It doesn’t matter to me!

Being a hobbist photographer is so much fun and rewarding.   But there are times that I am astounded at the cut throat, bashing and meanness that can come from those that have this love of art. There is lots of fun between us when debating over a certain camera brand, printing services or even down to the type of paper your lovely image is printed on.  Everyone has their own opinions, likes and dislikes. Hey, that is just what makes the world go around.  I love a good debate over matte vs. metallic paper any old day. It honestly does NOT matter to me how a person gets the end results of photo. As long as they took that picture and it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside, then who cares if they photo shopped the hell out of it. I honestly can’t imagine taking a picture with my digital camera and not working it in photo shop. It’s almost impossible now days.  But since I am having a bit of a rant today, here is a list of…..

IT DOESN’T MATTER TO ME IF ITS..!

1. Film or digital

2. Canon or Nikon

3. Photo shopped or Nekkid

4. Point n Shoot or dSLR

5. Shallow dof or infinity

6. Think Tank or Brown Paper Bag

7. Manfrotto or Velbon

8. Jpeg or RAW

It simply does not matter to me how you got your wonderful piece of art (as long as you didn’t right click and save it as your own from someone else)…. While I may not personally like your high noon, point and shoot, unedited jpeg photo, who am I to snarl my nose when it’s not my wall it will be hanging on?

And now I would like to share a picture that I took back in the summer and photo shopped it until it made my heart sing

The Good, The Not So Good and the Down Right Ugly!

Back around Thanksgiving my wonderful stepdad found me this fabulous old Mamiya 645 s1000 Camera. This camera is  large with a hefty weight to go along with it’s size. I was besides myself waiting to get my hands on it, let alone loading it up with film and testing it out.

 

So, I loaded a roll of Ilford 400  c41 B&W film into it and off  I go. I wasted a couple of exposures just be simply picking the camera up and hitting the bottom shutter button. That’s when I learned that it actually has a shutter lock on it that helps prevent accidental snapping!

Let’s start with the Down Right Ugly first. Because I have never used one of these cameras before, I had no clue as to what I was doing.  To get the right shutter speed for the film speed and F stop I had chosen, I used my canon 7D has my meter  and adjusted the Mamiya as needed. Hey, it worked for me. But what I struggled most with was the focusing. Pretty difficult if you ask me.

Now on to the “Not So Good”. Here I was trying to get this focusing down. Not a bad shot, but still missed the focusing mark.

So, out of 15 exposures, I ended up with, only a very select few, more like a couple of decent shots with this camera. I may have been a tad disappointed, but it was only in my lack of knowledge of this camera. I think this camera ROCKS!

 So here is the couple of  ”The Good” shots that I did get.

I have a roll of Kodak Portra 220 to load into it next. Got my fingers crossed X.

Looking forward to trying TTV photography with my Argus Twins Lens that I will be getting in a few weeks. (Another flea market find  from my step dad).

Let’s hear it for The Grandkids!

No! not my Grandkids.  One of my co-workers asked me to do some pictures of her grandkids because she wants to fill her house with photos of them.  This family was one of the greatest families I have ever photographed. They let me choose the location (sweet), and they came all dressed in colors perfect for the season. They came ready for this shoot, very cooperative, telling me what they wanted and would strike a pose before I even had the camera set! For Danny and Regina… Michael and Rachel. I love you guys!

Miss E.

Last weekend I had a great time hanging out with Miss E. I was really tested during this photo session when Miss E invited 11 of her young friends to join her during this shoot. And all I can say is WOW! I can’t believe I managed to get a few good shots of that many kids under the age of 10 in one photo! I couldn’t have done this without the help of Miss E’s mom and my son Brandon’s help in kid wrangling!

Tybee Island Get Away

I’ve been trying for days to get a post up about our trip down to Tybee Island, Georgia, but I just can’t seem to get everything together. Im just going to post my pictures and say a little about them as I go…

 

All packed and ready to hit the beach.. only a few miles from home and I’m already kicked back and ready for the trip.

Our first souvenir  of the trip was given to us by a hateful Truetlen Co. Ga Sheriff in the form of a 161.00 citation because of my tinted windows! But we were determined not to let this stop us from enjoying out vacation.

In the above photos you can see that I managed to get a sunrise photo one morning. It was the only morning that it wasn’t over cast.  I also got a bit to much sun that day.  I sure did enjoy getting to have a vacation with my sister and also visiting my dearest friend who happens to live close to Tybee Island.

My friend Liz and her boyfriend met us out on the pier one evening and took my husband fishing.  It was exciting when he reeled in a Stingray of all things. Very cool indeed.  And if you ever visit Tybee, you must view the lighthouse from the beach and have dinner at The Crab Shack!

Seagulls always astound me. They are little stalkers, and if you dare take any snacks to the beach, be prepared to share with these guys. They sure loved them some caramel bugles. Top, right photo.. My sister Deanna. Loved my time with her.

If you are looking for a nice relaxed beach vacation, Tybee Island would be a great place. There isn’t that much to do there on the small Island, but you are only 30 minutes from Savannah or you could head over to Hilton Head for a little more fun.

book review (Before I go to Sleep)

 

I am a member of a couple of book/reading groups on Facebook where I get some awesome ideas for good reads.  A while back some girls where talking about the book “Before I go to Sleep” by S.J. Watson.  Reviews such as, loved it, stayed up all night reading it, couldn’t put it down. Amazon also has it listed as 4 stars, out of 5. Well, I read the book and I am not sure where these rave reviews are coming from.  The story line seemed to be straight out of a Lifetime channel movie. Christina/Chrissy/Chris has had a horrible “accident”, where she loses her memory every night while sleeping. She wakes up and her husband has to tell her everyday who she is and about their life.  After a few chapters of reading, the story got old and very repetitive. Moving at a very slow pace. I thought seriously about not finishing the book, but kept remembering the reviews that said the ending was great, so I kept on reading. The ending was very predictable and not all that exciting.   What what really had me disliking this book was about 2/3′s of the way through the author started using the “F” word like crazy, totally in places that it wasn’t called for. I began to wonder if the author was actually a teenager, you know how they are, sneaking around with your friends and smoking ciggies and using dirty words to act grown-up? ….oh wait, I did that too at 16. LOL. Really, the language doesn’t bother me, it just didn’t suit this story.

 

Anyway, A HUGE thumbs down from me.  Just wasn’t to my liking. But hey!  I am the one that loved the Augusten Burroughs book, “Running with Scissors”, possibly my all time favorite book, and it got horrible reviews.

 

The wonderful world of Color!

I was catching up on some blog reading and came across a cool tutorial from MCP actions and how simple it is to change colors of an object in your photos. Well, it looked simple enough and had to give it ago and chose to change the color of the brick to match the color of the girls dress.  What fun and how it can totally change a photo! I just love learning something new.  Would love to know what ya think about it.

Here is the link to the awesome and easy tutorial. MCP Blog – Change the color of an object.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the Basic’s

To the couple of  people that read my blog. With my renewal for the old blog coming up soon, I’ve decided to ditch my donnatomlin.com blog and go with the free version of donnatomlin.wordpress.com. The cost to run the other blog  just seemed to be a bit ridiculous when I wasn’t willing to learn how to “run it”.  It was just to much of a headache to make changes, when I wasn’t really comfortable at making those changes. Might as well save my money and keep it Simple .