She is my pride and joy. She is also a very formidable opponent, especially in the category of stubbornness. And while she can test me to the point of madness, make me want to commit horrid acts of violence towards small furry creatures, or lock myself in my room for hours on end until I can come back to my senses, I have to remember that she is only 7. She still needs me to be her mom, to kiss away the pain of a scraped knee and scare off the closet monster. She needs to be cuddled, read to, and protected. And while I may have to dig deep sometimes to find the patience to be her mom, I love her with all my heart.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have my camera with me to take the photos of all the neighbors, kids and grownups alike, outside having snowball wars and building snowpeople.  The Girl doesn’t like the sexist term “snowmen” and will correct me at every opportunity that it is just as possible for those things to be girls. So we have since altered the verbage to avoid the argument. But I digress. I think as we drove through our sleepy little town, we counted something crazy like 30 snowpeople and several huge mounds of snow that might have been used as some sort of fortress for snowball fights. I did get a few shots with the Point and Shoot of the kids’ snowpeople in the backyard, but that will have to wait until a later date… who knows, maybe tomorrow? Yeah, I’d better not get ahead of myself.

So why the second post today? I don’t know, maybe I’m just happy that I get to sleep in tomorrow since the schools are all on a two hour delayed start which means I’m on a two hour delayed start and can stay up these extra precious 3o minutes or so. Or maybe it’s because I had a little too much iced tea at dinner and can’t sleep.  Or maybe it’s because I got a new lens last week and am starting to explore some of what I can do with it and thought I’d share in my newfound macro bliss.

As I previously mentioned, oh, twenty or thirty times now, I picked up a Bee-yew-tee-ful Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro. No, it’s not the IS version but the IS really doesn’t matter to me and the price tag was sufficiently less for this one. I have seen what it is capable of with other photographers’ images and have been coveting this lens since I got the dSLR.

What I am learning now with macros is how completely amazing the depth of field is! I disagree with some people who say the only way to shoot in macro photography is with a smaller aperture. I admit it’s tricky, trickier than any kind of “normal” photography I’ve been doing thusfar, but I find I am really enjoying this challenge – not to mention, I have actually been using that DOF preview button on the camera that up until now have never had the desire nor need to press. I have taken a couple of pictures with the lens wide open and have found that being so close up the DOF gives the image an almost unreal effect and something I find way cool. Others may not, but I don’t really care and since this is my blog I’ll put whatever I want to up here. So there.

The other thing I’m finding is that the image quality with this lens is such that I don’t feel any real need to do much post-processing. I could go on and on about how long I’ve owned Photoshop and how little I actually use it, but instead, I’ll just put up a couple of pictures since this is supposed to be a photoblog of sorts and not just me rambling on and on and on…

A Less-Ugly Dandelion

ISO 400, SS 1/400, f/2.8 cropped and some exposure adjustments in ACR

Wind Chime

ISO 400, 1/100, f/2.8 Cropped and boosted contrast in PS

]]> http://mirrorstomysoul.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/two-in-one-day/feed/ 2 Wendy IMG_5213 IMG_5205 http://mirrorstomysoul.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/seven/ http://mirrorstomysoul.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/seven/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:04:32 +0000 Wendy http://mirrorstomysoul.wordpress.com/?p=112 ]]> Where oh where has my little baby gone? In seven short years, she went from my little droopy dawg cheeky monkey to a worldy first grader. I sometimes forget how fast they grow, but just playing with this picture has reminded me sorely that she’s not a baby anymore. I do wish, however, that Miss Independence here would finally learn to brush her hair once in a while – but that’s an ongoing battle with us. So I take her as she is, in the moment, whether unkempt or not.

And since I’m hell bent on improving my images Straight out of the Camera (SOOC, or without any editing), I will post both here.

First, SOOC:

ISO 400, SS 1/640, f/2.8 with the 100mm Macro

And one of my many edits (which is why I am working hard at not having to do this so much – I waste HOURS playing with images in Photoshop!):

I love the TRA2 actions, and this one (Lux soft) just made me smile.

As always, any comments and suggestions are appreciated and considered!

PS – Did I mention that I’m falling in love with this macro lens?

It’s been entirely glum around here  lately so there isn’t much picture-worthy to snap away at, but the beauty of macro photography is that it doesn’t have to be anything big or beautiful to make a cool picture. Nothing like a new weapon in the ole’ Canon arsenal to spark my enthusiasm again! I leave this extremely short entry with the very first picture I took with the new lens, both in color and in black and white. As always, any ideas or suggestions are always welcomed!

Who knew a common weed in the yard could have anything interesting about it?

And a B/W of the same:

Enough about that, though. I’m making a fresh start. Although as I stare at the calendar it’s unbelievable to me that it’s mid-January 2010! I feel like I fell asleep for a long time and am just now waking up only to realize that I’ve missed out on a lot of time. Time for me, that is. I need to learn to be a little more selfish and take some precious moments out of each and every day to do a sort of sanity check. Maybe that’s why I feel like I have no attention span, no focus or drive – I’m running in circles and have no idea why.

I don’t really feel like doing the New Year’s Resolutions thing anymore. I have some goals set out that I am going to work on with specific timeframes by which I will complete them. First and foremost, I will start taking pictures again. And I have decided that goal number one is to get more active with actually editing and posting those pictures on my blog, sucktastic or not. I have this theory that if I don’t achieve perfection with little to no effort on my part, that somehow I am a major dork and nothing I have done is worth anything. Self esteem issues, anyone? But as I am trying to teach my kids, nothing worth having comes easily and you have to work at something to get better at it. So it is for me and what I want to achieve with photography.

The good news is, I was able to de-crudify my sensor (no scratches or other problems, yay!) and it appears that my camera is back to functioning as well as it ever has. I, however, am feeling the effects of not looking through the viewfinder for a good 4 months. Yes, FOUR months! So when I took the family out to take a few photos at Memorial Park in Round Rock, I thought for certain I’d get a few good shots or maybe even great ones. Reality bites. But that’s okay, because the only place you can go from rock bottom suckitude is up and that’s what I plan to do.

I decided to go with textures as a sort of “Welcome back to photoblogging” entry.

Oak leaf on the water

Bricks

Berries with an added texture

And finally, the river was flowing really well in Round Rock. I played with it and because the colors are still so drab everywhere, I decided on an action to play with the feel of the picture. I used the Troy action from the TRA2 action set (love those!) and I kind of like it. At least right now I like it.

There. I feel better now. And I look forward to improving in the days/weeks/ months but I look even more forward to enjoying what I have missed for a ridiculously long time.

/PSA over.

I took this (and several others) back in March last year, when we went back to Arizona for a week.

This image was pretty much straight from the camera, with some minor tweaking in Adobe Camera Raw. The sky was pretty, but the rest of the scene just looks, well, drab to me. So I played with some actions and think I really like this version of it:

I used the TRA2 Troy action to give it a sort of rustic feel. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Getting ready to go:

One foot at a time:

NOW you’ve got it! (And I was trying to pan the camera to catch some of the motion, so I am aware of all the blur but it’s not like you can make her stop in mid-pedal for a picture!):

And a few more “action” shots (read: blurry):

She consistently starts and stops all by herself and makes turns like a pro! I can’t believe she just up and decided to do it all in the span of about 15 minutes!

And speaking of consistent… Yeah. Let’s just say I’m consistent about my inconsistencies in feeding my neglected little blog and leave it at that, okay?

Peace out.

I’ve also been on the early shift at work, which means no sleep at night for me and then up at 0300. I think even the Army was more reasonable with their wakeup requirements of 0500. But at least I get to leave early, too, so there’s that. I haven’t picked up my poor camera in a week. I even brought my camera bag downstairs and propped it up on the bookshelf so it could be a reminder of sorts to take it out to play. That has backfired sorely – now,  it stares at me, menacingly, daring me to grab it and produce some sort of image. ANY image. My camera is mocking me. Well, I decided enough was enough and figured I’d entice the girl outside and bribe her for a few candid shots.  Who could resist the possibility of going to Gramma’s later on? And naturally, being the good natured, easy-going and cooperative kid she it, I got hundreds of portfolio worthy headshots. Hundreds! Okay, maybe sleep deprivation has taken over and maybe I only got like three pictures before the announcement of “I’m done” was a reality, but I think there are a couple of keepers.

We also had an argument about brushing her hair. She HATES brushing her hair or getting it brushed, but she has really fine hair that looks like straw ten minutes after I comb it so it needs constant attention. Usually we avoid all the unpleasantries by using scrunchies to hold it back out of her face.  I refuse to let her look like a homeless child, especially for any kind of photos, so I attacked her with the brush I keep in my purse and that led to the craziness in the pictures – static cling anyone? And me without my Bounce sheets.

Mean Face

She didn’t want me to take pictures on MY terms, so she was into making as many wierdo faces as she could come up with. That one was after I told her there would be NO ice cream in her immediate future if she didn’t indulge her poor mother!

That discussion lead to this shot – “But MOM! I don’t REALLY want you to take pictures of me RIGHT NOW is all. Okay? So do I still get my dessert tonight? Can we talk about ice cream again? Wait, are you joking? When are we going to Gramma’s?”

I also played with a color version of that picture:

Not really sure which one I like. I realize the second image is a little soft – she is a CONSTANTLY moving target and can be a little uncooperative if she’s asked to do something she doesn’t particularly want to do. And she’s only 6. 6! What in the world am I going to do when she’s 16? I shudder to think.

I’m still dabbling with actions and conversions, any input or ideas are always welcomed!