My Saturdays, are not Saturdays, and Everyone Learns from Mistakes!
My Saturdays are not the same as a lot of knitters, or well, a lot of my friends. My Saturdays seem to be split between "the real world", and my job. On Saturdays, I often wake up early (yes, 9:30-10am is early) try to do some basic house essentials, run errands for me and the BF, sometimes pick up his daughter, run joy-rides (non-essential fun trips), get home, and then work from 4:30pm to 1:00am. Then I stay up until 4am.... To say I like being a Night Owl amongst the DayWalkers, well that would be incorrect.
Today wasn't so bad. I woke up at a decent time, and started taking pictures, and then taking a separate set of pictures (blog post suggestions from different people, including a recent comment from ATangledYarn) ... Though, in my picture taking, I realized how extensive my tips were, so I may be breaking it up into little tips every now and then.
I have 5 Digital Cameras in my home, one Digital SLR camera, 2 film cameras and 2 mini-HD video cameras (which I do not use, check out the CheapGeek for that stuff). I'm not a pro, and do not claim to be at all. Most of my friends are photographers, I am not, but I constantly hold myself to the quality of photos they produce. For the most part, photography isn't the camera, it's the photographer (You). Unless there are tiny monster's inside your camera, you are the one that produces great photos.
I do almost all of my work with my little point and shoot camera. Granted, it's got some advanced features on it, but nothing terribly amazing. Since most of the stuff I take pictures of requires a lot of camera angles/positioning & close ups, I find my little camera, a cheap tripod, and some knowledge help. My pictures still aren't the greatest, but they ain't terrible!
Today, though, I have a good tip, because I made the mistake myself! My Number One tip for today is:
1. Know your Camera, and Know when it's not behaving how it should!
Don't freak out and obsess over your camera, or become intimidated by the fact that your camera has more power than the computers that monitored the first rockets into space. That's an old and tired saying, and both technology and humans evolve by leaps and bounds. You're TV Remote and your Sewing machine are fifty times more fabulous than your Gramma's, and you don't completely flip out when those malfunction, right? Though, I do throw the remote across the room, I don't throw my precious camera or the sewing machine across the room (NOTE2Self: Work out more, lift sewing machine).
How many Craft books did you read to become the Crafty person you are? How many Youtube videos or online tutorials have you watched to learn a new technique? Do you have more than one knitting/crochet technique book? If you already have that, then at least familiarize yourself with your Digital Camera's manual. Even if you don't read it, learn the basics, and familiarize yourself with the Camera Manual's Appendix/Index, and any "How To" Basic guides that come with your camera. There's Ravelry for us Crocheters/Knitters, and there's many Digital Photography sites devoted to basic and advanced shooting tips.
Here's what happened today: I started taking pictures of my latest projects and some stuff I wanted to sell. After shooting for a while, some of those pictures looked like this:
Today wasn't so bad. I woke up at a decent time, and started taking pictures, and then taking a separate set of pictures (blog post suggestions from different people, including a recent comment from ATangledYarn) ... Though, in my picture taking, I realized how extensive my tips were, so I may be breaking it up into little tips every now and then.
I have 5 Digital Cameras in my home, one Digital SLR camera, 2 film cameras and 2 mini-HD video cameras (which I do not use, check out the CheapGeek for that stuff). I'm not a pro, and do not claim to be at all. Most of my friends are photographers, I am not, but I constantly hold myself to the quality of photos they produce. For the most part, photography isn't the camera, it's the photographer (You). Unless there are tiny monster's inside your camera, you are the one that produces great photos.
I do almost all of my work with my little point and shoot camera. Granted, it's got some advanced features on it, but nothing terribly amazing. Since most of the stuff I take pictures of requires a lot of camera angles/positioning & close ups, I find my little camera, a cheap tripod, and some knowledge help. My pictures still aren't the greatest, but they ain't terrible!
Today, though, I have a good tip, because I made the mistake myself! My Number One tip for today is:
1. Know your Camera, and Know when it's not behaving how it should!
Don't freak out and obsess over your camera, or become intimidated by the fact that your camera has more power than the computers that monitored the first rockets into space. That's an old and tired saying, and both technology and humans evolve by leaps and bounds. You're TV Remote and your Sewing machine are fifty times more fabulous than your Gramma's, and you don't completely flip out when those malfunction, right? Though, I do throw the remote across the room, I don't throw my precious camera or the sewing machine across the room (NOTE2Self: Work out more, lift sewing machine).
How many Craft books did you read to become the Crafty person you are? How many Youtube videos or online tutorials have you watched to learn a new technique? Do you have more than one knitting/crochet technique book? If you already have that, then at least familiarize yourself with your Digital Camera's manual. Even if you don't read it, learn the basics, and familiarize yourself with the Camera Manual's Appendix/Index, and any "How To" Basic guides that come with your camera. There's Ravelry for us Crocheters/Knitters, and there's many Digital Photography sites devoted to basic and advanced shooting tips.
Here's what happened today: I started taking pictures of my latest projects and some stuff I wanted to sell. After shooting for a while, some of those pictures looked like this:
Are you able to tell what happened? If not, here's pictures that show how my camera should normally shoot photos:
What happened? Well, I had been shooting for a while, and the lighting conditions changed, and my settings were not the best settings for the situation I was shooting in. And bonehead me, I forgot to change my settings as the shooting conditions changed.
The important thing: When I reviewed the pictures, I realized what happened, and since I know how my camera works, I immediately went into my settings, and changed my camera settings to best suit the distance, available light, and the balance (color shift). For anyone that is familiar with cameras and most technology, I forgot to adjust my White Balance, and when my camera goes to sleep, it exits Digital Macro Mode (which I will definitely be doing a blog post about). All my pictures today were super saturated with blue tones as it got later in the afternoon and a few of them were not totally out of focus, but lacked sharpness.
Lesson learned: Don't freak out, and learn your camera. Otherwise, you end up like me, who will be going to bed late again, and waking up early to take ALL of her pictures over again.
PS: I got so mad at my bonehead mistake that I ended up still using alot of these photos today. One bad mistake can lead to hours of touch ups and photo work. If you're interested in the touched up photos, here's a link to the Vintage Polaroid Camera on eBay, and here is a link to the Vintage Shabby Chic ("Princess Gardner") Wallet. As you can see, you can paint a piece of poop (my photos) with gold (photo editing software), but it's still, well, poop.
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