Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Song Titles

I have begun the task of compiling song titles to use for photos.
The lyrics have an influence on what each photo is about.

Graffiti Six and Elton John figure in among the artists appearing on the list.
A more complete compilation will come.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Danyelle.

Danyelle. by speckled_beckle
Danyelle., a photo by speckled_beckle on Flickr.
Danyelle and her hubby operate Art Haus Ceramics in Severance, Colorado.

Their work is amazing. If you follow that link, it will take you to their Etsy store front.

(During our 90 minute session on location at her studio, Danyelle threw a tea set: pot, spout, and mugs, as well as other things.)

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Neglectful Ninny

I feel as though I have been neglecting my blog, but I have been neglecting a whole mess of things lately, so I guess neglecting the blog just makes it par for the course.

Last week was my last spring break as a college-degree-less woman.
I did truly nothing productive, aside from deal with some rearrangement issues that had been stagnating since my move back home last month. (There is still more to be done.)
There was a lot of Pinterest pinning, though (you can follow me here, if you have a Pinterest account, or request an invite in the comments on this post, if you don't have an account).
I also spent some quality time with my puppy, Bailey. There are worse things I could have done. =)
Attempts were made to catch up on notes from my anatomy class, but that's really all they were: attempts.
My family also had a fire to deal with. We lost a shed and its contents, but no one got hurt and nothing vital was lost.

In the move home, I seem to have lost my flash drive somewhere. It only had my school work on it, so I did not lose any client work, but I still mourn its disappearance. I bring this up because I need to share some more posts on what we've been doing in my studio class. (And there is work on the flash drive that has not yet been shared here.)

Oh well. Further posts are in order here, anyway, so I shall just upload the images straight from my laptop.

I have three shoots coming up before the end of the month: two this Friday and one next Saturday. I am excited about all of them, but the second one on Friday is especially exciting for me!

I will be writing more on that later, as well as sharing a link to a blog relating to that project.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Canon vs. Nikon

In my studio class, there exists a pretty even ratio of Nikon-to-Canon users. The other two students in class shoot Sony.

(Seeing all the trouble that the instructor is having getting equipment to work for the Sony shooters, I am very glad that I did not decide to go with a Sony Alpha when I purchased my dSLR.)

There seems to exist a strange divergence in the world between Nikon shooters and Canon users. (Or so it would seem.)
We even tease each other in class about it.

I like to think that I purchased a Canon camera because the definition of "canon" is: "a general law, rule, principle, or criterion by which something is judged."
...but, that's not why.

I chose a Canon because the point-and-shoot camera that I used directly before purchasing my dSLR was a Canon PowerShot SX110IS.
It was amazing: macro capabilities, non-Auto settings, manual focus, selective focus... It was beautiful. It was definitely a stepping stone on the way to a dSLR from a full-auto point-and-shoot.
I figured (and was proven correct!) that sticking with the same brand when it came time to purchase a dSLR was beneficial, in that I would already be familiar with the symbols and jargon. Because I owned a Canon previously, it was so much easier to acclimatize myself to a heftier camera.

At a wedding I shot a few years ago, the photographer I was working for handed me the film Nikon she was shooting with and asked for a photograph of her with her brother, the groom. I was a little intimidated, to be honest.
I had only had Betty (my camera) for a few months and was not 100% sure of what she was capable of. (I knew what I was doing, but I definitely did not know as much as I do now!) Then here I was, on the job, being handed a film Nikon. I felt like a stranger in a large city: I had only ever shot my parents' 35mm film camera* before, and it had a fixed-range lens.
Luckily, the lens on the Nikon had an auto-focus feature. I looked through the viewfinder, composed my shot, and pressed the shutter. When I wound the film to take a second frame, it sounded as though more film passed through than what should have, but I snapped a second photograph and then handed the camera back.

That was my grand extent and use of Nikons.

So, when a fellow photographer friend of mine came to me a few months ago, asking for help with her camera --she didn't quite understand white balance among other things and had been shooting full-auto for a while-- I filled in the basics.
Some of what I answered left her confused: she didn't know if her camera could do that or not, or where the button was to do that. We looked up an online manual for her camera, and I showed her a few things from what I had read. Then I encouraged her to go home and read her manual. I remember saying something to the effect of, "What you read may not make sense right now, but when you're out shooting and you want to do something, or you're reading a photo blog and the Nikon-shooting photographer mentions a certain technical aspect that can be done in-camera, it will click, and you will get it."

She's a lot more experienced now, and can navigate her Nikon a lot more expertly.
I don't think I had much to do with it. She has had a lot more time to use it now.
(She admitted to me today that she still hasn't read the manual. Ha.)

...notice I said "was" a few paragraphs ago: That was my grand extent and use of Nikons. 
I shot maybe 50 pictures with her Nikon today, quite breezily.

I was not intimidated this time.
(Dare I say it?) I even liked it...
In fact, I would love to own a D90 or a D7000 one day, yes'm.

Honestly, I don't get the whole debate between Nikon shooters and Canon shooters.
I really don't.
Any photographer knows that the most important piece of photographic equipment that a photographer can have lies just behind the viewfinder.
The second most important piece of equipment lies directly opposite that in the lens.

...but, I will save that discussion for a later blog post.

*I said above that I had only ever shot my parents' 35mm film camera before. That's true, when it comes to the types of cameras that I had shot, in which the film had to be loaded, wound, and then rewound, similar to the Nikon I was speaking about. That old camera was not the only one I had ever shot before digital, however; I used countless numbers of disposable cameras and shot film on at least three others that used film packaged in canisters (meaning: I didn't touch it and the rewinding was done automatically by the push of a button). I did not mention these other cameras in the main part of the blog post because they are not like the Nikon in any way except that they used film.