We are getting ready for the arrival of the grandbabies next week. The family is on vacation with my daughter’s in-laws right now- and most of the family is sick! I’m going with the theme right today, cube, and this is one of the most obvious cubes in my house right now. I hope we won’t need it!
The sunshine finally broke through the clouds this afternoon, bringing beautiful light to what has been gray and dull and turning it green and golden. Photography has not been my focus today, so the afternoon light was such a welcome diversion. I grabbed my camera and took a few shots of the light shining through the branches of the maytens tree.
My daughter’s family will be here one week from today! Today I am starting the babyproofing- Henry at 15 months is very active and into everything. I also am getting down some Easter decorations and getting organized for the egg hunt. Today’s Flickr challenge is oval, an easy topic for today.
The topic today is medicine cabinet. I took 3 photos of some essential oils using my speed light and added grunge in Snapseed on the iPad for a textured effect. I then added a watermark using :::TaDa!!!::: PHOTOSHOP TOUCH- all on the iPad!!!!! The test is whether I will be able to upload to WordPress.
Woo hoo- did it! I see the photo is smaller and doesn’t appear in the slideshow at the top- but that’s a small price to pay for the convenience of traveling with one iPad instead of 2 laptops! 🙂
On the road is the theme today- and the constant drizzle made getting out on the road pretty unappealing. I moved one of our bikes into the driveway and sat in the garage to take a quick photo. My aim was to import the photo into the iPad, edit it in iPhoto, and upload it to Flickr and my blog. Importing it to the iPad was a piece of cake, but I was pretty clueless about editing it in iPhoto. I played around with it, uploaded it to Flickr, and then tried to do the blog. WordPress wasn’t my best friend today, so I finally threw my hands in the air and am blogging old school- on my laptop. And since I am on my laptop, I did a few edits in Aperture and Photoshop- I just can’t help myself!
And here is a new and improved version edited later on the iPad with Snapseed!
My paper white stems grew really fast and quickly bent under the weight of the flowers. They are still graceful, however, and I often notice the new shapes as they fold and droop lower and lower. Today’s theme is mono, so I converted a photo I took this morning of my droopy stems to a black and white.
BTW for anyone interested in the Zone System, I metered off the green leaves at +1 (Zone 6)- and still had a few blinkies on the edge. It was probably a Zone 7.
Here is the black and white version.
The sun came out and allowed me to shoot some shadows for my Flickr group. I turned it into a black and white, but, since the subject of the photo was black and white, it didn’t make much of a difference. Kind of boring, but that’s it for today. In another week and a half I will have some (very cute) living subjects for my camera to focus on- can’t wait!!!
The topic: things that go together
The subject: toast and butter- YUM!
How delightful to have my photo done before I ate breakfast!
It’s a potpourri today. I did a ride-along with my husband on a drive to an out of town courthouse to search for some records for a claim he is handling. Today’s topic is street photography, and yesterday’s was construction– plus it is Fence Friday. I managed to take photos for all three, but did come to the conclusion, after a short while, that street photography in this area was not particularly safe. I moved to the square in front of the courthouse, where I photographed a little girl playing in the fountain. The midday sun was harsh in all the photos, as you can see. No golden hour here!
There was construction EVERYWHERE- even on the sidewalks.
On the way back home, we stopped so I could get my Friday fence photo. Here is a black and white version . . .
and an HDR one.
I have been reading about Ansel Adam’s zone system for achieving correct exposure in camera. One of the clickin moms swears it has totally transformed her SOOC images. When I read some tutorials, it totally made sense to me and explained why I often have to either adjust my exposure off zero in camera or in post processing. The theory is that you spot meter a tone in the average (18% gray) range to get perfect exposure throughout the image (something my Nikon system is supposed to do for me with matrix metering, as I understand it). My problem is what to do when the tone isn’t average.
Red is supposed to be an average tone, so I metered to zero- and it was overexposed. When I metered it a stop under zero, it was correct. This is SOOC, except for the watermark. I decided that it was a darker red, so it was really zone 4- and that was why it all worked. I was very proud of myself!
That was the last photo I took where I felt I knew what I was doing.
I thought that if a flower was Zone 4, you metered by spot metering the flower and adjusting the dials until the needle pointed to one stop less than zero. And if the flower was zone 6 (lighter), you would meter to +1. That doesn’t seem to be working for me! I then reversed my meter display, so that it would match the histogram and my zone system cheatsheet. That has only confused me more. I don’t know if I have things backward or not. My brain is exploding!
The system is working for me when I meter something in the average tones- green grass! Woot! But, other than that, mixed results.
The theme today is marine (I guess meaning anything associated with water). But my husband WAS a Marine and served in the Vietnam War- so, theoretically, I could just take another photo of him to satisfy today’s challenge.
But instead- here is one of the few items he brought home with him- his cap.
I’m going with the theme today- attachments and connections. Here is a photo of the beautiful necklace given to me by my husband- with connected hearts. OK, let’s hear it- Awwwwwwwwwwww !
The theme today was “do over again”- but I had no intention of re-doing one of my old photos to see how I had improved. It was a long day with its share of drama- and I am tired. Every macro shot I took after I got home was out of focus- and I am not feeling energetic enough to get out the tripod. So while my husband and son were on the phone chatting, I took a few photos, vaguely reminiscent of the photo I took last week of myself talking to our son. I went for the closeup and framed it differently- so there you have it.
The topic today is new purchase. It was a toss-up between today’s groceries and my husband’s brand new iPad, which arrived in the mail Friday. The iPad wins, hands down! It is pretty awesome.
Although it is going to be used for business, here is what it is being used for tonight. . .
and here is how I hope it will be used in the future!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I don’t have anything with a St. Patrick’s Day theme to post, but there is plenty of green in all my photos. I took a quick walk in our neighborhood today, armed this time with a plastic bag to cover the camera in case of a sudden downpour.
Our neighbor’s lavender is beginning to bloom.
The lemon tree on the corner is filled with gorgeous lemons.
I didn’t realize we had cows five minutes from our house!
All in all (to quote Mr. Rogers)it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. . .
melinda anderson photography 