My Camera is Back

The service department at Canon mailed back my camera today, so I went outside to feed the mosquitoes and try it out.

cranesbill geranium and unidentified insects 

shasta daisy

campanula

caladium

Bubbles

I probably should have used this as a mystery photo, but I already posted it on Facebook as my cover picture and spilled the beans about what it is. 

Interesting Links and a Correction

Anna J Boll posted an interesting revising idea. She made a chart of the first sentences of each chapter in her novel. This is a way to check if chapters start with too much exposition. She can see if chapters tend to start at the same time of day, like when the main character is waking up. Most importantly, she can judge if each chapter starts with a hook. I’m going to try this. 

Elizabeth Wein’s wonderful novel Code Name Verity won the Edgar Award for the best young adult mystery/thriller in 2013. She also has a new book coming out, Rose Under Fire. I have never met Elizabeth Wein, but I loved Code Name Verity and can’t wait to read her new book.  

Correction: I misidentified a plant in my April 28, 2013 photographs.

This plant is called Spanish bluebells, which is a monocot. I said they were Virginia bluebells, which is a dicot. (The leaves in the photograph are vinca.)

Tripping the Light Begonia

Here's some homework I did for my photography class. Our begonias are still blooming, so I decided to shoot them again and play with exposure.

The begonias love the filtered light that comes through this rice paper screen. I liked it for a backdrop.

The stems caught the light (and the focus).

Under-exposed, but interesting.

Very under-exposed, but sparkley.

More Snowdrops

Now I'm in the beginners' photography class. It's a much better place for me. This is clearly going to be one of those experiences where the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. Here are my first attempts to adjust white balance. The clarity is much better than in this photo.

zooming in

A white flower on a bright sunny day is a difficult subject, especially when it's breezy.

Negative Space

“Negative space isn’t the absence of space but rather the space that defines the positive space.” [link]

This is my Aunt Bibi’s bird. It’s all about negative space. The sweep of the neck and the curve of the back enhance image.

As a former scientist, I’m fascinated with biological design and tend to do a lot of macro photography. For macro shots, there’s a trade off between zooming in for detail and zooming out to improve the composition of the picture. I posted this flower a couple weeks ago. The close up (with minimal negative space) shows textures and the play of light through the petals.

Backing off the flower increases the negative space and gives a sense of the wider world of the garden. 

It's a trade off.

Conversations About Art and Photography

My friend, Susan Miller, is posting a painting almost every week on her blog. Check them out. Susan is a fantastic artist. I mentioned to another friend (and another fantastic artist), Ruth McNally Barshaw how impressed I was with this goal of creating a painting a week because I often have trouble getting a photograph each week to post on my blog. Ruth was surprised.

Why is it a challenge to take one photograph a week?

1. I need to find something to photograph. If I photograph the beautiful lilies in my garden, it will look exactly like a million other pictures of lilies.

2. For every photograph I post, I often take ten or twenty frames that didn’t work out.

3. I’m still learning to use my camera. It’s a complicated computer, and I don’t know everything it can do.

4. I often don’t know what I’ve taken until I view the picture on a big screen. A few weeks ago, I was concentrating getting an unusual red bug in focus before he flew away. I didn’t know until later that I’d captured the optical illusion of a giant shadow caused by the leaf’s shadow superimposed on his.

Ice

Last winter my Sunday nature series was frosted over. Remember picture after picture of ice formations? So far this year, my hunting expeditions have not yielded great photo ops, but while I tromp through the snow, I’ve been thinking about the weather conditions that make the best ice photographs.

1. Moving water – like a river or a fountain. No splashing – no stalactites.
2. Temperatures just below freezing. This year we had a hard freeze right after the first snow, and the Red Cedar River crusted over.
3. Sunshine. Yeah, it’s all about light. Unfortunately in this part of the world, when the temperatures warm up to freezing, the sky is often overcast.*
4. Lower water level. As the water freezes, the river level goes down, leaving ice formations high and dry.

I’ll keep searching.

*To be honest, that sentence should read: Unfortunately in this part of the world, the sky is often overcast.

Photos and Computer Woes

I hope to have a nature picture up on Sunday, but it all depends on the home computer situation. My new camera will not interact with my venerable computer, so I’ve been downloading photos onto my husband’s newer laptop. That worked until Sam’s laptop battery refused to recharge, and we learned the hard way that many online computer companies post false information or fail to ship ordered products. Sam and my husband have been sharing our one functional battery, but last week Sam took the battery to Ann Arbor so he could complete his midterm projects, and my husband borrowed a computer to give his lectures at State. I’ve felt that photos for my blog are a less important concern.

Sing along with me:

Four weeks of waiting
Three follow-up emails
Two insistent calls
And a dead laptop battery

I hope the situation resolves itself before we get to five – or at least before Christmas.

(There’s an excellent reason why I don’t write in rhyme.)

Lights, Camera, Action!

I’ve been recruited to make a music video for Jeremy’s band even though so far I’ve done only still photography. In my manuscript G&CBS (fka TAoCBS), Troy, the protagonist, makes a short film, and he has the entire novel to figure out how to do it.

I have a week.

Troy’s approach was to film everything in his life then cut, splice and edit a bunch of random footage into a video. Probably the band will want a more specific approach. I think practice is the answer – practice for everyone. Tonight, when Jeremy plays his guitar, I’ll start figuring out lighting and camera angles.

What’s the Story on the New Camera?

I’m making progress.

I know something about the automatic functions on my camera.

I’m trying to learn some basic photography concepts beyond, “Isn’t that pretty? Hang on while I point the camera at it.”

I can resize photos to a web-appropriate dpi. Don’t you hate it when you try to zip over to someone’s blog, and it won’t open or takes a few epochs to click into view? That can happen when picture files are too large.

I’ve learned I need a USB media card reader to load my photos on my computer. My new camera and my aging computer don’t play nicely together.

I’ve viewed the tip of the iceberg of photographic manipulation and realize that someday I’m going to have to learn a whole bunch more stuff.

I tried to go on a photo-shoot today at Sessions Lake and discovered you can’t see the water from the trail. I could hear swans paddling on the lake. I hope you can visualize graceful white birds on sparkling blue water, green leaves, puffy clouds because I couldn’t get close enough to the lake to take a picture without leaving the trail and trampling through the local flora.

In parting, here’s a butterfly – not a perfect photo, but it’s something.

What, No Sunday Nature Photo?

For years now, I’ve managed to come up with some image of the natural world every Sunday morning. Not today, though. I recently purchased a new camera (Canon Rebel T2i), and I’m trying to figure out how to use it and manage the files. My previous photos were taken with a Sony Cyber-shot which is basically a point and shoot. Now I need to learn something about photography.

I will have a mystery photo up tomorrow – taken with my old camera. I think it’s an easy one, but then I know what it is.

It’s All About Stealth

I walked toward the pond at Fenner Nature Center. Plink. Plink. Plunk. My footsteps had scared several frogs and maybe a turtle into the water. I turned on my camera. Plip. Plop. More were frightened by the electronic whir. I stalked a sleepy-looking fellow, floating with his head above the surface. I focused, wondering if reflected sunlight would spoil the picture or make it more interesting.

“Is there anything in there?” a woman shouted as she came up to the pond.

The frog disappeared into the murk. I turned so she could see my camera.

“What are you taking pictures of?” She yelled even though she was standing next to me.

“Frogs,” I whispered, hoping she’d turn down the volume.

“Oh, I see ‘em now.” She hadn’t taken the hint.

Plunk. Plop. I put my finger to my lips.

“They’re all over the place,” she shouted.

“Could you please be quiet?” I whispered. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re scaring the frogs.”

“They’re all over the place! They’re all over the place!” Her voice kept getting louder.

I sighed, and eventually she left. Then I managed to photograph some of the braver individuals. Stop by tomorrow to see more frog pics.

November Challenges

NaNoWriMo
I applaud all who are participating. My critique group has a NaNo spin off in which we will all try to do some writing every day. I made an Excel file to record my efforts. (I love Excel files.)

Saying Goodbye – or at least See You Later

After the SCBWI-MI fall conference, I decided to put aside TAoCBS. Maybe someday, I’ll figure out how to fix it.

Revisions
I must finish my current revision of CBL in the next few days. It needs some breathing room before I take it to the Highlights Founders Workshop on Writing YA Novels later this month.

New Project
A novel idea has been percolating for some time. I’ll begin planning it while CBL is breathing.

Gray Skies
Now that it’s November, we’re unlikely to see sunshine in Michigan until the end of March. Overcast skies didn’t bother me until I became the delighted owner of a digital camera. My Sunday series will become an extended experiment in muted lighting.