Now that I have settled in to the routine at work and the rumors about the madness have taken on a routine of their own I have time to reflect on the adventures had on the last days off. Between bouts of watching the news and feasting on abundant salmon I got a birthday/sorry you can’t come visit present. A shiny new fancy camera! Photos have been a part of my life and marriage my husband had a good camera on our honeymoon and took lots of pictures. We have had a camera on every trip since. I was almost always designated as the helper. Carrying the tripod, helping change lenses, carrying extra things, and of course being the main model. But now with a fancy camera of my own I see how nice it is to have a great assistant (and yeah I was a great assistant). This time I had a great assistant too. I’m not sure how both of us having a camera and no assistant but that is future problems.
With my shiny new present comes a learning curve. Learning the system and the proper way to use it. Learning about things like F-stop, aperture, shutter speed, and exposure. I now know all kinds of things about the exposure tringle but this is not a camera blog this a post to show off my photos so I will spare you. In short I was gifted a camera and got a whole new hobby complete with learning and trials and tribulations. The first step is to compose a winning photo, this takes lots of practice and trial and error. I got lucky a few times and got one or two good ones. After that comes the editing and cropping, I’m not even close to good at this part. It takes a lot of time and patience. Sometimes I have the time but patience has never been my strong suit. There are lots of rules about how to crop or edit things. Like when it comes to the size of a picture it should keep the same ratios it was shot in or avoid square crops. But what most people don’t know is that the library does a fundraiser every year where people get to decorate an 8X8 block of wood. I’ve already picked out which picture I will be submitting for it. When it comes to the editing the best advice I heard was to make the very best picture in the camera first before editing. If you find yourself always cropping smaller maybe zoom in more or get closer when you take it. Or if the exposure its wrong learn to change that before the picture is even taken. But after all the computer work is done comes the much more fun part of figuring out the size and material to print it on. Then the extra exciting part of seeing the thing in print and going “wow” that came out way better that I thought! Some get put on the wall directly and some get framed up first. After coving every wall with new art it becomes a bit of a challenge to find place to display your handy work.
The adventure starts with finding things to take pictures of, and ends when the prints come back from the printer. It is very exciting and trilling. The adventure takes me all kinds of place from waterfalls in the Gorge to the beach, wildlife preserves, historical forts, aquariums, even just a walk down the street can provide inspiration. Inspiration is everywhere! Now that I’m back at work and the world is still covered in snow and darkness I’m very glad I took so many pictures of spring! I now have a new hobby to keep be busy when I get laid off.
