A Photo a Day: Day 16

We went to play on the square today, and the weather was gorgeous, so I finally had a chance to take some city pictures.

These - and more - are going to replace the taken-with-my-phone pictures that I use on many of my bottle openers that I sell locally.

Two favorites - this is a a sculpture and also a steam fountain, and it's a delight to photograph:

I also really like this one (which I've run through a few filters/Actions) - but I know that with a better lens it really could've been amazing. I think right now it looks a bit flat and I wish the pillar in the foreground popped and/or that the background was a little less in focus. Still, I like it.

A Photo a Day: Day 15

It was cold, rainy, and disgusting outside.

The FatMumSlim photo prompt was "Mail" so I came up with this...

A Photo a Day: Day 14

My kid got a haircut today so I ran around like the paparazzi and played with my camera's settings. I still am trying to learn why when I set it to aperture priority, I can take great shots, but if I go to either shutter priority or manual, I often get shots that are VERY dark, despite my best efforts. I'll get it.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite shots from the haircut:

Another dilemma - the warmth/coolness of the tones in the pictures. I ran this through Photoshop, and the original was much warmer. Part of me really likes that. But possibly that's too yellow/orange/red? And this seems more accurate. I also am figuring out how much sharpening I like - I can do it manually or I can use one of a few Actions I've now accumulated. But sometimes sharpened looks fake. And sometimes it looks enhanced in a good way.

I was thinking about how my wedding was shot on film - I insisted, and I bet we were one of the last weddings our photographer shot on film - and how even there, our photographer tweaked the final images we purchased (vs. the raw proofs) and how tweaking is OK and even necessary. But I'm trying to learn how much is just right. I hope to develop that eye over time.

I've had this camera for two weeks. I'm having an amazing time with it.

A Photo a Day: Lucky 13

This is my daughter walking unassisted at physical therapy.

I love it.

OK so while I of course love that she is WALKING! WALKING UNASSISTED! I also love this shot. The background is a little blurry, you can see the motion in her body, but her torso is perfectly in focus. If I were faster, I'd have set the focus point a little differently, maybe. And yet....this is, to me, exactly what I was trying to capture.

A Photo a Day: Day 12

I took one picture today (OK technically I clicked the shutter a few times - I kept one of them) - of my lunch.

Spiralized turnip, spinach, garlic, "tofu cutlet," parmesan. It was so good. Also this picture's histogram was fantastic. Photoshopped: Cropped to square (I put it on Instagram with an Instagram filter over it) and sharpened.

I also Photoshopped a picture from yesterday that was blurry yet still awesome. I turned it from a bad picture into a little bit of art.

See where it says my blog name? That's just placeholders for her album name and her name, obviously. Or her zine title.

I also watched some tutorial videos on YouTube, loaded the camera's software onto my computer (may never use it but it's the only way - for now - that I can access raw files), and spent some time on Etsy looking at various camera bags and straps. I have a gift card generously given to me for my birthday and I think I've found what I want to get. But I'm going to wait a few days before hitting purchase, just in case.

What I really need to do is go on a photo safari of my little city - I took phone pictures a few years back and used them on my line of bottle openers and pocket mirrors that I sell at the artist co-op. I can do so much better with that now. But it's cold here. Thursday looks promising...

A Photo a Day: Day 11

I got some lovely shots of my kid (some overexposed, some blurry, all fun) but I'm going to share this one of my cat instead. He was in my lap and wouldn't move. I all but put the lens on his nose to get this shot. A tiny bit blurry (fixed a tinier bit with sharpening in Photoshop). A lot of love in it. I had the settings...almost right.

A Photo a Day: Day 10

I am determined to keep this up for at least the entire month of January, but cold/gray days don't make for good photography days.

I'm learning as I go, which sometimes is frustrating - because I'll figure out something and then realize that I should've used whatever that technique was a week ago. It's the reason I probably should take a class or at least find an in-person mentor to help me out. I'm reaching that place I often get to where the enthusiasm wanes and reality sets in.

But I want to make this work.

So I practiced taking pictures indoors, in terrible light, of my very very black cat. He's probably hard for just about anyone to get right in a photo. But he's so cute when he sleeps.

These two pictures were taken about a minute apart with minimal changes in settings. Yet one's blown out overexposed (though I like the effect) and one is truer to life. Both tweaked in Photoshop - resized, sharpened, auto-color/levels/contrast.

I think I like the top one better because it's more accurate (and also because he wasn't annoyed yet - you can see that he opened his eyes to give me a dirty look in the bottom one) but the bottom one has so much more detail on him. And neither are exactly right. With a better lens, I do think I know how I could get that quilt-background to be much blurrier though.

Also I am learning that if the light is too low and the aperture is set incorrectly, the shutter speed slows to about 5 seconds and the camera gets - justifiably - crabby. But it also makes something kind of beautiful. As in....

Direct from my camera card to the blog. I deliberately started moving the camera around while the shutter was open.

And then for fun I staged a photo for the FatMumSlim photo a day challenge - today's theme was "lucky" so I combined my black cat with my losing Powerball ticket. Then I cheated the entire thing by running a Polaroid-style action that made any messiness and improper exposure look artsy....

One thing I think I need to start doing is taking notes of EXACTLY what settings I'm using with each shot. Yes, I can see most of that in Photoshop, but I'm talking about on the fly so I can see what works in real time and learn from it. It's a new week. I'll start that ASAP.

...Then while my kid and I were playing Monopoly Jr. I decided to try taking pictures while manually setting the focus and putting my camera on the floor. I'm really happy with how these came out. Direct from the camera: