Take more pictures

I have a lot of pictures now. I’ve been burning then off to DVD recordable disks but until now I’ve been at a loss to find and organize all the pictures. I found an app called WhereIsIt that can read in disks, automatically make thumbnails and then keep the t-nails in “catalogs”. The catalogs are searchable with a powerful included search engine. What I thought was real cool is you can then comment the catalog with the location of the disk. Takes a bit of patience to read the disk and then type a little info but I like the idea. I’m just concerned to see how large the catalogs will get on my hard disk with all the thumbnails. I’ll experiment and see. Hope this was useful to someone… I’m crossing this off my list too… /ww

I took the entry level classes for digital photography from Ritz (shameless plug, they have been extremely nice and helpful). I have had some B&W classes in my teens and also I’ve been self studing for digital for some time so the class was really a review. The class was also a teaser for the more advanced class that I’m still waiting to take. I did learn a bit about SLR lenses which has payed off with my picture taking. However my 19-55 lens busted and a newer 25-90 lens I bought sometimes doesn’t feel wide enough. I’m going to bust the piggy bank for a nice wide lens soon. Arg, darn Canons with the 1.6 multiplier. Lately I’ve been taking before and after pictures of houses I fix up with my friend. The clients really get a kick out of the work we do, I even print out color hardcopy for them. I would like to hike around my local area and soak up more nature with my camera. /ww

The local camera store offers photography classes. I’m going to see if some are offered that coordinate with my schedule. I have this fancy camera but I feel I’m not that good at controlling the picture I take. I have been having fun taking lots of digital pics. Weird mothers day for taking pictures. We went to a upscale part of town to a party from a nice friend we know. Excellent food, but a lot of the moms were boozing it up on white wine before we arrived! Ack! I asked, but no one wanted pictures taken. To make matters worse of all the bad luck my battery failed when we were leaving and the light and nicer people were around to take pictures of. Oh well… I’m going to concentrate on being more prepared ;o). Can anyone recommend an intermediately priced 19-35mm EF lens?

I’ve been packing my camera in it’s case and hauling it in my bicycle trailer when I ride. We’ve had beautiful blue skies, puffy clouds and flowers everywhere. Sometimes it’s been fun to just stop riding, pull the camera out, shoot a random direction, wait for AE lock and snap a whole bunch of pix. I’ve had interesting results. Also, I’ve joined the Flickr website, but I haven’t uploaded anything yet.

I have a nice semipro camera, the Canon Digital Rebel. I’m not satisfied with the quality of some of the shots I’ve taken. Not to be to hard on myself but I know enough about the camera that there are more advanced settings that give more control over flash and light balance for example. Daytime pics are sometimes too contrasty and flash pics are often almost overexposed. I’ve had some b&w film camera framing instruction, but maybe another class? Maybe signup at the R camera store I liked? I bought a book on the bells and whistles in the camera. I don’t understand some of the concepts or controls yet (exposure compensate, AE lock, lock zones), I’m hoping the book will help. I come from a PC graphics background so the file formats are a no brainer. I’ve just never had an SLR camera before. I understand and can swap out lenses but the concept of when to use a lens baffles me. Currently I have a wide angle 18-35 and a telephoto 75-200 with nice fast UL motors. I dropped the camera once on the wide lens (long ugly story) so I probably am going to replace it, but not before researching a nice one. I enjoy wide angle shooting of people (daughter, wife, relatives, friends). Looking forward to a fun journey of discovery and new knowledge. Maybe combine my more bike riding goal with picture taking and neat locations? Spring has definately sprung with all the rain we had…