As I experiment more and more with this Website, I am discovering what a thrill it is for me at my age to have the opportunity to mess around with this technologically supported creative activity. It is certainly pleasing to me and I hope it has some value for those of you who choose to look at it from time to time. At the very least, it is a hobby that gives me personal satisfaction. It may serve as a sort of journal of this phase of my life that may have some meaning for my kids and grandchildren. I keep adding to the various pages on the site, but I am beginning to have the most fun with the "Photos of Interest" section. As I learn more and more about the power of Adobe's Lightroom, I am amazed what Lightroom enables me to to do in transforming a decent or not so decent photo taken with my trusty Canon Powershot SX50 HS or occasionally with my Olympus D300 or even my iPhone.
The camera course I took at the Silvermine Art School in the early part of this calendar year taught me a great deal about how to plan for the original shot. I find myself using the manual settings more often, including the ISO settings, Exposure Compensation scale, and overriding the automatic white balance, although this last function, I do rarely. Often, reality dictates that I have only a few seconds to take a shot or it is gone forever. Birds flying, wild animals in the backyard, people doing acrobatic exercises on the beach, my grandson hitting a Wiffle ball thrown by his Father provide just a momentary set of opportunities.
I suppose it is possible to take the time to pose some of these shots, but I love capturing the spontainaity of a candid photo with little semblance of posing. At any rate, those rapid fire shots often leave much to be desired with the initial photo. Shooting in RAW and importing the photos into iPhoto for editing in Lightroom and occasionally some final touches in Pixemator comprise a process that is working well for me. I will continue to develop this site. The time will come when I will need to start removing some content to keep the navigation of the site more manageable, but I am not quite ready to do that yet.
The camera course I took at the Silvermine Art School in the early part of this calendar year taught me a great deal about how to plan for the original shot. I find myself using the manual settings more often, including the ISO settings, Exposure Compensation scale, and overriding the automatic white balance, although this last function, I do rarely. Often, reality dictates that I have only a few seconds to take a shot or it is gone forever. Birds flying, wild animals in the backyard, people doing acrobatic exercises on the beach, my grandson hitting a Wiffle ball thrown by his Father provide just a momentary set of opportunities.
I suppose it is possible to take the time to pose some of these shots, but I love capturing the spontainaity of a candid photo with little semblance of posing. At any rate, those rapid fire shots often leave much to be desired with the initial photo. Shooting in RAW and importing the photos into iPhoto for editing in Lightroom and occasionally some final touches in Pixemator comprise a process that is working well for me. I will continue to develop this site. The time will come when I will need to start removing some content to keep the navigation of the site more manageable, but I am not quite ready to do that yet.
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