A Little Bit of Everything

I finally started shooting in RAW.  Before I only used it when I was going to be in a low light or bad shooting conditions and needed all the data I could get.  But I've finally gotten fairly aggressive in my deleting (so I won't run out of space so quickly) and I want to please my photography teacher.  It puzzles me what SOOC means with a RAW file and Lightroom's import settings, but I set all the sliders (except white balance) to 0 for my "macro" for shoot and edit.

SOOC:

Edit:

Crop, Blacks +7, Brightness +10, Clarity +25, Vibrance +10 and sharpening

As far as I can tell the biggest down side to shooting in RAW is all those presets designed for RAW now work on my images and every picture has 10 ways it can go that I like.  Fun...but time consuming!

Even when hiding the beautiful fall colors in black and white 

or 

giving Sunflower some "fashion" colors.

Jelly on her face and all.  

Of course I can still do clean and simple edits.

Still Life

In order to please my photography teacher I also bought a speedlight for my camera...okay, mostly to please myself, but I really do like getting A's even in ungraded continuing education classes.   But today we have our first lab and he is bringing in all of his Canon gear to show us lighting set-ups etc.  I figured I have the money set aside I might as well buy it now and benefit more from his knowledge (his Canon speedlight wasn't going to work on my Nikon).  So of course, I did play with it a little.  I think I might get to really like it.  (I also bought a diffuser and a cord to take it off camera.)  Besides learning how to use it, the biggest downside is that it is heavier than my camera.

Now I know I have a lot to learn, but I am really excited about the idea of being able to take pictures in lower light settings without losing details.  While shooting pictures of Oak in the kitchen, Sunflower fell out of her bed.  I went up to check on her and she was instantly happy...sitting on the floor.  Since I'd carried my camera with me, I was able to take a picture even though the only light on was the hall light behind me.  The hard part was focusing.

No editing...but I did leave the LR import preset.  What do you think?

Of course, there are some little quirks I need to understand a little better.  One is that my camera does not support high speed sync...but if the flash isn't mounted all the way in it can stop talking to the flash just enough that it doesn't force my shutter speed to 1/200 but still flashes...makes for a funky photo.

It has something to do with having two shutters to get higher shutter speeds, overlapping, and some such stuff...but I did think I'd gotten a very broken flash for a bit.  It might be fun to play with someday, but in the meantime I experimented with basic ttl and some pears...after all everyone takes pictures of pears and we happened to have some.  Oak said this was a good example of pictures I can take 500 of for experimentation and then delete them all.

(I added the grain in lightroom because I like to play, but the colors and details were just right with the flash)

I told him that if I ever made money selling pictures of pears...as some people do...I would not share the profits with him...anything else, yes, but not pears.  So I am now planning to go into the pear portrait business.  I think I need some French text.

I am linking up with This or That as that is exactly what this post is.

Some Sunflower Snapshots

I have been following Katie Lloyd's 31 days to releasing your inner artist.  I've spent so much of my life thinking of myself as anything but an artist--the literal one, the one good at math, the geek...it is taking me time to accept that in photography I might just be an artist.  It has definitely always been a "creative outlet" and now more so than ever, but art?  That is really hard for my mind to wrap around.  I really dislike reading posts about how you can learn all the technical stuff but an artistic eye cannot be taught.  But there is still a lot of the technical side of photography for me to learn before my photos start being judged solely for lack of art.  Anyway, that is just a thought I'm mulling over.  Am I an artist?  Do I have what it takes?  Does it matter?

In the meantime, I'm reading all I can to learn more and taking a lot of pictures to get better...I certainly haven't maxed out my potential yet.  And Katie challenged us to find inspiration in what we have around the house since we cannot always go out to capture beauty.  I feel like it is almost cheating to participate since over half of my pictures are taken at home...and are of the same subject that is with me everywhere.  But it is true that my daughter inspires me...to be more active, to be more creative, to have more fun, to be a better mother, to be a better example...each and every day.

She also makes me laugh and laugh and laugh so I'm also linking to Simplicity's Photo Challenge: Laugh Out Loud.  (Simplicity is hosting 31 Days of Inspiring Photography for the month of October.)

Here is where she tells me that this rock is her "pecial rock...it's precious to me."

This is right after I told her that she could not go into the house and bring her stuffed animal into the wet yard.  "She's my baby!  It's dry!  Daddy said I could!"  Ummmm, still no.  (Yes, this makes me laugh.)

Here is where she decided to change her clean boots for the boots the boys had left out only to discover a spider web in one of them.  "Get it out, Mommy."   No.

"Push me, Mommy!"  No...again.

"I could have climbed up the slide better if you'd helped me put on those other boots."  No, I don't think so...but I will give you a hand.  It seems like these stories are more about me saying no than laughing out loud, but I assure you that her sheer enthusiasm, determination, persistence, and overall energy can usually crack us up.  She is a real joy to be around.

As my 7 year old said yesterday, "Mommy, was I as funny as Sunflower when I was her age?"  Ummmm, sorry, but no.  He came into his funny a few years later.   His idea is that if Sunflower is ever homeless she could make money by going around and making people laugh.