Last night, I tried to take good pictures of the campfire that we created, but because my tripod was defective, it was hard to take a good picture. Thankfully, my husband fixed my tripod and I was able to use it today to take some macro shots of flowers in my yard. Since the fall season is starting, the flowers are on their last bit of fun. I did find one that was dying and I was able to get a really nice shot that I then edited in my computer with my Digital Photo Professional 4 program. It was really fun.
Of all the shots I took last night, only two towards the end were good. It’s always like that, I take a million pictures and then get one or two that just steel my breath away. On the one with the fire, I added a bit of ambient light, while the one with the flower, I was able to darken the background. Both have their own qualities in their own rights. I just hope to become even better week after week, year after year, as time will go by.
I admit, I was a bit disappointment to see how hard it is to shoot at night. I still need to do much research on this. And as for the macro photography, I adore it! When I will have enough money, I want to get myself a diopter lens to go with my EFS 55-250mm lens. I was surprised to see how well it worked from a far to take really nice cool shots. I had previously read a few articles on macro photography from the http://Digital Photography School website. Each day, I like to check a few articles on a particular subject I want to work on during the day, evening or night. It helps me learn a lot that way. I will have to read and study a lot more about night photography, but for now, my heart pitti patters for Macro. I never need to go very far to get a nice subject to photograph.
It was a lot of fun today and hopefully tomorrow will be even more fun.
Today, I decided to tackle editing with my program Digital Photo Professional 4 that I recently put on my computer and I at firs thought it would be tough, but it was surprisingly easy to do. I had a lot of fun to work on my picture that I took the other day of my panflutes. I had a lot of fun working on editing it. I really like how it turned out. Seeing the wood of the vertical flute more in a reddish color contrasted well with the purple of the glass candle holder, which was slightly darkened at the same time, really gave it a rich element that I just enjoyed. Today was a day of discovery and I think I will wait for our world to become pitch black tonight to go work on a bit of photography and truly explore what I can do during the night. I may even be able to convince my husband to build a small fire in our pit so that I may just have some crazy fun with my camera. If I am able to do that, I will most definitively pick my best picture if I can tomorrow, edit it and show you the end result.
On top, you will see the before picture, and on the bottom, the after picture. Have a good end of week people!
Last night, I watched a YouTube Video entitled: Photography Basics in 10 minutes, by David Manning. If I would have watched this video from the start, it would have saved me a ton of time. Thanks to this video, I am finally able to start to understand how a camera works. I was able to trouble shoot my shots as I worked on them and saw more and more of the correlation of what the aperture will do with a certain kind of settings with my shutter. And as I was testing my numbers, I did see how much garbage a high ISO puts on a picture. So I will make sure to keep my ISO as low as possible when ever I can. Still, what a revelation this was for me tonight! I only worked for one hour, but I was able to discover oh so much from my Canon.
The shots you will see were in essence a blast from the past. When I first got my camera 6 years ago, I tried to photograph my pan flutes on my furishiki fabric without any idea what I was doing and I did not get anywhere. I think it was one of the reasons why my camera ended up in basically prison storage for 5 or 6 years. I had no idea how to proceed and I knew that my father would not really teach me anything. If I would have been a boy, things would have been different as I stated in a past blog post. I am not angry at my dad for that anymore, but it did leave a sour taste in my mouth for many years.
Tonight was at first a bit daunting, but I quickly went into action once I was in my basement workshop. I got all that I needed out of storage, and midway through, or a bit after that, I even added a small candle to complete the look. Yes, I could have tried to put my candle in a more aesthetic way, but for now, my job was to find out about how the aperture, shutter and ISO functions worked together on my camera. So, I went full blown into the deep end and put myself in manual mode. I swear, I will never go to auto ever again! Manual mode offers so much more freedom. It was great fun to find out how it all works and to actually see tangible results that I could now use and, more importantly, understand.
Yes, it will take a time to remember that the bigger the F/, the less light gets in, and the smaller the F/, the more light gets in. And if I am able to write this without checking my notes, I think I am getting there. All I needed was to learn the basics that seemed so frightening to me in the past as it was pure Chinese, but now, I get it, or at least starting to get it.
I am thrilled that I was able to get so much don in such short time. I can only imagine how my life will be in a year or two from now. The real test will be when I will be outside in the woods in the next few days, not sure when as they are forcasting rain for tomorrow. but, when I will go there, I will know how to add more light to my photos. Because the composition was good, but the light was always dim and grey. Now, I know how to trouble shoot my photos and to fix them on the spot, or try to at least.
Until then, see you on the other side of the flash.
Today, my daughter was just in one of those teenagers mood that even walking on eggs would not do. So, I took my dog, my camera and went out for a nice walk. The setting is easy to imagine, forecast, rain clouds about tu burst all over the place, little to no sun peeking through, right at the start of the day after lunch.
Simply walking around and taking advantage of the times my dog wanted to sniff around, I took some photos while tweeking the settings on my camera to really test this all through. But because of all the light, it was impossible for me to use the screen (I rarely do anyway) and went total viewfinder, which is my favourite way to take a picture. In a way, it was for me like back in the day with film, where you took a picture and hoped that it worked and could only find out later if it did.
While I was walking back home after 45 minutes of walk, I stumbled upon a nice flower that I had not seen before. It’s nice lavender kind of colour contrasted well with the green surroundings. My pictures are still a bit too dark and flat to my liking, okay, a lot too much, but I am getting there. I saw later on that there is a new function that I could have tweaked on, so I will do so next time I will go on a stroll. That function is called the AEB setting. I will tweak on that as well as the ISO and F/ numbers next time. But so far, I am learning.
The picture on the bottom that you will see, was taken with F10 ISO400. As I am tweaking with these, I am slowly starting to see how they work. It will take a lot more tweaking before I can know it by heart, but so far, so good.
I guess what I have been doing as of late has become more than stale for me. There is no more excitement in trying to write, or even to draw in graphite. But, I do believe I have found a new way of expressing myself that doesn’t leave me raw and “exposed” in the end (pun intended).
Recently, my daughter wanted to know more about photography. I tried to dabble a bit 6 years ago when I got my Canon EOS Rebel T3 camera. But soon lost the spark, if you do not mind me saying so. I was alone trying to find my way, with little to no resources that I knew of. Thankfully, I have come across of them as the years went by. Anyway, I digress. As I tried to explain the very few things I knew to my daughter, we started to have fun with my camera. We would experiment on a few tips and tricks we found on Pinterest and I felt like I was alive again after having been dried for far too long deep down inside. One good indicator of this was that when it was time to go to bed, I just could not sleep. My mind was literally on fire. What used to scare me now electrified me. I used to be terrified of the numbers and functions on my camera. What F should I use? What ISO should I go to? Which is the best setting? I used to have a headache just thinking about it and now, all I want to do is to figure it all out. I am far away from that, but I am getting there. Also, I used to love to hide and not let people see me create, and now, all I want to do is go out and find subjects to photograph.
One question does come to mind, what type of photography would I want to do? So far, creating stock pictures seems to be what attracts me the most. You know, these pictures we see in adds all over the internet, where everything is perfect and which attract people to a business? Yeah, those kinds. From textures to scenes, from the natural and wild to human and domestic. It all appeals to me simply because I want to be my own boss. I do not want to have to answer to somebody hiring me. And having been to enough weddings as a kid, helping my dad in his own photography business, I do know that this is not the avenue I want to take. I want to take pictures of anything that comes my way in the world and learn to make each picture not just beautiful, but downright stunning.
I will still write on occasion, I will still draw. But now, all I want to do is go outside and snap pictures. Too bad my mountain of laundry today will not allow me that, but I will still have fun testing my camera. Because testing is fun and seeing progress and slowly seeing my brain get it, is incredible.
So sorry if I have not written in months. The past few months have been challenging for all of us. With the covid19 mess and the new way of life we all have to get into, it has taken me a few weeks to get into it and be comfortable with it, while others have not yet grown accustomed to the whole situation.
You see, I am an introvert. I feel very comfortable not mingling with people. After I lost my mom, I felt like I had been propelled not only out into the stratosphere, but also out of the whole universe that I had known since my birth. And to be honest, I did not want to go back to where I was. All I wanted to do was learn to deal with my new situation, having become an orphan. This is something that could never be explained to me in a way that I could understand unless I actually lived it. And as much as I had been a sedentary woman in the past, my legs only wanted to move while my heart was bleeding from this new prospect. As if in a way, I was not only mourning my mom, my dad that died 4 years ago, but I was also mourning the person I used to be. I needed to explore this new life I was in, and the better way to do it was to just move. So, I started to walk more and more every day. Inside my home, outside of it when it was permitted to go outside. I had to move as I was going nuts sitting down and crying. And after two weeks, I still felt I needed to move, but I also needed to structure my new life. So, I contacted the only person I knew who was good at that stuff. My big sister who used to be a professional body builder since forever. I remember when she was not yet an adult, she was already into that stuff. And her being older than me by almost 6 years, I knew she had the knowledge I needed. So, I went to her and she became my coach.
For the past 3 1/2 months, I have been working my ass off to loose my extra weight that I have been carrying since I was 16 (and I am now 44, almost 45). Remembering how much I struggle in karate, I now had a purpose in my life. To not only loose all my extra weight, but to improve on my health, my cardio and anything I can work on so that never again I will be dead last in the dôjô. My ego took the wheel and I have been working my ass off not only in the workouts that my coach has been given me, but the food that I am now eating as I have switched my life to the keto lifestyle. I do nto call it a diet, because it is not one. It is my new lifestyle that fits with my new life. Away from my old world, embracing the new one.
I have stopped drawing, but the itch is tarting to come into my mind again. I have mostly been writing, taking the leap into the void and finally working on a story that I have had in mind since 2010-2012. I was too afraid to start on this new journey, but with all that has happened to me, I feel that it is time to just learn something new to express myself. I hope to add my own artwork into my book when it will be ready, but I am not in a hurry. I am still writing my first draft, which is horrendous right now. But, hopefully the future rewrites will look better. I am learning as I am going.
My novel will be one in the adventure genre, a bit like my favourite author, Edgar Rice Burroughs. I used to be into Stephen King, but my respect and admiration for the guy has taken a nosedive after seeing how he is on Twitter. Plus, I have found that horror is not really a genre I want to dive into as it is not a healthy escape for me, except from the occasional book I read.
I have joined a fantastic writer group, and I am having a ball in the write-in’s that we do twice a week. My workouts are pretty intense and sometimes, I can only find time to write during those write-in’s. The price is reasonable and I am having a ball learning the in’s and out’s of writing. I am currently learning on how to market myself for when I will be ready to have my novel out there, which will be part of a series, just like the Vic series by Jerry Gill. Just click on the links and it will take you to a whole new world. And about the write group, if you do decide to join, you will help me as this is part of the affiliate program I am part of in the group. The price is really cheep and the people are awesome.
So, for now, this is my life. Work out 2 days, rest one day, workout 2 days, rest 2 days, write when I can, eat healthy all day, read when I have a chance, and learn, learn, learn, from the best authors, the best writer community, the best people I can find in my life. I help those I can help, I research what I can research for my book, and I am doing my very best to survive this weird times where my soul is thriving and my body is just following along. I may go back to drawing soon, the itch is getting strong.
Life is worth living, and I hope that many of you will find the strength in them to live the kind of life they want to live, even if right now, we have to all stay a part. Life can be good, even when alone. Trust me, it’s all a question of perspective. If you decide that you are okay alone, then hold onto that and never let go. Because God knows when we will get out of this mess.