Merry Christmas

35 mm prime lens, 20 seconds, ISO 800, f/8.0

I discovered these cool shadows cast by the ornaments hanging in my kitchen window by accident.  I had a gnarly case of insomnia and wandered out to the living room to watch tv when these shadow caught my eye.

Since I couldn’t sleep, I thought it would be a good time to drag out the ‘ol tripod and experiment with long exposures.

I’m really loving the shadows and starting to think of other things to hang in my window after the Christmas decorations come down.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday!

xoxo,
Bec

Quick Clicks 12.18.2020

I’ve made it a point to take a walk every evening to gawk at the beautiful homes in my neighborhood all decked out for the holidays.  I even managed to get a small group of friends to join me last Sunday night after bribing them with mulled wine and boozy hot chocolate.  Each night I post a picture of one the homes from my walk in my Instagram stories.  This was the picture from December 14th.  I love how cozy this house is with a candle in every window and a few ornaments in the trees.  Understated and very Scandinavian!

Here are a few things I read this week….

I loved this post on shooting indoors.  Aren’t her photos beautiful?  Winter + pandemic = good time start making some still life photographs.

Powerful Photography Remains our Greatest Weapon in 2020.  While I agree with the writer that photography is a powerful documentary tool, I don’t agree that it’s unbiased.  If there is a human operating the camera, there will be bias.  After all, the photographer decides what to include in the photograph and what to exclude.

This is nice blog post from a photographer who shot pictures from the night that John Lennon died.  He shares his experience along with a few photos.

 

 

 

Quick Clicks

While I’m trying to figure out the whole adapter/new computer situation, I thought I’d share a few photography related articles, blog posts, videos or anything else I found interesting throughout the week.

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation.  This is a great piece from the New York Times.

If you have some time, this video was fun to watch (it’s 45ish mins long).  Three bros are critiquing black and white photos.  What they don’t know is some photos are by Ansel Adams and some are amateur snapshots.  At the end, they have to guess which photos are Ansel Adams’s and which aren’t.    I especially love the guy who thinks three of Ansel Adams’s photos were his own even though he didn’t remember taking them. 😂  And one of them asked an interesting question at the end…should anything else matter other than the finished image?

This photographer is quarantining with his mother and ex-wife and making a photographic diary about it. Yikes! The toilet paper photo really hits home for me.  There was a time this spring that I had to resort to paper towels until the shelves were stocked again.  How about you? Can you relate to any of the pictures?

This post lists a ton of tutorials available for pretty cheap.  I’m currently pursuing a Photography Certificate, but if I had the time I think I’d try the street photography tutorial, the landscape tutorial or any of the Lightroom tutorials.

Year-End Checklist for Photographers.

International Photography Academy

Just a quick note……

The International Photography Academy is offering its Six Level Virtual Class series at a 50% discount.  Pre-Covid days, when we could meet in the classroom, this was their Certificate Program.   It’s six levels consisting of four classes per level for $97.50.  You can sign-up here and since it’s all virtual, you don’t have to be in Chicago!

 

Live and Learn

Me too, Gladys. Me too.

 

How’s it going? It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I’ve been battling a myriad of technical issues for the past 6 months that have prevented me from editing photos and posting. I won’t bore you with the details, but it turns out I needed a new computer with more memory and a faster processor.

My new laptop was delivered today and I was all set to start editing 6 months worth of photos I have sitting in my camera. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it doesn’t have an SD card reader. You know what else it doesn’t have? USB ports. Awesome. What it does have are USB-C ports which means I now I need to find adapters to to hook up an external SD card reader and my external hard drives.

*sigh* Live and learn. How very 2020.