Blended Paths

I have several posts to get up here; a few on video and photo apps, one on parenting, and a random photography craft tutorial from a project I'm planning to do soon. But, I can't help but skip all those partially written posts and/or ideas for the moment and talk about something else I've become obsessed with as of late: VINYL.

I'm a music lover. It's a fact that I can't (nor would I want to) deny. I became addicted to the whole "digital" craze because of space saving and easy backup solutions. It's a lot cheaper in the long run.  You pay less for music, you buy an mp3 player (it doesn't have to be a $300 iPod!) and you plug it in and go. It's a lot more convenient. You store your files on one device that fits in your pocket, and if all your music won't fit on that device, you create playlists or select your current favorites and store it all on your computer and a backup drive for good measure. The biggest plus is the easy travel factor — you can take your music ANYWHERE and listen to it in any number of ways. There's one real drawback. It's a lot LESS FUN.

I don't remember the good old days of turntables and vinyl very vividly. The most I can remember is having one of those cute little box record players, you know, the kind that look like a tiny suitcase, and having a bunch of Walt Disney books with 45's in the back of them that played music and told the story to you as you read along. Yeah. I know. Not much to base my new obsession on, right?

So what's the real story? It's the "real" factor.

I've been spending a lot of time hanging out at this "new" local coffee shop called 318 Coffee & Bands. I haven't been able to make it to one of their Friday night live shows, but I've been to the place on a couple of band-free Friday nights. These restless Fridays are filled with the amazing world of REAL music — as real as it gets without being live -- Vinyl Night. I've noticed three things during these amazing vinyl adventures:

1. Vinyl sounds better (even though I know the gigantic and amazing speakers they have help) because you get ALL the sound. It's not necessarily all cleaned up (even NEW releases by CURRENT bands) so by "sounds better" I don't mean it sounds cleaner. You don't get the sparkly, shiny, brilliant sound of perfection — you get more of the reality of the music and the making of the music. To ME, that's better.

2. Because you get more of the reality of the music and more sounds, you enjoy the music more. It has more personality. It has more feeling. It has more heart. It has more meaning. It not only has the substance of a real and tangible piece of vinyl that you can touch to know it's there, it has the substance of what music was always meant to be — a true, unadulterated expression of self with all the flaws in tact.

3. Vinyl is happening again, so it's not as expensive as one might think. I've learned from the Vinyl Night guru that MANY artists and bands, especially the kind of homegrown bands we all love the most, are going back to vinyl and including digital downloads with the purchase of the vinyl LPs so you get the substance and the expression I mentioned previously, but you get the convenience, too — and all for the price of one. Let's face it: buying a CD or vinyl album is always going to be more expensive in the long run than digital music, namely because people can't just steal whatever they want from the Internet whenever they want to steal it, but also because online music sites that sell full digital albums for $9.99 can't be beat by CD or vinyl sales — hey, there's a cost for material in there somewhere that gets added to what the artist and then the "store" makes. So what's up — get it in your head now: it's not going to be cheap...

But, the point I'm trying to make is that sometimes cheap in the way of cost simply cheapens an experience as a whole, and since my first Vinyl Night experience I've realized how much more real the experience of music can be — much more real than plugging in headphones or my iPod to the dock, or clicking a button on my computer to open an app, and pressing play. That's gotten lost, and I'd like to find it for myself again without the shop on Friday nights being my only chance to experience it.

I don't want to toss out my iPod - I'm all for convenience in the car or on a run or on the train (an experience I'll be having soon). I'm just saying that when I'm home, I want to chill and know —- and I want my son to grow up chilling and learning and knowing — what that true musical experience from that era I cherish so much in my heart (the 60's - for reasons I can't explain because I wasn't alive then, unless I OD'd and was reincarnated) is and that it truly can be an experience where you get up and walk over to the machine to change the record or turn the record over or fix the arm/needle...that being involved in more than pressing play or saying, "go," is much more fun and rewarding in most cases than the convenience (which is generally just laziness) we've all become accustomed to.

Blessings - and enjoy your music!

C~

I've concentrated most of my energy discussing iPhone photography, photo apps, and tips/tricks/etc. for still photographs when I've posted artsy iPhone-ness to the site. But, lately I've been doing a lot of VIDEO with my phone - in fact, more video than photography, and I really began to think about why I have never shared anything about the iPhone's video capabilities.

Perhaps it's because I started this iPhone thing when I had an iPhone 3Gs and video wasn't an option or was a crappy excuse for a moving picture with that phone. I've had my iPhone 4 for less than a year and I can't even remember whether the 3Gs had video capabilities - I want to say it did, but then I wonder.

Alas, the iPhone 4 (which isn't even the newest or greatest iPhone on the market anymore) DOES have great video tools and I decided that I was going to share a bit about my love of shooting video with the iPhone 4, as well as the apps I love to use to edit my footage in-phone.

I love using my iPhone 4 for shooting video for two reasons: 1) I always have it with me, and 2) just as with photography, there are so many options for in-phone processing and editing of the footage I capture. It's a lot of fun and I have made a few videos that I never would have thought to try to "make happen" because they just played out in front of me and I happened to have my phone (happened? Ha!).

A little about the iPhone 4's video capabilities:

• Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio
• VGA-quality photos and video at up to 30 frames per second with the front camera
• The LED flash for still photography can be turned on for filming (indefinitely, turned off when filming stops).

Of course, the newer and better iPhone 4S is going to have quite the jump on these tech specs, what with it's better lens, higher MP rates, etc., but these iPhone 4 tech specs aren't bad for what the equipment actually is - a tiny camera in a slim phone.

So, without wasting any time trying to explain the technical here-to's and where-for's of the camera itself, lets talk about apps! Because, apps are everyone's favorite thing when it comes to the iPhone and it's camera/video accessibility!

Here is a list of my favorite video-related apps:

• iMovie (Surprise!)
• Super 8
• VideoPix
• Slowmo
• Splice
• Viddy

I'll talk about these in detail in separate posts, so for now I'll just decipher for you what each one actually does: iMovie is VERY similar to the iMovie app Mac users are used to on their computers. It allows nearly full control of video editing. You can use themes, add music and text, etc., to your footage. You can even splice. But, sadly, you can't add slides between clips manually. Oh, well. It's my favorite tool for editing my footage in-phone.

Super 8 is an actual "shooting" app - similar to the photo apps that allow you to take pictures from within them. It's an app that was released to promote the movie "Super 8" (great movie, btw), and it is really cool!

VideoPix is an app that allows you to pull still photos from your video footage. Getting a truly clear image is nearly impossible but it's still a great tool when you'd like to get a still from that great party or that crazy accident you happened to be filming.

Slowmo just allows you to slow your footage down (another feature iMovie for iPhone is lacking, as far as I know). You can save the clip and add it to your iMovie project, etc.

Splice is an editing app similar to iMovie, but it doesn't quite have the detailed functions that are available in iMovie. I haven't used this app since the last update so it's possible that could have changed.

Viddy is an app that allows you to create shorts of your footage (complete with themes and music) and share them with other viddy users, very similar to Instagram for iPhoneographers.

I'm so glad I finally got this much done on a post about iPhone video. It's not what I wanted or expected to accomplish, but with a sick kid and feeling a bit run down myself, it being 10:30PM and just getting him to sleep, I'm fairly satisfied with the start! I will soon be posting some individual blogs (with links) about the apps I've mentioned here (as well as some photo apps) and I will also include some links to some of the iPhone videos I've done as of late.

Blessings,

C~

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!!

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!!

...knocks me off my feet. Seriously! I really do wish I'd waited and gotten the 15 inch model now that I've tried working with photos on this 13 inch, but I'm still incredibly happy with it. That's because I have a plan. I always have a plan, and a good plan helper.

As you may remember, Jeremy and I are going to be building a house soon (I will it!). And, we've discussed the options and since I love the portability of the 13 inch, especially with loving to sit on the porch in the mornings with my coffee and write, we've devised an evil plan to fix the photo editing problem. Right now, I have a 15" Dell monitor, standard, of course - not widescreen, which I've gotten used so I hate the standard one, and instead of spending $40 for an adapter for a VGA monitor that will obviously loose the amazing quality of what I'm seeing on this screen, we're going to wait until our house it built and we move and we save about $500 more bucks (which is totally doable in a year - come on!) and get a Mac monitor, maybe even 17"! Our house plan has a loft upstairs that will be used as office space, and I can plug in up there to work on photography things, and still have the best of both worlds.

I am considering, however, ordering the HDMI adapter for the MacBook for connecting to the TV for now. How can you beat...what? 42" at minimum? I don't even know how big the thing is - it's huge, but looks smaller in that big living room. LOL We do netflix and that would be awesome (it sucks through the Wii, really - not a huge selection compared to the actual website), and you can't beat editing pictures from a huge screen like that. The only downside to that is the necessity of getting a wireless keyboard (possibly with the built in trackball), and I don't know the expense of that. Merry Christmas anyone?

Alas, I will do a blog (maybe even a vlog, wow!) reviewing my experience with this amazing machine in a few days, after I've had more practice with it and learned more awesome things to share. I've been a hardcore PC for going on 12 years, so the move has been strange but not totally impossible or difficult.

I can tell you this - vlogging is back in the mix because the freaking webcam actually keeps up the sync between your mouth and your words. It's not like a Japanese ninja flick - it totally works. Since it's such a load of crap trying to transfer from our mini DVD camera, it's just perfect. Great sound, great graphics, all in sync. If I can get myself back to that comfort level with talking to my computer that I had when I was doing pregnancy vlogs, watch out! I might be posting so many random things I'll make everyone bored. LOL

Have a great Monday. For that matter, have a great week!

Recently, I have had a couple of people bring to my attention that others have brought to THEIR attention that blogging is a good way to promote photography, and even yourself, as a commodity. This is true! The general question is: how do I blog, where do I start, what do I do. Well, as I said, that's pretty general. So I hope with this post to give some options, tips, and suggestions from personal experiences to help at least get those people started with blogging.

First of all, it's important to note that there are MANY blogging tools available, and each one has pros and cons when it comes to abilities and difficulty levels. Some are fairly straightforward; some require some knowledge of HTML in order to make your blog look and feel the way you'd prefer (some of which is very simple, like the alignment tags and such).

If you know nothing about HTML, you can visit W3Schools.com for awesome tutorials on lots of things language related - from HTML (which is what I have linked) to CSS and on.  Being able to read, even only somewhat understand, and copy and paste works wonders - and the more you do this, the more you learn the language and can use it to build a blog (even via a blog service) the way you want. HTML is probably the easiest language ever created and it is totally web-involved. I will try to do a post with basic HMTL information soon.

As far as blog services, as I mentioned, there are many free ones - some of them have options for paid accounts that basically eliminate ads on your blog page and allow you more opportunity to use themes or layouts for your blog that you don't have to create - this relieves the issue of having to have extreme knowledge of HTML for design purposes. Following is a list of blog services that I have used and found to be really good.

The best blog services for beginner bloggers, especially those wanting to share photography, are Blogger and Xanga (again, in my experience). While there are MANY options to choose from in the list of blog services, I have found these two services the most straightforward and the most user friendly.

As with any self-taught endeavor, whether it is photography or blogging or website design or cooking or crafts like crocheting or knitting, reading and practice are the key. You learn as you go, so the first suggestion I have is to be patient with yourself. The second suggestion I have is to know what you want to get out of your blogging experience. If you simply want to share photos with captions or stories, Blogger is great as a starting point. I like Xanga because it is more community based, and as you make friends and your blog gets out there more, my experience has been that Xanga offers more feedback than Blogger; however, this is not a fact written in stone. With any blog, self-promotion is key. Sharing link-backs for your posts and blog in general via Twitter, Facebook, or other social networking tools is a key to promoting yourself. It's really good to have a Facebook Fan Page devoted to your photography where you share your blog post links. The more of a following you build (which takes time), the more feedback you get, the more suggestions and requests you get, etc.

Here is a full list of blogging services I have tried:

WordPress

Xanga

Blogger

Tumblr

LiveJournal

and, of course, the blog application associated with this website...

Another place that allows you to post "journals" (basically, blogs) is deviantART. deviantART is an art community that allows you to upload your content into a sort of gallery, and also gives you blogging/journaling capabilities. Again, this is a nice option because a) there is a free version, and b) it's a community based system - although, I must be honest and say that recently deviantART has become rather dramatic and filled with less serious artists/photographers and seems to be turning into more of a "Photobucket" type site. The quality there is lacking lately, it seems - BUT, this could be a definite plus for serious andaspiring photographers with more than "snapshots" to share. My issue, and what drove me away from deviantART, is the overhead involved in keeping up with the site. It's almost like a full time job to keep yourself in the loop and keep yourself promoted there. This service also allows print services, but they are rather expensive and the artist makes very little commission from sales of their art. Things have changed a lot with this service, and I am not currently aware of what the free accounts offer...

Alas, regardless of what service or community you choose, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when making this choice: how much time do you have or are you willing to put into the process? Do you want to be a part of acommunity that requires a lot of time (with a pro of connecting to other aspiring photographers and a con of a serious time issue), or do you simply want a private blog (like the ones in the list above) to share your work and have little overhead as far as time? The learning curve is much less steep with some of the community sites because of the tools they offer for sharing your work/blogging your work, but the overhead in maintaining those type of sites is MUCH steeper.

Here is a list of such community sites:

deviantART

PictureSocial

RedBubble

Artician

Again, I have only listed communities/sites I have used or tried personally. Of these, I would have to say the PictureSocial is the most professional true "community" site, but RedBubble is an excellent source and seems to have the least overhead involved. Also, selling your art through RedBubble is much more efficient and leaves you more room for profit than deviantART. I'm not certain that Artician or PictureSocial even have (at this point) print services.

Going back to blogging alone, my suggestion for a beginning blogger is Blogger. This service offers you the most leeway for personal design and setup of the blog. Its generally a one page/site blog with each entry linked. Uploading and sharing images in posts is fairly easy. There is little or no overhead with Blogger. THIS LINK is a review of the current Blogger setup/tools and may give you an idea of what others think about the site. Blogger is simply more basic and straightforward, in my opinion.

My best advice about this topic is to visit these links, read about these blog services and what they offer, how they work, the cost (again, as far as I know, all of them offer free basic services), and evaluate what you're able to put into learning and using them.

If you have a request for a more detailed tutorial about any of these services, please let me know and I will be happy to try to do a post to help you. In fact, I can also start a forum section for blogging and different sites, based on your input!

Coming soon: A general HTML tutorial (HTML knowledge is not always NECESSARY but good to have in order to make your blog what you want it to be - and it's fairly simple to get the hang of!).