You've been goosed!

One of the things I learned in Fundamentals of Digital Photography Part I was that exposure, composition, and focus all don't matter if you are taking pictures of small furry or feathery critters. Just try not to say "awwwwwwww!"

Ruby Tuesday

So a bunch of blog-photographers do a photo meme every Tuesday called Ruby Tuesday hosted at Work of the Poet. The goal is to get a ruby red themed picture. Like 127 that I took this weekend:But living here in East Tennessee, I went literal and got the BEST RUBY TUESDAY PICTURE EVER on my weekend photo safari in Maryville, TN this weekend:
Yep, that's the corporate headquarters of the restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday! It's THE RUBY TUESDAY.

By default I have taken the picture of the ultimate Ruby Tuesday. BOO YAH I WIN!!!!

What? There's no "winning"? No cash prize? well damn.........

Snapshot Monday

I think I need to check my 9 y/o son's room for a copy of Carnegie's book How To Win Friends and Influence People. If nothing he has learned to phrase a question to get the answer you want.

"Daddy?" he asked as he walked into my room late this afternoon, "Do you think you could take me to the pool so you could take some pictures of me?"

You might remember this cool picture I took of a plasma ball about two months ago....I couldn't help but remember it when I took this picture of our neighborhood pool in the late afternoon sun.Other than that, the rest of these are just snap shots. I wasn't worried about composition or anything other than getting decent exposure. I was just having fun goofing off.

Here the master manipulator flies through the air.#1 is true. This pool can never be self-restrained. It's quite embarrassing sometimes.Apparently, throwing mannequins into the pool is not allowed. (Jeeze....I have ONE wild party at the pool and they never let me hear the end of it......why not just add "Blow Up Dolls Are Not An Approved Live Saving Flotation Device"?)Yeah no lifeguard on duty. Based on the pictogram in the upper right corner, it appears he lost his pants and shuffled off covering his private parts with a white paper plate or something.Go ahead, get the hell out of here!

Saturday Morning Shoot

I hit the road this morning to get reacquainted with my DSLR that I finally got back this week. After two shoots, I am pretty certain they gave me an entirely different camera back and just switched the serial number plate. That or the firmware update made significant changes. Before sending it in, I usually liked to get my light meter about 1/3 to 2/3rd f-stops over neutral. Now, that is overexposed. I'm finding I need to be neutral or 1/3rd under neutral meter.

Anyway, here are some of my shots today.

I played with shadows some and knocked out Shadow Shot Sunday a day early, but that's okay because Harriet, the host of SSS, lives in Australia. They are way ahead of us on the international date/time line so it's probably already Sunday there....in the year 2011 or something.


The shadow of the light post above reminded me of the neck from the Martian ships in the 1953 version of War of The Worlds.
I also toyed around taking reflection shots. The first one my favorite from today. I set this up for about 5 minutes, trying to get the best angle and nailed it on the first shot. I took this using my 50mm prime lens. If you can't tell it's a reflection by the backwards wording, look at the bottom, just left of center and you can see some window cleaner bottles in the window.
I practiced framing shots within the frame. Some were better than others.

I worked on composition as well. I absolutely LOVE 127. As soon as I happened upon this scene, I knew it was going to be worth almost getting hit standing in the middle of the road to take the photograph.
And finally, some just because shots....
DOH! How did I clip off the top of the damn building??????? I was in such a hurry to get the shot while keeping an eye out for the oncoming traffic that I blew the shot. Cute place though.
An accurate depiction of East TN life. In fact, I dance just like the guy in the middle wearing the red shirt.
I adore photos that start a story in my head when I see them. I wonder who had an appointment with Shawanna at the City of Knoxville last week and for what purpose? Did they make the meeting or did losing this note blow it for them? Inquiring minds....
Hope you are having as much fun as I am this weekend.

I couldn't wait

...to get my camera back in action and Trevor was wanting to go fishing, so we went to the public fishing area off of Northshore and Concord. Unfortunately, he got bored after an hour so we left before sunset started. I don't really care, I was just glad to be shooting again.

These certainly aren't the best shots. I was fumbling with the camera controls like someone who had quit smoking for 37 days and was just now ripping back into their first pack of cigarettes. But damn it was fun.

"Sure, I used to fish on the banks, but it's much easier to just sit here and steal from the fishermen."
"C'mon you two.....get a room!"
Trevor didn't actually fish a whole lot, the banks were more fun for him.
"Dude....I'm so stoned."
Different dock, different heron.
"A Train Runs Through It" ~ I think it's a juxtaposition how you have this great natural setting of the water, trees and stuff with a train track running through the middle of it.
Yet another different heron. This one seemed like he was racing the train or at least following along with it.
I'll get some better stuff this weekend.

Broken record fixed

FINALLY, my repaired camera made it home today, thirty seven days and $151 later.

My joy last week was a bit premature. My camera seemed to have gotten lost somewhere in the process. I had talked to 4 different people at Nikon and none of them could figure out why the repair had been completed but it hadn't shipped out yet. I was going to call them back yesterday afternoon because they had not gotten in touch with me as promised when suddenly the camera that no one could find for several days now showed that it not only had shipped, it arrived in Knoxville late last night. Apparently it did get temporarily misplaced at first and then in the quest to get it out quickly, someone never changed the status to "Shipped". By the time they figured it out, it had been traveling for 2 days already!

Anyway, had to take one last shot with the little compact, pocket point and shoot camera.....

Now if you'll excuse me, my camera and I need some time alone together;) ha ha

On edit: OMG....I just realized my camera is wearing "protection".

And The Angels Rejoiced!!!!

Please excuse me while I do my happy dance with Godzilla! Feel free to do so amongst yourselves.




I just got of the phone with Nikon and they are done with the repairs to my severely missed camera. They are processing it for shipment now!!!!!!!!!!

Due to various delays, it has been two days shy of a month since I broke the damn thing. I'm so happy, can ya tell!?!?

Rock on, Godzilla!

Parallax Error

Do you take pictures of someone and even though you had the shot perfect in the viewfinder, when you snap the shot, the top of their head is chopped off? This might help you. There's a ton I don't know yet about photography but I do like to pass on what I do know.

I took this shot yesterday afternoon with a point and shoot camera. I was just playing with composition. Even though I framed it right, as you can see I chopped off the top of the maple tree buds.
This is often because of something called a "parallax error". This happens when using a camera with two lenses, one is used for taking the picture the other lens is the viewfinder. Usually the viewfinder is located above the camera lens. The two lenses see ALMOST the same thing but not exactly, as I've drawn below. The red lines are what the camera lens "sees" and the blue represents what the viewfinder lens "sees.

In the above picture, the top of the head won't be cut off. But, the closer you get to your subject, the parallax error has more of an effect. So in the shot below, the viewfinder would show you that the picture is framed correctly but when you snap the photo, the camera lens is going to cut our poor model's head off.

DSLR cameras eliminate this problem entirely because there is only one lens (single lens reflex). What you see through the viewfinder IS coming from the camera lens. A lot of point and shoot digital cameras also now use a through the lens (TTL) viewfinder. But cheaper digital cameras and any non-slr film camera will be affected by the parallax error.

How do you fix it? Just be aware and allow for a little extra room up top when framing a picture. Be very careful to adjust for it when taking close ups.

Old Man Waiting At The Window

I took this shot today of a 78 y/o neighbor looking out of his door window this afternoon waiting for his daughter bringing his wife home from the doctor's office.Ok, I'm kidding. I made this shot of myself tonight using my son's pocket camera, a Fuji Fine Pix Z20. And I wasn't "by a window".

I was walking down the hall this afternoon when I saw that one golden beam of late afternoon sunlight coming from the window in my son's bathroom reflecting on the door jam on my bedroom about 20 feet away. I saw my shadow pass in front of it as I walked to my bedroom and stopped. The word "composition" flashed through my head and I started playing.

I put the little camera on a tripod and then stood about halfway between the window and the door, lining my shadow up on the wall. I then reached down and snapped the shot.

To give you an idea of how small of a sliver of light this is, here is the rest of the light that was caught by a wall by the bathroom. Only the right edge of the octagonal window was hitting the door jamb in the first photo.To be honest, I'm pretty damn proud of the image I created in the first picture using a crappy camera. This is what I like about photography. Sometimes it's not just "recording a happening". Sometimes, it is creating a scene, developing a mood, and telling a story.

I still can't wait to get MY camera back.

If April Showers bring May Flowers

Then what the heck do April Snow Showers bring?
It was seventy something degrees two days ago and now we have snow on the ground? In April? I had to snap a shot or two this morning before leaving for work. I loved how the leaves of the tulips are all curled up like they are shivering!

Your Camera Doesn't Matter

"The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it." - Ansel Adams

Ken Rockwell has this great article about why your camera doesn't matter.

Our photography instructor, Tom Geisler echoed this when he pointed out that Ansel Adams could take a pinhole camera and take a better photograph with one shot than most people could with a top of the line digital camera.

That's true. But it's also true that Lance Armstrong could beat me in a 100 mile bike race if he were on a bike with two flat tires and a corn cob for a bike seat. The point they are missing is that Lance isn't going to enjoy it too much :0 :) !!!!!!!!!

So yeah, I am still using my point and shoot and I'm not enjoying it much. Nikon got my camera on 3/27 and I approved the repairs ($131.....cheaper than buying a new body) yesterday, so hopefully I'll have it back in a week.

In the mean time, I went out this morning to TRY to take some shots with the old camera. It's really frustrating not being able to manually focus, set a custom white balance, and I keep reaching for the lens as if I'm going to be able to adjust it to frame the shot.

Tennessee Veterans' Cemetery. The tombstones always remind me of soldiers lined up on a hill before the battle.
It's hard not to feel thankful when I visit here. I also hope that my children never have to answer the call.Play Ball! Glad to see I'm not the only idiot out in the fog at 7 in the morning. (see? I've gotten so over shooting this mediocre shots that I didn't even bother cropping out the score board on the left;) )I wanted to get a better view of the baseball diamond so I climbed up the steep hill through this water runoff and got my feet covered in red clay. This isn't a great shot, it just shows that a part of my enjoyment of photography is climbing over things, getting places where you probably aren't supposed to be, and having fun doing it.
This is where not having my DSLR camera drove me nuts. I found some GREAT spider webs with dew drops, the area was rotten with them. But the autofocus of the camera absolutely would not focus in the low light, no matter how much I begged it or cursed it.
At that point, It was getting to be 8am and I decided to call it a morning. I think I'll go start my first homemade pastrami (should be done by tonight), go for a run, and then get to painting the spawn's room.

Have a great weekend!