Friday, July 31, 2009

A new perspective

Sometimes I am WAY too critical of myself.

Sometimes I don't challenge myself to try new things.

Sometimes I am lack confidence in my art.

But then...

I put together a digital frame with some of my favorite photos of family of friends, all of which I have taken. It sits on my desk at work and the other day I found myself staring at it, thinking that if I saw these photos in someone else's cubicle, I would commend the photographer. And yet, I don't do that for myself. I came home and told Jonathan, "I realized today that I really don't give myself enough credit."

And so a new desire was born in me to really start photographing regularly again. To challenge myself to try new things with it, like filters, and camera angles. And above all, to gain some confidence in myself. So after yesterday's post, I was taking a look back at the photos and thought, yeah, that's a nice photo, but then I played with it and found what I consider "wall worthy."
















It's hard to tell from a small blog photo, but such a simple change made a huge impression on me that this is a really good photo. I think I will have to frame this one and and actually hang it!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Some new treasures...

I bought a new camera a couple months back. It's a Canon 50D, the latest and greatest of the semi-affordable Canon SLR line. So I set everything up the way I wanted including shooting in RAW format, which basically gives you a raw image without a lot of the automatic image editing mumbo jumbo that most cameras will do with other image types. I took it to a Mother's Day family BBQ and was very excited about my new toy. Sadly, when I got home, I couldn't see the images. After a little research, I found I should have done more research earlier. The camera was too new for my version of Photoshop (CS2) and was not compatible in RAW format. It's rather ridiculous to me that the Photoshop upgrade we bought only a year and a half ago is now outdated and won't work with a new camera... anyhow....

At least the camera came with a conversion software and I was able to salvage the images. Since then I have had to shoot in jpeg, which is sort of disappointing, but it beats spending another several hundred dollars on software upgrades. In the mean time, I was so distracted with my loathing of the software industry, I forgot I was able to salvage the Mother's Day shots and came across them again the other day. So here are my few forgotten treasures...































































Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Bad Bad Blogger....

Again! I can't believe how long it's been since I have posted.

The last six months or so have been very hard on me and my family. I hated my job with a passion, the whole getting older and the outlook of having kids looking grimmer and grimmer, my sister getting laid off, my niece in the hospital, and on and on and on.... But now things are definitely looking up. I started a new job that I think I am going to totally love! It's a career change for me so it was really nerve racking when I was deciding whether to take it or not, but even after two days, I feel like I finally found my niche. And being away from my last job has really helped me realize how stifled I was there. But that's enough about that!

Hopefully things will look up for my sister soon too. She is a teacher and had only been in this district for two years, but thankfully, she is #1 on the seniority list, so hopefully they will restructure or someone else will quit or something and she will have her job come the new school year! Keep your fingers crossed for her.

My niece is out of the hospital but is slow going on her healing. She is only two and is being put through a lot. Not to mention how much my brother and sister-in-law are going through with spending two weeks in the hospital with their son just eight months ago. Send them lots of prayers for all their health and safety. They could really use it!

I am excited about another scrap night with Melanie on Saturday. I'm feeling inspired again so hopefully I can get some stuff done! In the mean time, here's a couple layouts I finished in the last few weeks...