More 'product' photography

What a full day! You'd think I would have taken a photo of something Thanksgivingy, but I was more involved in watching the Macy's parade and pitching in with dinner, and didn't even think to pick up my camera. We rested a bit after dinner, watched the Westminster dog show (I liked the Bulldog out of the final seven, personally), then piled back in the truck to make the drive home. I'm so exhausted that I was THIIIIIISSS tempted to post the sunset photo I took last night, but it would need more tweaking than I'm allowing myself for NaBloPoMoPHOTO.

I know this one looks like the previous two, but I used an on-camera speedlight bounced off the wall behind rather than a CFL/umbrella to the side. Also used a much wider/higher angle. It's two tubes of mascara, a thing of eyeshadow, and nailpolish (some of the makeup for a water sprite).

Tomorrow I will post a photo that does not involve small items on a piece of posterboard, I promise!

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 250
Focal Length: 80.0 mm
Flash: On-camera speedlight (bounced)
White Balance: Auto

Stacy G: Who's Coming for Dinner?

From today...not the sharpest picture (still having issues with natural light) but I love the comp of the picture.

ISO - 160
f/1.8
1/60 sec
50mm

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Photo Phlop

The travel muses are conspiring against me.

Knowing I wouldn't have time later in the day, this morning I set up my mini 'studio' from last night and took some photos of my vintage Sekonic light meter. Hooked up my camera to the computer, downloaded the photos and cleared my CF card.

And got distracted with getting the family out the door to the in-laws. I remembered the unpublished photo only after we were in the car. No problem, right? I have my camera, I'll just take another photo. Got a decent photo of a beautiful sunset.

Yep. Except that the Internet is unavailabe at the in-laws, and my phone just is not up to the job. So I'm gonna have to edit this post tomorrow to add my photo.

Have a blessed day of thanks!

EDIT: Here's my original photo for the day. I love that you can see the reflection of the umbrella and side table lights in the dome.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 90.0 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto

Cheap ribbon saves the day

Realized twenty minutes ago that I'd not touched my camera all day. I've been working on processing photos from Friday, Saturday, and Monday. So I frantically set up a piece of posterboard against my headboard, dug out my tripod and clamped a CFL/Uumbrella fixture to it, then pointed it at the posterboard. And was stuck. What to photograph? I wandered around the house, picking things up and turning them over in my hands, looking for an interesting angle. Nothing worth the pixels. Then I spied a box of Target Dollar Spot ribbon on the shelf over my craft table. Aha!

My white balance target is still in the back of my truck from yesterday, and I was too lazy to go get it. So I did cheat a bit and tweak the white balance in ACR.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 85.0 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Tweaked

Bare-naked toesies

This guy refused to wear his boots for the family portrait, but it was so cute. I almost suggested that they ALL go barefoot, but there were fire ant piles around. And as any good Texan knows, the more barefoot people, the greater the chance somebody's gonna get chomped.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 122.0 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto

Lazy day

Low-key, lazy day. The trampoline springs provided an interesting texture. (We bought it second-hand for a ridiculously low price, and a safety net new for a not-so-low price. With the net sewn to the edge of the mat, we never bought replacement spring pads.)

Aperture: f/6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 41.0 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto

The magic of a tiny arachnid

Played event photographer today for the first time in 15 years. A friend asked me to come to the courthouse to serve as photographer while the family gathered to adopt their youngest child (today is National Adoption Day). Brought my daughter with me to photograph also, using the 'little camera' (the Rebel XT). I was using my 50D with speedlite flash in manual mode. Looking through the photos, they're... okay. Not fabulous, not bad. I'll have to fix a few (shot RAW), but overall, the fact that I was able to recognize problems with exposure and fix them immediately is huge for me.

Anyway, by the time the photo below was taken, it was past nap time for the little ones, who'd also had to get up early. They were cranky and fussy, and didn't want to sit for photos with family members. My friend started singing the ABC Song to no avail, so I suggested The Itsy Bitsy Spider--it worked wonders for my kids when they were little. There we were in the hallway outside the courtroom, probably a dozen total adults singing the spider song, drawing curious stares from people down the hall. And the little ones were mesmerized. It was magic.

Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 640
Focal Length: 33.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: On-camera speedlight bounced off (high) ceiling
White Balance: Auto

Grandparents Day

I had a loooooooong day at the elementary school doing Grandparents' Day portraits. Last year it was a sunny day, so I had ample light coming through the huge wall of windows and I didn't need to use any other lights. Today it was rainy, and the light coming in the windows depended on how thick the cloud cover was at any given moment. I had to use a strobe in a 2'x3' softbox and continuous light w/ shoot-thru umbrella, and a reflector, and sometimes even an on-camera speedlight, to get good lighting. Even still, I'm going to have to adjust the lighting on about 30% of them in photoshop. Dangit.

Anyway, below is one of the photos where the lighting was fairly decent (just a hair dark, though). This one was not chosen for a portrait package, but it might be my favorite of the day. I love the way Grandma and Grandpa are blurred just a smidge, laughing at Mr. J, who is being silly.

Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 47.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: Strobe w/ softbox
White Balance: Custom (not sure what happened--that's actually a gray background)

An awesome camera and a studio

I'm LOVING LOVING LOVING the 50D. I did a photo shoot with my good friend Courtney today (in an actual studio--I'll tell you about that in a minute...), and just sat down to look through the images. WOW! They are wonderful! I mean, Courtney is beautiful anyway, but the images are so crisp and fabulous, I could upload half of them directly to Mpix without touching them at all.

Check this out (be sure to click to see it bigger). Straight off the camera.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 41.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: Studio strobes
White Balance: Auto

The studio we used was courtesy of David Whatley of The Covenant Studio. He's a member of StudioSpace Arlington, and graciously let me try it out during his time slot. Great place and great guy! I don't have the budget to become a member myself yet, but will definitely be using the space on a per-hour basis in the future.

Click here to see the final images from this shoot.

Such a handsome man

Okay, kinda fudging a bit. The purpose of my own NaBloPoMo challenge is to post good photos straight out of the camera. The first photo is straight out of the camera, but 'good' is debatable. This is a handsome little man I met today. He sat so patiently in his carseat while his mom helped with PTA stuff.

Aperture: f/4.0
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 47.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: none
White Balance: Auto


However... the color balance is way off, the overhead incandescents offered very little int the way of lighting, so the photo is more snapshot than photograph in my opinion. And since I'm a portrait photographer, I have a hard time posting photos of people that aren't fabulous.

So I spent two minutes in ACR and Photoshop and kicked it up a notch:

One-Light Louie cleaned up

Yep. Bad battery. Dang it. Let it charge overnight, and got four photos this morning before it ran out of juice. Frustrated, but at the same time, kinda glad for an excuse to stop into Arlington Camera LOL

Anyway, I meant to post this pic last night. It's Sunday's pic, but with a little processing. Dang that compression again...the little one looks awful. Click on it to see it bigger :)

I'll post an untouched NaBloPoMoPHOTO pic later today...

Lame

This one is really lame, I know. The new camera arrived at about 3:45 this afternoon, and I love it, I do... It's just going to take a bit of getting used to. It's kind of frustrating because I think it came with a bad battery--it charged for three hours and ran out of juice after 10 minutes. So I may be headed to Arlington camera to get a spare tomorrow so I can exchange this one with Adorama. Didn't get to take many photos, but I promise I'll do better tomorrow.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 90.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: none
White Balance: Auto

Proud member of DSA

That's Dye Sniffers Anonymous for you non-sniffers :) I love the smell of steaming hot RIT dye.

In this photo, I think the custom WB really made the colors amazing--I was even tempted to take the saturation down just a smidge (but resisted of course!). These are a four of the five backgrounds I've hand-dyed in the last week. I'm really loving the brown one, but all of them turned out better than I'd hoped.

Aperture: f/4
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 35.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: none
White Balance: Custom

One-Light Louie

On Friday, I drove up to IKEA in Frisco and stopped by Cowboy Studio Lighting in Dallas on the way. Picked up a couple new shoot-through umbrella and continuous light fixture, among other things. Before we headed out to parents' house this afternoon, I tossed a light stand, CL fixture, and umbrella into the back of my truck, hoping I'd have time to shoot some basic portraits of this guy before we lost all window light. Yeah... that didn't happen.

But I forged ahead anyway, stubborn as I am. This is with that one light set up in a room that currently has no light fixtures (they just had the ceiling fixed), and it was just after dusk, so the light coming in through the big windows was pretty much useless. Had to go with a higher ISO than I would ever normally use for portraits, and it shows. The umbrella is about even with his head, about six inches to the right (you can see it reflected in his glasses). He's also holding a piece of white posterboard as a reflector on the other side of his face. I wish I'd had at least one more light with me, preferably one of my strobe & softboxes. Anyway. Be sure to click to see it a bit bigger--the blogger compression really did a doozy on this one. This one is totally untouched by the way. I'll clean it up a little before I let him use it for a profile picture :)

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 56.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: none
White Balance: Auto (forgot to tuck the WB target into my camera bag)

Psychedelic sea of chairs

Had lunch at Rosa's Café today. Honestly I love the interior of the restaurant more than I love the food. Of course I had my camera with me, so I got a few shots to go along with my enchiladas. This first pic is my official photo of the day. I did crop out the top 1/4 of the frame--chose to do that rather than climb on top of the table to get the composition perfect in the camera :)

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 38.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: none
White Balance: Auto



This is what I THOUGHT would be my pic of the day. I got four different shots of these frogs that were hanging on the wall (picture me with my camera pressed up against the bricks with my camera pointed up, and picture the lunch crowd staring). Unfortunately the ones with the good exposure settings were at an odd angle and cut off too much of the front frog. This one was great composition-wise, but was underexposed in my camera. But I liked it enough to share, so adjusted the exposure and whatnot in Photoshop.

Stacy G: Brutus on the Edge, Take 2

Ok, here is the attempt with the flash....a little better...Getting there!!

ISO 100

F/1.8

1/60 sec

50mm

Librophile, logophile, photophile

I haven't played with bounce flash in a while. I generally eschew on-camera fill-flash (patooey!), and when I'm out and about, I normally don't carry a shoe-mount flash with me. Even for portraits, I prefer to use natural light and a reflector or two. I can honestly admit now (*uncomfortable cough*) that my negligence of my strobes and shoe-mount is largely because I haven't been comfortable with the manual settings on my camera (sadly whatever mastery I gained in Sgt. Pratschler's photography class circa 1989 was neglected and disused upon the purchase of my first wonderfully automatic Canon SLR).

I wish I'd knocked myself upside the head and done this manual-immersion challenge years ago. *shaking head ruefully*

My photo of the day is of a very small selection of books in my front room/office. It's just a hair underexposed, IMO, which I didn't see until I opened it in Adobe Camera Raw. Resisted the urge to fix it with a quick slide of the exposure control bar. But the colors actually look better here than they do in real life.

Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 41.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: Kodak shoe mount bounced off white ceiling
White Balance: Auto

Stacy G: Baylee the Wiggle Butt

Stacy says: A little dark, but great picture if I may say so myself!!

AV mode - nice setting - really like it (try it)

100 ISO

f/1.8

50mm focal length

1/8000 sec

Stacey says: What a beautiful baby!

Pizza for four, table six!

I'm a doofus. It was so loud and hectic that I didn't even think about ISO. It was the monthly school fundraiser night at a local pizza hangout, and we hadn't been yet this year. Everything in this place is dominated by the color red it seems. We sat at a red table that had reddish lights overhead. Got a pic of the red cups all lined up on the red table. Shoulda turned the cups so they were all different directions, I know. Shoulda increased the ISO, too, yadda yadda yadda. The table was my tripod.

Aperture: f/4.0
Shutter Speed: 1/6
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 28.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto







On a fabulously exciting note, I ordered a new camera (a Canon 50D--nearly twice the resolution of my XT!) and actual digital image stabilized lens today from Adorama!!! I'm giddy, and can't wait to get it in my hands. I hope hope hope it gets here by Wednesday, because Thursday I've been invited to shoot with another local photographer, Friday I have a school gig, Saturday I have an adoption party gig, and on Monday I've got a portrait session for a family of eight. I'd love to use my new toys for every single one :)

One of the other items I bought was backordered, so I called to see if I could substitute a similar item. Talked to a very helpful customer service rep named Lucie, who has the cutest New York accent and sense of humor. Adorama is where I got my XT body three years ago, and various accessories and doodads since then.

Stacy G: Brutus on the Edge

Stacy says: Here is my picture of the day...Straight off the camera... I had the vision of the picture in my head and it did not come out...oh well...keep practicing!!

f/5.6
Shutter 1/30
Focal length 65mm
ISO 160










And here are a few more pics she sent that I didn't get posted last night. She says:

I am very happy with the one with the Tuba...I love that I caught the cheerleaders in the tuba!

From Pitt Cheer Day that my daughter was a part of.

Forget Ambrosia...

...THIS is the nectar of the gods...

I need to invest in a better lens. I'm still using my old analog lenses, and this particular one came with my EOS Elan 7e when that one was first released. The aperture limitation made this pic just a tad dark, IMO.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 79.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Custom

"P to the R to the N to the 'cess' "

I'm fudging a bit. Actually took this photo a few days ago, but since Stacy sent pics of her critters, I thought I'd continue the theme and post a pic of another one of mine. This is ChiChi Ratriguez, named after John Lequizamo's character in To Wong Foo (who uttered the line used as the title of this post). She's about 12 years old, was once all black but has now gone very gray. The bright sun on her white muzzle made an annoying hotspot, but I love the expression in her eyes. Sort of confused ("Why do you keep calling my name and then pointing that thing at me?"), yet adoring and trusting. And she'd just roll her eyes if you ever called her a princess.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 90.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Inadvertently custom

Stacy G: atch-up pics of the critters

My friend Stacy has been sick but is feeling well enough to be incredibly busy! She sent a bunch of manual-setting photos to share today. These are her critters. The dog is named Brutus. Will have to ask the cat's name :)

Holiday bauble

I've been running all day, didn't take my camera with me and wouldn't have had the time to stop and take a photo anyway. So this evening I was wandering around the house, looking for something to photograph, when my eyes fell on the Christmas fiscus tree that's still decorated with ornaments from last year. So I grabbed a colorful one, set up some foam core and two desk lamps, got out my new white balance target, and made myself smile. This is the first shot I took, again straight off the camera :)

Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 54.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Custom


*Added 11/10: By the way, my new white balance target is a set of three 3½x5" Wilsonart kitchen counter laminate samples in Designer White, North Sea, and Black, which I got for free by following the links on this site, but I think you can pick some up at Lowe's. Eventually I'll get a 'real' target, but these worked beautifully!

Take a deep breath and make a wish

I love dandelions. Which is silly, really. But in this state, they're so beautiful! How can such delicate and fleeting beauty make such a mess of my yard?

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 90.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto












And this is a 'just because' photo. Meet Jasper, one of our two cockatiels. As you can see by his crest standing up, he's not terribly fond of the camera. I tried to get him to do the feminine pose, but he insisted on doing the basic 3/4 pose. Such a diva. :)

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 90.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto

O Tiny Toad on my Doorstep

Sounds like the title of a Keats poem :)

Got home from Gold's this morning and as I approached my front door, I caught a bit of movement near my feet. We've got hundreds of geckos and a dozen or so lizards that live on/around our house so that's not unusual, but when I looked down and spied the fairly-well-camouflaged critter, it wasn't a gecko or a lizard. My first instinct was to move it into the cover of the monkey grass so it didn't get eaten by a sharp-eyed jay, but after a few failed attempts at rescue, I dashed inside to get my camera.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 90.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto

Pretty sure this is a young female Woodhouse's Toad, though it might be a male that doesn't have the dark throatpouch yet? Cute as a button, regardless. A tad more than an inch long from nose to rear. She sat still for a good five minutes and let me zoom in quite close--I didn't want to risk taking the time to change lenses, so even at 90mm, the lense was within six inches of her. Good thing the neighbors are kind of used to seeing me crawling around on my belly with a camera in front of my face. I really like the angle of this photo, even though the DOF blurs out the texture of her skin.

Here's another pic I took before I got down on my belly (same settings as above). Not as much DOF on this one, so you can see the texture of her skin. Very cool, IMO.

She eventually lost patience and hopped into the tall grass under the bushes.

Sam's Club pizza... mmmm...

It was 7:30 this evening, we were sitting in Sam's eating a cheap dinner, and I remembered that I'd not done my daily photo yet. My camera was in my backpack (I carried it around all day thinking I'd have time to grab some photos of downtown architecture... *sigh*), so I pulled it out and took a picture of the most colorful thing available to me in the light that was available. And yes, people did stare at me taking a photo of my pizza...

The photo looked okay on the LCD screen, but opening it up in Photoshop, I see that the colors are awful--I never reset the white balance after testing a white balance target outdoors in the shade. However, the exposure isn't too far off, which is kinda cool. Again, this was a set-up-the-camera-BEFORE-I-shoot-and-go-with-the-first-shot deal. So even though the photo kinda sucks, it's still progress. And small victories add up.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 50.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None








And just for the halibut, I adjusted it to the way I hoped it would magically turn out...

Nothing like morning sunshine...

...to illuminate the dust on the dashboard. :)

Just in case I don't have time to post later today, I'm gonna post this pic even though it's kinda boring. I took my camera with me for the carpool drive this morning, intending to get a photo of a rose that looked so beautiful in the dappled sunlight coming through the trees. I only notice it on the way out when we're in a hurry, and don't remember by the time I get home. Turns out traffic was awful, so by the time I got home, the sunlight on the rose wasn't worth the effort. But while I was stopped at a traffic light (just turned red, had plenty of time), I did get this picture. I'm thinking I might convert it to artsy black and white and print it big to hang on Teenager's wall.

Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 44.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None



Maybe tomorrow morning I can get a photo of that rose...

A wee bit o' November color

Just want to reiterate that my personal goal for NaBloPoMoPHOTO this month is to get decent shots straight off my camera. That means no color or exposure adjustments, and no cropping. I aim to resize for the web and maybe slap on my watermark, and that's it. I'm already good at post-processing--that's not where I need the practice. I want to master my camera, and make it do what I want it to do.

Which makes this photo a little bit exciting for me =D. I got out of my truck this morning and noticed that my neighbor's tree has fall colors! If you live in Texas, you know fall colors are fairly rare because we don't normally get enough rainfall to keep the leaves on the trees long enough TO change color.

So noticing the tree and the way the sunlight was was perfect and the sky so blue, I ran inside to get my camera. I adjusted the ISO, shutter speed and aperture before I took the first shot, and as it turns out, I only needed one. This is that shot! Normally I need at least one test shot to gauge and tweak. So this one got a little personal victory dance in my driveway.

Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 44.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None

Stacy G: Pic of the day!

Here is my friend Stacy's manual photo of the day:
She says:
ISO 100
f/7.1
1"
65mm Focal length


Love the colors in this, Stacy. Nice depth of field, too. :)

Buggin'

This guy was on the door of my very dirty white truck this afternoon as I left to pick up a kiddo from school. This is as close as my lens would let me focus (was running late, so couldn't switch lenses), but I totally love his shadow :) Click on the pic to see it bigger--the blogger resize makes it look awful.

Was tempted to crop a little bit, but didn't. Converted from the RAW, because the processed JPG looked too blue.

SOTC
Aperture: f/10
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 90.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None

Freshly Shaven Pate

Fudging just a bit--this photo is from yesterday afternoon :) Resized and added the watermark, didn't touch it otherwise.

SOTC
Aperture: 5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 71.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None

Photo taken indoors next to a large window on the left. Glass on the right (an indoor window) reflecting just a bit of light.


Can you believe I do not own a white balance card? Before now I've never actually wished I had one, since I shoot RAW and can fix it with a simple click. But this photo shoot illustrated to me the importance of having custom WB, so a WB target is at the top of my list of things to add to the camera bag. The Auto WB setting on the camera gave me an image that was blah and flat (pic below left). The simple click in photoshop turned the image blue in this case, because the spectrum of colors in the image is so limited. It was still an easy fix (duplicate layer, overlay blend mode, adjust brightess and contrast, reduce opacity), but it would be very cool if I didn't HAVE to fix it because the camera captured the colors just right. KWIM?



Yaaay! My friend Stacy Holumzer Ginkel is also participating in the photo challenge, but lacking her own blog, I've invited her to share her photos here. This is her first:

SOTC
Aperture: f.8
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 100
AWB: Daylight
Flash: None

Kindred Spirits Lost in Conversation

My first NaBloPoMoPHOTO picture. The concept in my head was a little more difficult than I thought it would be to actually execute, and it doesn't quite match what I envisioned as far as composition. Oh well. Practice, practice, and more practice this month.

For some reason the JPG version gives the silver a bluish tint. :(

SOTC (Straight Off The Camera--resized only)
Aperture: 5.0
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 54.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None

NaBloPoMoPHOTO

Okay, I admit it. I've been shooting with a Canon SLR for nearly ten years now, and I STILL hardly ever shoot in manual mode. It's a travesty, I know, but it's easier to shoot in one of the program modes and I've been lazy. However, as I begin to make the move from hobby photographer to professional photographer, I'm sometimes frustrated with my lack of MASTERY of my camera.

So I intend to tackle that this month. November is National Blog Posting Month (30 posts in 30 days). Since Shutter Muse could use some serious attention, I'm imposing a challenge on myself: Take and post one GOOD photo per day that was shot in manual mode. Not P, Tv, or Av. M. And preferably straight off the camera (resized, but no other manipulation).

And check out the 'NaBloPoMoPHOTO blogs' list in the right-hand column! Those are other photographer bloggers that are participating in the challenge, too! Check 'em out!

I don't have my photo yet for today (will post again later), but I'm excited!

New website live

I've been volunteering/donating my portraiture skills to friends, family, and PTA for the past few years. Finally enough people asked, "Why aren't you making money for this?", that I decided maybe I should give it a try.

For about three years, my web site at staceylking.com has been more of a portfolio of an assortment of skills, among them book covers, graphic design, web design, photography, and flash animation. It had no real purpose, except to show my students when I was teaching a class on web design, or photography, or graphics, or flash. It now has a purpose.

For the past three or four days, I've been brushing up on my Flash skills (it's been a long time since I taught it), and cranking out a new and improved website, this one a home for my portrait photography. Rather than an entire site in a single flash animation, I split it up into separate pages, so the browser buttons work, and individual pages can be bookmarked. And I'm very pleased with the result!

Woop!