Taking pictures of flowers, that's where. Also, working on some new knitting projects - developing designs that I hope will be included in an upcoming book. I'm experimenting with Misti Alpaca Chunky, described by the woman at my neighborhood yarn store as the softest yarn on the planet. She's totally right!
No weaving today - I got distracted by photography and just couldn't stop taking pictures of these tulip bottoms. If only my bottom were that smooth.
Although I envisioned this as a blog about weaving, it appears that all I can post about is photography. Go figure. So the other day, I spent an intense few hours with my new camera, a tripod and some supermarket mums and came up with about 50 flower portraits. This was one of my favorites . . .
. . . until I started reading about photographic composition and came across the rule of thirds. (Actually, I already knew about this rule, but what with setting up the camera and adjusting the tripod, and getting the cat to stay away from the flowers, I more or less ignored it during my photo session.) Anyway, according to this rule, you should overlay a grid (like a tic-tac-toe grid) on your image, and position the most interesting part of the photo at one of the four intersecting points. Obviously, I didn't do that in the photo above. So just to check, I opened the image and cropped it according to the rule of thirds. Here's the result
Do I like it better? I don't think so. Maybe the rule of thirds is kind of like the speed limit on the highway - just a guideline.
Today I'm eschewing all things photographic and concentrating on some weaving. I'm experimenting with a comb reed that I borrowed from a friend in my weaving class. A comb reed has a removable top bar, which allows you to resley while weaving - moving the warp threads farther apart or closer together, so you can get different setts in the same piece of cloth. Preliminary results are pretty cool. I'll try to take photos (beautifully composed according to the rule of thirds) tomorrow.
It wasn't until last Christmas that I broke down and bought myself a DSLR (that is, more than a point and shoot camera). Until then, I'd been using a compact Canon, which took great photos, but was such a pain to use that I rarely bothered. I was forever fumbling for my reading glasses to look at the tiny screen or decipher the markings on the miniscule buttons, and by the time I figured out what was what, my subject would be long gone. (Remember the scene in Zoolanderwhere Ben Stiller talks on a miniature cell phone? That was me with my Canon.) Anyway, counterintuitive as it seems, I decided that a bigger, more complicated camera would be easier to use than the one I had. So I took a deep breath, bought my Nikon, and was immediately overwhelmed by everything I didn't know about photograpy, which was a lot. F-stops? Metering? I was in over my head.
Searching the web for some answers, I stumbled upon Ree's blog, which includes just about everything you ever wanted to know about life on a cattle ranch and . . . photography. It was comforting to read that Ree is self-taught (at least she says she is!). If she could figure out her Nikon, I could figure out mine.
Then I found Bryan Peterson's book and online photography classes and I was on my way. One of the first things I learned was how to photograph silhouettes. Luckily for me, I just came across exposaroonie, which runs weekly (I think they're weekly) photo challenges - and this week's challenge is silhouettes! I'm all set until next week, when I'll have to learn something new.
Like Barack Obama after the Texas and Ohio primaries, and like countless would-be bloggers before me, I seem to have lost some blogging momentum. How many blogs have you seen where the author started enthusiastically, posted furiously for a week or two, and then ... dropped into blog never-never land. Seeing that I am in danger of becoming a blog dropout, I'm determined to post something today, no matter how random.
How about this? A close-up photo of a microwave egg boiler that I bought in Paris. I should mention that on that same trip to Paris, I also bought a litterbox, which I carried home with me on the plane. It was, and still is, a masterpiece of design, a gentle oval of frosted blue plastic. Who but the French would see a need for a good-looking litterbox? My cat actually preferred her old litterbox because it was covered, but that's just too bad. As I told her, there's nothing more important than good design.
Okay, one more. I call this "Sunday morning", even though I think it may have been taken during the week.
I guess that's enough randomness for one day. I'll try to write, you know, a real post sometime soon.
Despite having been divorced for more than ten years (or perhaps because of that), my ex-husband and I are pretty good friends. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find a gigantic Valentine's bouquet on my doorstep the other day. I don't often receive flowers, so I seized the opportunity to experiment with the new camera I got for Christmas. First, I did some closeups.
Though I'm new to photography, I've heard people say that it's not the camera that's expensive, it's the lenses that one begins to covet soon after purchasing the camera. I guess that's true, because I am convinced that this picture would be sooo much better if only I had the $700 macro lens I've been eyeing. But I don't (yet), so this is as up close and personal as we're going to get with these flowers.
Next, I tried "exploding" the vase of flowers. Pretty cool.
And then I zoomed in and jiggled the camera for a "Monet" effect, which I like a lot.
Thanks, Jeff. You can send me flowers anytime.
