It has been quite a long time since my last post. Although I have continued my interest in photography it seemed like it was time to study the subject more. When I started this blog and the photography journey it was my intention to document my progress as a photographer. It was going to be a blog with my successes and failures in hopes that any readers could identify with my journey. It was also an opportunity for me to play around in the blogosphere and learn some new things. That is still the plan, however, I needed to get more familiar with aspects of photography other that releasing g the shutter.
That’s a long way to say I’ve been learning new things. First of all, I joined a photo club and have heard some great presentations on many facets of photography. The speakers also presented their work and I could clearly see that I had a long way to go to even get close to their quality of art. Next I took some lessons in using Adobe Lightroom 5. I also looked at videos on both Adobe’s site and YouTube. I even bought an expensive book on using Lightroom. Fortunately, for me all of this is starting to help and I’m getting more proficient in using Lightroom!
In the process of using Lightroom, I’ve come to the understanding that beauty is a very subjective term. I wonder how many of you have also come to the conclusion that Lightroom by itself is useful but only if you have an idea of what you want the final picture to look like. This has been a real challenge for me since my artistic eye is not well developed as you can probably ascertain from the pictures on this blog! To that end, I’ve recently started looking at photos on 500px. This has now given me more ideas on what good photographers produce. This is going to take a lot of education to get me up to speed, but I’m looking forward to that.
As I mentioned, I joined a photo club and that is proving to be a great experience. I’ve even submitted a couple of photos for the contest the club holds monthly. I haven’t won anything or even finished above the bottom yet but I’ll keep trying. Recently the club sponsored a Macro Photography Workshop. I attend along with around 25 other photographers and we spent the day taking pictures of all sorts of small things. I am sharing some of the photos I took with you in this post.
Another item I am tackling is learning Photoshop. I decided to start with Photoshop Elements because it seemed simpler and was definitely less expensive that the full version of Photoshop. This software is somewhat challenging for me and I must admit it has been a slow learning experience. Have any of you suffered through either Photoshop Elements or Photoshop? If so, I hope the learning process is getting better for you! I did have a little success in making a composite picture. The first one that I
labeled Treasure Found is a composite. The shell is the one in some of the other pictures in this post and I used another photo for the background. It came out ok for a first attempt!
Please take a look at the pictures from the Macro Workshop and if you have a minute, leave a comment for me.
C'est la vie 