All the people in my extended family are photographers. I don't know how they do it - they all seem to somehow just "get" it. I don't. I am a visual person, I appreciate the visual fine arts, I know what looks good and what doesn't look good. My photos? They don't look good. That is all going to change, people. For Christmas Santa brought me a digital camera. I have a great camera that uses film that was a fabulous and generous gift from my Dear Aunt C, but I was spending too much $$$ getting the film developed and printed into crummy pictures. The kind of pictures that aren't ever going to make it into the photo albums. That was a bummer for me.
This year I am going to learn how to use my new camera. And I'm going to take pictures. A lot of pictures, now that I can print out only the pictures I like. The more pictures I take, the better I will get. That is my philosophy.
There might possibly be a photography class in store for me later this fall. Wouldn't that be awesome? I don't want to be a professional photographer. I just want to take some decent pictures. I want to share it with all of you, the gorgeous, pictorial record of my daily life.
Until that happens, it will be stock photos downloaded from Google Images.
I have trouble sometimes getting my pictures to turn out as well. But I have learned that the better the camera, the better the pics too. And at least with digital you know right after you take it if it turned out or not instead of getting them back and being disappointed.
ReplyDeleteI took a basic photography class once from Leisure Learning at HCC... it was called "How to use your 35mm camera", but f-stops don't matter so much with digital.
ReplyDeleteMy advice: think up a filing system to store your pix in, in your computer. Mine is pretty chaotic and could use a "just start aaaaaaall over" approach, I think.
The one thing I've learned about using a digital camera is this: Don't ever delete anything directly from the camera. That tiny little little screen is not enough to see if it is good or not. Wait until you can view it on your monitor, in full size, to determine if you want to keep it.
ReplyDeleteEven then, I keep all of the photos I take for work, even thought I use about 10% of them in the end. Disk storage is cheap.
Here's a 750 GB external USB hard drive for $100:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136176
You can fit loads of photos on that.
As for organization, here's how I do it:
At the root of my drive, I have 2 folders: "Processed", and "Raw". The "Raw" folder contains photos that came directly from my camera. The "Processed" folder contains photos that I have done something with (Resize, Color Balance, etc.)
Under each of those folders, there is another structure that is the same for each. I have a folder for each month, like "June 2007" which contains all of the photos I took in June of 2007. Under that, there is a folder for each day. So there may be a folder called "17" with all of the pictures I took on the 17th of June in 2007.
That keeps them all pretty well sorted and organized. You can use something like Adobe Bridge, to quickly browse those folders with a nice thumbnail view.
You can also crop out the parts of digital pictures that you don't want. There is a free photoshop-esque software called The Gimp that you can download to play with effects and things, and of course, you can get a trial version of Photoshop free for 30 days at adobe.com, if you're interested in learning how to make good photos into great photos. Plus too I bet your college has a continuing ed course on it.
ReplyDeleteGreat pictures are a numbers game for me. I have taken a few FANTASTIC pictures in my life. The bad thing is I have taken a few hundred-thousand pictures to get them. Just as Mark said, storage is cheap. Go get some and put them there for future viewing pleasure. Good luck and I am eager to see some of your photos.
ReplyDelete