Yard Snappin

So, I’ve decided to try and revive this dead blog with yet another photo project. ( I see all the eye rolling!) I was reading a cooking blog this morning about food ideas for memorial day,ya know, hotdogs, ribs and baked beans, when this idea jumped out and slapped me in the head! I am gonna do a once a week post of pictures from my yard. You see the connection between the 2 don’t cha? Yeah! I don’t either.. But it show’s just how “off” I am most of the time. Anywho, it boils down to this.. This spring I got plant fever, which I normally do every year and then absolutely plant nothing. This year has been different and I have planted lot’s of stuff. Now whether or not any of it survives is the big question. Usually, I sit and watch all of the birds at the feeders, butterflies and bees buzzing around the flowers and now I am gonna start keeping my camera handy and snapping photos and doing a post once a week. Now, this won’t be about how to garden because I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but yet, just the goings on in my yard and bird feeders. Looking for a good snazzy title for this project and would like some input on that. For now, I am going with the cheesy “Yard Snappin”.

Here it goes with the first posting of this weeks yard snaps.

First butterfly to hit the butterfly bush since it started blooming..

This little baby was calling for it’s momma wanting to be fed.

BlACKBIRDS…little heathens have cool eyes though..

My new little trellis/fence. I heart this and I’m sure it will be it a lot of my posts..

Instagram Printing

It has been 2 1/2 months since I last logged in and blogged, so I think it is only fair that I legally change my name to S L A C K E R.  I,  the slacker that I am, always have good intentions to sit down and blog but, crapola just seems to keep getting in the way. Well, today is your lucky day as I seem to have found something worth blogging about.. (to me , that SLACKER!) that is.

I admit that I am an INSTAGRAMing fool! As much as I love my big fancy camera, I also love my iphone that I am never without. While you can’t hardly ever get me outta bed early enough on the weekends to shoot a sunrise, I will glady whip out my iphone to catch some amazing morning shots on my drive to work.  The problem was, that all of these pictures where trapped in my phone, and without transferring from phone to computer, from computer to print company, I was only enjoying the photos from within my phone.

I have heard of instagram printing companies, but I was being super lazy, again SLACKING, about placing my first order. Plus, using other local printers to print instagram photos might be a problem because of the square format. So anyway, I ended up using an app on my iphone called Imagecrop that allowed me to place the instagram photo into a 4×6 photo template, only from what I have read, you can’t actually crop your photo with this app (?), but it served its purpose for me. Once saved I opened my Walgreens app, and under photo, I quickly selected the photos I wanted printed. I had my photos within the hour. HAPPY!

You could easily trim the white border from each side if you wish. I happen to like it.

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Long ago in a land far far away……..

 

Okay, so it was in the late 70′s and out in the country in Barnesville, Ga where I grew up.

My friend James on Facebook posted a song earlier “Hello its me” by Todd Rundgren and that got me into listening to some other songs from around that time, like, Paul Davis ” Sweet Life” and America “Sister Golden Hair”. That got me to remembering the times I would lay in bed late at night and listen to these songs on the radio. For Christmas one year I got a clock radio, the kind that the numbers on the clock actually flipped, I thought I was hot stuff! Living out in the country it would get so quiet at night that it was almost more than I could take, so I would turn on the radio and turn it down as low as I could so that  I didn’t wake up the parents. I would tune into the Atlanta station Z93 or 96 Rocks and let the music comfort and  lull me into sleep. To this day I still don’t like complete silence when I sleep. My bedside fan runs every night, even if it’s 20 below outside and occasionally I still turn that radio on low and let it do its thing.

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.