When last I posted pictures, I promised to keep up better. Evidently I was lying. Sorry about that. But without further ado, I present pictures!
February 17, 2008:
I thought this might make a nice colorful picture, and it did. I love my Prismacolor pencils. Sophia and I spent the day coloring. As you can see, both her favorite color (pink) and one of mine (green) are well used.
February 20, 2008:
I took about a zillion pictures of the lunar eclipse, and none came out as nicely as I would have liked, but I did like the way the bare dogwood tree branches look all silvery in the flash on this one. And the moon, though small, is clearly partially obscured.
February 22, 2008:
In retrospect, I appear to have been tired of the lack of color during February, because I appear to have gone out of my way to capture color.
February 24, 2008:
This is a performance of a drama I co-wrote for Lent. We did six of these, one a week until Easter, and it was a lot of work but I think people generally liked them.
February 25, 2008:
A second run at the desolate garden.
February 26, 2008:
Snow and water. I thought it’d present a more compelling image somehow.
February 27, 2008:
I have no idea. It must have looked cool in person.
February 29, 2008:
Kids jumping into swimming pool. One of my favorite things about my new camera is the ability to get non-blurry pictures of action.
Oh look, I’ve gotten to the end of February. Now I’m only two months behind! Of course, I took no pictures while ill so that’s about two weeks in April that are unaccounted for, so I’m less behind than you might think by date. I’ll do one more, so I can be in March, and only one month behind.
March 1, 2008:
A sunset, instead of the usual sunrises I offer. The colors were better than I captured, I’m not sure why, but it still looks pretty good. Also you can see all my neighbors’ yards.
Comments
I think you’d be happier with your pictures if you futzed with them a bit. It doesn’t take Photoshop; there’s an open source program called Gimp that’ll do a lot, and some version of Photoshop Elements may have come with your camera, or with your scanner if you have one.
If you’re willing to try hardware, get a fixed-aperture f/1.4 50mm lens. Mine was $78 and I can’t believe the difference. It lets in way more light than a longer lens, so the flash never fires and the pictures are warm and delightful.
And try this blog:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/…
Her photos are wonderful, but she futzes with every single one. I used just one of her favorite tricks (a duplicate layer in Hard Light blending mode) on your snow and water shot, and I think it got closer to what you probably saw.
http://www.kostia.net/pics/… and Water-hard light.png
That link to the edited picture had a space in it. This will work: http://tinyurl.com/42v5lh
I love the picture of the pencils – it looks like it could be a postcard.
These are great!
You’re right, Elaine, your futzing around goes a long way toward making the picture more like what I saw. Maybe I’ll take a run at that sometime. Unfortunately, I spent the better part of the weekend listening to Kurt wail about how much trouble it is to get Gimp working on OSX and struggling to use it. It will be a while before I willingly submit myself to that level of frustration.
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This blog, Among Mad People, and its contents by Anna Schwind are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
On a backcloth of lashes and stars