Pinky's Redemption

When last we met, I told you the story of acquiring my current camera, "Pinky", and how I let someone else affect my photographic-self-esteem.  But there's small a "rest of the story" that warrants telling.

While it took me months to pull Pinky out of its bag again (I still haven't determined if my camera is a male or female entity), I did ultimately do so.  A lot, particularly during my Lenten exercise.  I feel like we have a better relationship now.  I'm a lot less embarassed about the color of my camera body, partly because I know I can capture quality images that *I* like. 

It's so easy to forget or care what your equipment looks like while you're standing next to the goal capturing beautiful images of your beautiful daughter doing something she loves.

It's so easy to forget or care what your equipment looks like when you've found amazing light in a magical setting and are able to capture your beautiful daughter in a moment of laughter.

It's so easy to forget or care what your equipment looks like when you're scrolling through your days' work for the first time and discover something that makes you say, "Wow!"

Someday, maybe I'll be practiced enough to plan these shots so they aren't a delightful surprise, but instead, an expectation.  In the meantime, I intend to keep shooting, and to keep Pinky.

The Materialistic Canon Guy at the Medieval Faire forgot one of the most important rules of photography.  And I can let him go, so long as I keep shooting.

"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase." ~ Percy W. Harris.

A Daunting Experience

I recently rediscovered a big psychological hole in my photography practice. The Medieval Faire. I go every year, and with all the participants and visitors in costume, it's a great opportunity for pictures. And I forgot my camera. Correction: I forgot to bring a memory card for my camera, making it a worthless weight that I left in the trunk. And sadly, I think this oversight is Freudian, but let me backup to tell you the first part of the story.

Did I tell you about my camera? It's a pink Pentax. Yes, I said pink. I ordered it from a one-day one-sale kind of place, and it was a bit of an impulse buy. Sort of. I'd been watching cameras and camera prices for a while. I knew Pentax was a solid brand as they've been around for years. In fact, my very first SLR camera, back before the digital age, was daddy's Pentax he gave me for graduation. I checked reviews and found favorable information there. The price was good. And I could get something a little unusual but not ridiculous: a camera with a purple body. Only when it arrived at my office it wasn't purple (which would have been different without drawing a lot of attention), it was pink. Bright Barbie Pepto Bismal pink. I'm not really a pink kind of girl, and I was fairly disappointed. But I was determined to make the best of the situation, showing it off to family and friends with joy and laughter. How fun is this?! Inside though, I worried. Would anyone take me seriously with this? It's a pink camera for crying out loud! It could only be worse if it was pink GLITTER! Anyway, I put my fears aside and started dragging my camera with me for the occasional shooting expedition.

And then came the 2011 Medieval Faire. I dutifully strapped on my still-new very-pink Pentax, and headed to Norman, OK with My Amazing Boyfriend, his two kids, and my youngest daughter. And I shot this and that and was having a lovely time.

We stopped at one of the blacksmithing booths for the kids to get nails that had been hammered into tiny swords. Sadly that year, there was a burn ban in effect, and the smiths were not allowed to run their forges, but they still had their gear and costumes, just something less of a show than we were used to. At one booth, a strapping young fellow had a Canon strap across his neck and a pretty hefty camera in hand. A visitor/photographer approached, and asked him a bit about his camera. And proceeded to tell him about the girl he had seen earlier with the pink Pentax. The newcomer shook his head and said, “It doesn’t compare.” I just—stood there. Didn’t do or say a thing. Thankfully, our photographer/smith didn’t really respond. I thought about it a lot the rest of that day, and for many days after. Weeks even. It occasionally still haunts me. When I got home, I put the Pentax away and barely touched it for most of the next YEAR.

Part of me wants to be The Girl with the Pink Pentax. Part of me wants to embrace this fun, unusual, attention-drawing camera. That part of me knows it’s less about the camera and more about the photographer. That part of me dreams of portrait shoots with darling little girls and enchanting them with my bright pink “girlie” camera, setting them at instant ease with my less intimidating equipment. Another part of me can barely take myself seriously, much less expect others to. And I think that is precisely why I managed to forget a memory card at this year’s Medieval Faire.

Lenten Recap

Lent is over.  I've had my first coke.  And my second.  And even a third!  Though I didn't finish the third one.  Thankfully, it was in a 12 oz. bottle with a lid and it may be salvageable with some time in the refrigerator.

How did we do with our Lenten disciplines?  I was completely successful with giving up Coke.  I didn't have a single one.  I did substitute with the occasional rootbeer, Sprite, 7-Up, or Sierra Mist.  Also lemonade, but even among these five different drinks, I had less than one a day, so a definite improvement from a caloric and general health aspect.

What about the positive discipline?  The goal was to write or shoot every day.  I didn't quite make it.  I made 16 entries here, and none elsewhere, unless you consider the essay I wrote for my history class.  So with 46 days during Lent (including Sundays), I had about a 35% hit rate on writing.  But I could also shoot, so how did I do there?  According to the information I have on hand (there's more in other locations) I took pictures on 16 different days.  Seven of those days overlap with journaling days, so we're up to 25 days on which I either wrote here or took pictures.  54% hit rate.  Eh, not great.  I'm certain I took pictures on more days that I just don't have records for here, so I may update at a later time, but probably not. 

While I didn't meet my discipline goal, this was a successful exercise in other ways.  I'm more confident about taking pictures than I was when I started.  I probably took at LEAST a thousand pictures, of which, I kept more than 800.  Probably 30 or so meet my "Oooh, I like that picture," criteria.  Heh, that's about 4%, obviously leaving LOTS of room for improvement.  But overall, I'm content.

I think I'll keep the blog.  I'll post picture samples here.  We can watch my improvement together.  Or not, depending on how my work progresses!  While I wasn't totally successful, it still served a very useful purpose and got me a little bit away from my hangups.

(More to come on those hangups in another post).

Oh yeah, happy Easter!!

Techno-Envy vs. Satisfaction

For many months, if not years, I have suffered from a mild case of Technology Envy.  As my children and a few friends got newer and better cutting edge "stuff", and as I watched them use it constantly, I started to turn green.  Most of the time, my symptoms were mild, but occasionally I'd have a big jealous flare up, and would consider possible remedies.  Those remedies usually involve spending a big chunk of change up front and increased monthly costs for the remainder of history.  As a pretty serious saver, spending is sometimes frequently anathema.

A few months ago, I had a little cancer scare.  I had to get a breast biopsy, which turned out clean and clear, but between learning that I had to have this procedure, getting it scheduled, having it, and getting results, I made some plans.  The first plan was to quit smoking.  I'd invited cancer into my life long enough, and it was time to close the door.  The second plan was to reward myself if A) I did not have cancer, and B) I succeeded in stopping smoking.  The reward would be an iPhone.

I do not have cancer.  I have stopped smoking (100 days, coming up!).  I have met my goals and have not yet rewarded myself.  I'm a little annoyed that I haven't treated my case of Techno-Envy, and haven't come through on taking care of myself with this reward.  However, for Valentine's Day, my Amazing Boyfriend gifted me with my very own iPad2.  I get probably daily use out of it, and am very happy with my toy.  This may in part be why I haven't yet rewarded myself--he kind of already did it for me.  When I looked to see when I had bought my current phone, it had been less than a year.  As such, my internal saver (who takes up a good portion of my internal personalities) is not ready to let go of another $100-400 (upfront cost only) to meet a need that's mostly already been met.  Why pay to fix something that's not really broken any more?

I think at present, I will wait until it has been a year since the purchase of my last phone.  Conveniently, that is my birthday month, so I will have even more valid reasons to treat myself than I do now.  In the meantime, I need to find some small way to reward my recent accomplishments.  Otherwise, I'll be less likely to accomplish future goals if I fear I'm going to welch on the deal.  The big question is HOW to reward myself?  I've already had a beach vacation.... I already have a pretty decent digital SLR camera and some nifty tech-gizmo accessories to go with it... I'm already planning a cruise with my daughters... I'm already taking classes with more planned... Experiences are pretty well covered, as is stuff, and self-improvement--what's left in the reward department?  It doesn't even HAVE to include spending money, but one really awesome thing is that there's money available to be spent (pretty much for the first time in my adult life).

Could it be I've reached a point of satisfaction in my life that I don't really NEED a reward?

As Promised

Ten of my favorite pictures from Saturday's soccer tournament.

Easily my favorite shot from the first game.

During warm ups for the second game.  They're on the same team.

I've watched #17 grow into a beautiful young lady.

Subbing.

I love capturing the extension and grace.

A wee bit overexposed, but I still like all the action and intensity here.

Coach and trainer come to see about an injury, as three team mates stand by for emotional support.

#15 is SO much fun to watch.  Isn't that just beautiful?  I have a dozen or more of these shots.

#20 shows intensity in everything she does.

Reducing an Album

I went to Miss Boo's soccer tournament last weekend.  I took my camera and my 70-300 lens.  There was a point during the second game where I remembered how much I used to LOVE taking pictures of the girls sporting events (I haven't done it for several years).  Unfortunately, this is Miss Boo's last season of high school sports, and she's not intending to participate in collegiate sports, though I hope she'll at least get involved in intramurals, to stay active and social. 

I took over 600 pictures during three games and it has been an almost overwhelming task to pare them down to a reasonable quantity of high quality pictures.  I almost didn't know where to start.  Once I did figure out some sort of process, I decided I wanted to record that process, and where better than here?  Once I get them pared down where I want them, I'll share a few here, but following is the basic structure of the process.

At some point during the first game, I realized I was shooting in both .jpg and RAW.  This means I would have two files for each picture.  One file (.jpg) is more compact and computer ready to view.  The other file is bigger in terms of the memory it takes up, and since I knew I would be taking three games worth of photos, I switched to shooting .jpg only.  One of the advantages of shooting RAW is the file captures ALL the information about the photo: every possible color in every possible pixel.  This allows for greater possibilities when it comes to post-editing  .Jpg files pare down what the camera computer thinks is necessary to render the photo.  This makes for faster recording, smaller space, and less flexibility in terms of editing.  But since I don't really LIKE to edit my photos (for two or three reasons, some of which can be fixed), I knew the .jpg files would be what I needed.  So that cut out about 46 files.  Only 570-some to go!

Next I viewed each picture, and deleted any that were just absolute crap.  This really didn't remove very many which is good news when considering my skills, but bad news when considering how many more I had to cull!

On a second pass, I decided to take out almost every picture in which we couldn't see at least one face from our team.  This was kind of tough, because there were still good pictures where you couldn't see faces, but I really had to have some criteria to determine what to keep and what to lose.

On a third pass, I took out pictures that were not in good focus.  On a fourth pass, I took out most pictures that didn't convey action (these are soccer games after all).

On a fifth pass, I took out pictures that didn't tell a story.  This is a little hard to explain, in part because everybody is going to see different things from a photo, so what tells a story for you might not tell a story for me.  And some stories were told across multiple photos depending on what was happening in the game at the time.  But again, I wanted to get this under 100 GOOD photos, and why show a photo that doesn't tell a story?  I'm the author, so I can tell the story my way (which means there aren't very many photos where the other team is controlling the ball)!

I'm currently down to 253 photos.  Hopefully, one more pass will do it.  This (hopefully) final pass will probably be making sure I have at least one photo of each girl on the team, and no more than... say ten of any one single girl.  Though I have so many of Miss Boo that it will be difficult to cut those.  She was, after all, my primary focus.

Samples to follow, hopefully later today!

Neither

Neither writing nor photography, the following is a status update:

Good job, me!  Keep up the great work, and remember to reward myself!  (If I can stomach the recurring monthly expense, the reward may be an iPhone.)