I’m ready for warmer temperatures and longer days. Shorts and short sleeves. Open windows in the house. The beach. The ice cream truck. Picnics and cookouts. Very long bike rides.
I’m soooo ready…
Month: February 2014
Disorganized
I’m a big fan (HUGE fan) of going paperless whenever you can. Probably to the point of annoying some people. Well, with all the options for portable devices and virtual documents, why wouldn’t you? And my computer desktop? It’s a pet peeve of mine when my desktop gets all cluttered. Mac, PC – it doesn’t matter. Organize your files in folders for cryin’ out loud. It’s not like cleaning your house (which I’m not very good at). Everything’s virtual. It takes very little to no effort at all.
Here’s my desktop. What does yours look like? by the way, you can order a print of my desktop image.
Many speakers distinguish between disorganized and unorganized.
Disorganized applies to the sort of person who stuffs receipts into the sock drawer and can never find the car keys. Unorganized applies to things which have not yet been arranged in an organized manner. By this reasoning, a person would be disorganized, but an office would be unorganized.
Patterns
Order a print of this image
Want to know how to take amazing pictures? Read on…
I’ve done a lot of self-guided learning in my life and have heard and read lots of advice – good and bad. It’s a daunting task to learn new things especially as you age. Get over yourself and accept the fact that there are others who are just as qualified as you are and even more qualified in many cases.
One gem I’ve heard over and over again in a variety of ways is that it’s not about your camera. It’s not about your computer or latest software. It’s all about you. It’s about your ability to see new things or to see mundane things in a new light. It will never be about your camera.
The key to taking amazing pictures is simply this – put yourself in front of amazing things.
Alive
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
– Marcus Aurelius
Convenience
It takes effort to be good at anything – I know that. After two months of hard effort I’ve started to get frustrated with how things have gone so far. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading about different techniques. Watching different tutorials. Learning about things I thought I knew about. Filling in the gaps of knowledge. And I realize I’ve got a long way to go. The one thing I haven’t spent a lot of time doing , however, is shooting. Don’t you love the irony here?
Practice, an enormous amount of practice, makes better. There is no such thing as perfect – I know that. But at least I can improve. I know I can. One of the biggest tips that any great photographer will hand out is – shoot every day. That’s a no brainer. If you don’t practice, you can’t get any better. You just can’t.
So, what to shoot? When to shoot? Where to shoot? Anything, whenever and anywhere.
Photo opportunities will rarely, if ever, come to me. I have to make them happen. Sometimes I have to go out of my way to discover new places, new things and new situations and just be ready wherever I am. There are so many things about freelancing that are going to push me beyond where I’ve been before (this is my second go at freelancing by the way – my first was wedding videos). I realize that to these opportunities come at a cost sometimes. Late nights, early (sometimes extremely early) mornings and weather that I hate.
These opportunities are rarely, if ever, at my convenience.
The Silver Lake Mill in Dayton, VA. Took a detour to shoot this and was late for lunch with my mom and sister. Order a print of this image.
Metal
So with the Olympics approaching, I starting wondering what the medals were made of and found this on the web:
Gold and silver medals are 92.5% silver. Gold medals must be plated with at least 6 grams of gold. All Olympic medals must be at least 3 mm thick and at least 60 mm in diameter. Bronze medals are bronze, an alloy of copper and usually tin.
This got me thinking about other famous iconic awards and what they’re made of. Found this on the web:
When they pick up their trophies, the winning celebs are toting around 8.5 pounds of metal. Oscar is 13.5 inches (34 centimeters) tall. The Oscar statuettes, officially dubbed the Academy Award of Merit, have a 24-karat gold plating on their surface. Beneath the gold, the statuette’s interior is a metal mixture called Britannium, also called Britannia metal. It is an alloy of tin (93 percent), antimony (5 percent), and copper (2 percent).
How about this one:
Each Primetime Emmy statuette weighs six pounds, twelve-and-a-half ounces (3.08 kg), and is made of copper, nickel, silver and gold.
And, of course, that got me thinking about what my stuff is made of. It doesn’t really matter, I’m just curious. This is all I could find:
Silver Winners are awarded a Silver Telly statuette, the highest honor. Bronze Winners are awarded a Bronze Telly statuette. Designed by the same firm that makes the Oscar® and Emmy®, the Telly statuette is nearly 12 inches tall and weighs more than 4 1/2 pounds.
A couple finisher medals and a Silver Telly Award I’ve earned over the past year
Dark
Looking forward to (possibly) two weeks of sunny Florida beaches this summer.
Just saying.
What happens after one week in the sun.
Light
I know I’m not the first person to do this. And I certainly won’t be the last. I just wanted to demonstrate how cool it is when you can manipulate light. That’s what being a good photographer is all about, after all, right? The ability to use light (or the lack of light) to create images.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
– 1 Corinthians 13 verse 13
I created this for my wife for our 13th wedding anniversary in 2007. Look closely at the scripture in the image.
Cedarmeade Studios 