR - and I guess the truth is that when it comes to digital photography, we've more learned together than anything else. I've read a lot of books, a list of which I will try to blog at a later date if anyone wishes me to, and I've read a lot of articles online and in magazines. Popular Photography often has wonderful articles in their magazine and online. But, I have to be honest and say that I learned most of what I know - most of what I use in every day situations, from my activities and correspondences at deviantART (when I was very active there) and from SHEER PRACTICE AND TRIAL AND ERROR. Photography, in my opinion, is not something you can really learn completely, in the sense that you can't learn to have an eye for a scene, you can't learn to have an eye for photography, from someone else - you just have to practice and try different things and see where your own creativity takes you.

ADVICE

My advice about photography, for those new and/or aspiring photographers (of which I still am one, in a sense) is this: first of all, SHOOT WHAT YOU LOVE. If you hate architecture, you're never going to take breathtaking architecture photos. If you hate nature, you're NEVER going to make it sitting in the middle of the woods or on top of a mountain you have to hike, etc., much less get good pictures once you get to your destination. If you love people, shoot people. If you love cars, shoot cars. If you love brownies, shoot brownies. If you love rocks, shoot rocks. Do this first - and then move on to new things as you tire of others. Let it flow - photography is kind of like a human relationship or marriage: if you don't have a passion for it, you're never going to make it work. If you do have a passion for it, or for a thing or subject that you want to capture and are willing to practice and learn, it can blossom into so much more than you ever expected. Never give up on yourself when you keep getting it "wrong," because in photography there are a lot of technical rules, but there is never a "wrong" if a shot is from your heart. Yeah, you'll make mistakes and shoot blurry shots and shoot even some really shitty ones, but even those are not "wrong."

For more specific answers, feel free to e-mail me questions, DM or @ me at Twitter,  or comment on this post!

I hope all I've written inspires or helps you - this is for you, April! But also for all the others out there like you - with questions and passion!

The Smoking Stick

Great shot Jeremy saw and I took. We played with fire in our yard tonight (in our little fire pit, of course!).

The secret life of smoke in fostering rebirth and renewal of burned landscape:

"The innermost secrets of fire’s role in the rebirth and renewal of forests and grasslands are being revealed in research that has identified plant growth promoters and inhibitors in smoke. In the latest discovery about smoke’s secret life, an international team of scientists are reporting discovery of a plant growth inhibitor in smoke. The study appears in ACS’s Journal of Natural Products, a monthly publication: “Butenolides from Plant-Derived Smoke: Natural Plant-Growth Regulators with Antagonistic Actions on Seed Germination.”

“Smoke plays an intriguing role in promoting the germination of seeds of many species following a fire,” Johannes Van Staden and colleagues point out in the report. They previously discovered a chemical compound in smoke from burning plants that promotes seed germination. Such seeds, which remain in the undercover on forest and meadow floors after fires have been extinguished, are responsible for the surprisingly rapid regrowth of fire-devastated landscapes.

In their new research, the scientists report discovery of an inhibitor compound that may block the action of the stimulator, preventing germination of seeds. They suspect that the compounds may be part of a carefully crafted natural regulatory system for repopulating fire-ravaged landscapes. Interaction of these and other compounds may ensure that seeds remain dormant until environmental conditions are best for germination. The inhibitor thus may delay germination of seeds until moisture and temperature are right, and then take a back seat to the germination promoter in smoke."

Source: ACS Chemistry for Life

Haha...we went out yesterday. I know - can you even COMPREHEND the fact that I went to WalMart? Well, it was just the outdoorsy section where they keep the Christmas-ness (they probably had more inside, as they did with the Halloween-ness, but I couldn't bear it - too many morons cramped into this comparable tiny space, which is pretty bad since WalMart is HUGE). Anyway. We went to get a new fake Christmas tree (much easier with a kid and much cheaper over time. We had to get a new one because our old one (and probably all of our decorations, except the really special ones I'll try to clean with clorox) are likely infested with mold spores since they've been sitting at our old house all these months and we never thought to go ahead and move them here. Ugh. Mold. F*** you!

So, in light of the fact that the only thing really keeping me from freaking out was totally and completely concentrating on photography, JR let me use his amazing Pentax Optio W90 again and I took a lot of shots (so this photoblog might have a lot of pictures, but that's nothing new for me, eh?). I shall soon post a video of him, as well.

Now for the photos:

Shiny Silver Balls in a Box

Well, in a clear box - shot these while they were still in their packaging and on the shelf.

Shiny Sparkly Silver Balls in a Box

What the description says. LOL Love how Christmas ornaments are in clear boxes - makes taking pictures of them that much more fun.

Crazy Colored Reflective Balls

These were the most fun Christmas ornament balls I saw today. Really trippy.

Holiday Sequins

Sequin-like decorations on a wreath...very close up with the Pentax Optio W90 SUPER macro!

Sparkly Pine Cone

Great sparkly and glitter-fied pine cones for your Christmas tree.

Red Sparkles

This cool ornament was at the end of the cash register. I loved it.

Sparkly Blue Balls in a Box

Well, in a clear box - shot these while they were still in their packaging and on the shelf.

Sparkly Snowman

Just a tiny ornament on the shelf at the store...

Tiny Little Presents

Tiny little presents - little ornaments for little trees... There were so many fun things on the Christmas decoration shelves at the store today!

Trippy

These are those ribbon things on the handlebars of a kid bicycle. Going to the store CAN be fun. LOL

I took some CRAZY FUN close-up shots the other day.  Most of these pictures turned out to be really grainy because of lighting and lack of tripod issues but hey - for what they are, I think they’re amazing. LOL They look a lot like tilt shift, but that’s not exactly it. They’re just normal shots - taken with a very NOT normal camera. I should also add that the texture you see overlaying one of the images was added in Photoshop - I wanted something to make it look grungy since it wasn’t a very clear shot to start with. Other than that (adding a layer with a texture and making the opacity very low) and a slight adjustment to lighting or crop here and there, these images are pretty much shown as shot.

My friend got a Pentax Optio W90 so that he’d have a waterproof camera. One of the features? Digital Microscope mode with LED lens lighting. Yep, that’s right. Macro within up to 1cm of the object. And that, my friends, is what I shot these images with. Thanks, C_l_o_g! It is a lot of fun to play with - especially when things like this are lying in wait for you to shoot them. Not the best shots that this camera could take. I was just playing around with it and don’t really know how to use it to it’s full capability…though I did have it on that super duper macro setting.

This is actually a dollhouse, and this is actually a picture of the really tiny can sitting on the really tiny kitchen table in the dollhouse. This image was handheld (meaning not shot using a tripod) and, as I mentioned, the lighting was very low as it was getting dark out. I had turned off the flash because the flash only served to TOTALLY wipe out the picture.

So…yeah. What a fun toy. I am going to see if he’ll let me play with it more. If I really love it, I might buy myself one after the price comes down a bit. Right now they’re a mere $270-$300. Not a bad price for what this camera really offers (check out the specs at the Pentax website) but I can’t afford much more than $150 right now. LOL And that would have to be in payments because, well - I’m trying to get a new house. Ha!!

Tiny Little Kitchen

Tiny Little Kitchen Table

Tiny Little Coke Bottle

Tiny Little Globe

I should have thought to take some reference shots so that you could see the actual size of the stuff. Heh! That's a good excuse to go back over there and play with this stuff more!!

I did two posts today at Xanga but decided to combine them here. Ha... LOL

Just wanted to share some recent photos I've posted elsewhere. I'm trying to get some time to blog but geeeeezzzz....  LOL

Random workspace.

The recliner, with the dragon table to sit things on when I have to get up and chase my child. Wheeee!

Summer Turns to Winter

There are a few fall colored leaves but it's pretty much like summer gave fall a miss and we went straight into winter. The things of summer still lie around the house though it's cold outside.

Goalless Mornings

My mornings are completely random and purposeless except for the routine of Jesse. What's on this table is as random as what's on my mind by the end of the day.

I'm really into capturing how cold I feel today. Here are a few more shots I've done today. Wow - two blogs in one day...well, only a few shots per but still!

Winter Textures

These are some of Jesse's winter clothes - a toboggan and a corduroy coat...I thought they gave a nice representation of the textures we often see and feel during the winter.

Cold Logs

The logs in the fireplace are still cold as of now...soon they will be throwing off some HEAT!

Grate

Winter is upon us again, and this cold grate in front of the fireplace is a good representation of it.

Hope you enjoyed these shots. You can view them (and more) in the Miscellaneous album. :-) Happy Thursday!

Yes, it is!!

This is a subject that has been on my mind for quite some time, the reason being that many times when I post images I am asked a couple of repetetive questions: the first is, "what editing software or functions in that software did you use to get the photo to look like this?" and the second (or most common question) is, "Did you edit it (usually with some specific thing they think I've done to edit it)?"

Well. 95% of the time, the answer to both those questions is a simple, "no." I generally do not edit my photos in a program, though I do use Photoshop to make them web ready (I size them down majorly and do some things to improve quality of the pictures because of the resizing, but don't edit the image itself, as in how it appears originally). These are the steps I take using Photoshop to edit my photos for web posting:

1. Resize the image (usually to 600 or 700px by whatever the auto-matching number is for the other sie of the image - portrait vs. landscape).

2. I create a duplicate layer of the image.

3. I use a sharpen mask set at a very low standard to sharpen the smaller image, thus improving viewing quality of the smaller image.

4. Sometimes I do step 3 twice and lower the opacity of the second layer copy.

5. I add my watermark.

6. I use "save for web and devices" and save the image as a .jpg (generally) or a .png (sometimes, if I have done something and forgotten to change it back to .jpg).

So that's the majority of the editing I do. I do have some actions that I have created in Photoshop and a few that I have downloaded that I use to help better the brightness/contrast of images or levels of images (shooting in natural light doesn't always get you great results, no matter what you do with your camera, because digital camera sensors are, well, VERY sensitive and often misread the lighting, and I don't have any fancy light meters or anything of the sort). Generally, this is the limit to my editing, unless I purposely want to add an effect to the image and usually those effects are obvious.

When I shoot, I use my camera to do literally 95% of the work. Well, my camera combined with my eyeballs. There is no point in having even an intro level dSLR ($600 or so), much less an expensive model, if you're not going to utilitze the abilities and tools you have paid for. That's my philosophy and it's just for myself. I have no problem with people heavily editing images in editing software - there is a huge gray area that involves editing that is NO DIFFERENT THAN EDITING IN A DARKROOM, just like the old processes, only you're doing it digitally (which is worth a whole blog in itself). I just don't have time to do that sort of editing, and my personal goal is to gain knowledge and skill by using my camera; I do not want to depend on a program on my computer to make my images good or better - I want to be able to do that on my own. That's how I learn, improve, and gain the knowledge to share and possibly help others learn about photography.

That said, I have to say this: I DO use filters and even things like women's stockings, etc., to create effects with my camera that can be emmulated in design or editing programs like Photoshop, but it's much more fun for me to do that kind of thing manually. There is a line when a person does cross over from photo editing to the equivalent of digital art with manipulation and REALLY heavy editing of photos, but I don't have the knowledge of any program to do that, nor the desire, patience or time to figure it out. So basically I guess I am saying I am computer stupid when it comes to such things. I've insulted myself, but that's OK.

My intent here is NOT to insult anyone who edits their images - as I've said, I have methods that are considered editing for web posting, and I enjoy graphic art and photomanipulations as much as any art lover does. I just wanted to do a semi-quick post explaining my methods and answering that all too common question about my photos. :-)

Have a great Thursday!!