Even More Randomness

February Photo-a-Day Challenge – Day 4

Donna — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:22:09 +0000

A stranger is the theme for today. I captured two as we sat at an eyeglass business waiting for Ed’s turn to get his glasses adjusted.

Do you have an iPhone with the Instagram app installed? Do you want to play too? Here’s the list for this month’s challenges.

1. Your view today
2. words
3. hands
4. a stranger
5. 10am
6. dinner
7. button
8. sun
9. front door
10. self potrait
11. makes you happy
12. inside your closet
13. blue
14. heart
15. phone
16. something new
17. time
18. drink
19. something you hate to do
20. handwriting
21. a fave photo of you
22. where you work
23. your shoes
24. inside your bathroom cabinet
25. green
26. night
27. something you ate
28. money
29. something you are listening to

As I said in my last post, I missed the first two days and I’m not sure I can manage every challenge, nor are the challenge police going to arrest me if I don’t, but I am happy to be inspired to look for these challenge ideas and if it involves taking photos, you know I’m a happy camper!

You can read about the February photo-a-day challenge and find the rules here.

February Instagram Fun

Donna — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 05:59:24 +0000

A theme for every day with today’s being “hands“. Instagram is an app on my phone with these cool retro (and other) effects. I’m a couple of days late joining in on the fun, but we shall see if I make the rest of the month. Fun stuff, y’all!

Thunderstorm Coming

Donna — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:53:24 +0000

Strange green dot, but the clouds were fabulous looking with the sun shining through. Rains-a-comin’!

Our Life

Donna — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:24:03 +0000

Dropbox

Donna — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:35:16 +0000

Since I’ve gone on and on about the iPhone, I thought I would share some of my favorite apps and perhaps even tips and tricks in the future.

I already was familiar with Dropbox as I had it on my Motorola Droid smartphone. It is handy and convenient to save any file and have it sync to your phone, your pc and in my case, my iPad as well. You can get a 2gb free account or purchase accounts for storage up to 100gb.

Even if you do not need the ability to share between devices, the free storage or paid storage is a great tool to use to back up important files.

I share my photos, PDF documents and more on my free account. I’ve also downloaded the manual for my DSLR to have to review on my phone while I’m out and about taking photos.

It’s a must-have app in my opinion, get it now!

iPhoneography

Donna — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:02:59 +0000

Being new to the iPhone World, I had no idea how enamored others were with their iPhone photos. There’s even a term they are using and that explains the subject line of this post. Guess what? I’ve joined the crowd.

No, the photos will never compare to my DSLR, but the apps and just the fun of whipping it out of my pocket for a quick pic is just too much fun. My previous smartphone had a camera and yes, I had apps for it too, but I never got too attached to the pictures taken with it.

This photo was captured this evening with a camera app called TrueHDR and then I just had to see what else I could do with it in PSP. It is perhaps a little over the top in the editing department, unless of course, you like bold…and I do.

iPhoneography

Model Doe

Donna — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:43:28 +0000

I had a great photo trip this evening and although I got a late start, it was worth burning the gas. I had not traveled too far from home when I came upon a doe on my side of the road… just THERE, right there at my bumper! I wasn’t fast enough to get my wits together, the vehicle stopped and my camera aimed at her. However, I did slow down to watch her cross the road and stop once she made it into the edge of the wheat field. By that time, I had my truck stopped as well and that’s when I took the first two shots through my passenger window (it no longer rolls down).

She finally was startled enough again to flee by taking a right into the cedars.

As I’m busily reviewing the couple of pictures I got on my LCD screen, I look in my rearview mirror and see a vehicle behind me. I’m sitting in the middle of the road, so off I go to get out of the way. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there might be more than the one deer and had decided I was going to turn around. I’m in luck! The vehicle takes the next right, I continue on down the road to the next “Y” and turn around. As I approached her field, I couldn’t believe she had returned just moments later.

I was wrong though, she was alone.

Or, was she?

Whatever she was watching she wasn’t telling and they weren’t revealing themselves either.

I was totally mesmerized watching this beautiful animal. She sauntered down the edge of the field and then on out into the wheat to start grazing with absolutely no sign of fear from me this time.

Although, she did feel the need to look in my direction just one more time only to once again start grazing with no thought to me at all. I could have sat there and taken photos as long as I wanted, but darkness was beginning to settle in.

My camera journeys are some of the best times of my life. I am thankful to have the evidence.

Lake Crockett

Donna — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:50:12 +0000

Gorgeous, late evening at the lake, can’t wait to go back!

Cane Creek

Donna — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:17:40 +0000

The kids and I played here last week; today we stopped on the bridge to take a photo with my phone. It was a gorgeous day!

Just Playing

Donna — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:30:04 +0000

I spotted these two deer in the cemetery, backed up and managed to take a couple of crappy shots before they fled. Hey, it was late (very late!) evening and they were too far away, but I managed to catch them at the far reach of the telephoto lens I had on my Nikon. I totally overexposed the shot and the original below is cropped, but I decided to show you what you can do with a bad photo. View the before and after and please bear in mind, it is still not a good photo, but you can see what editing software can do. I would never print this, but it was fun to play with.

I enhanced the contrast, the colors and sharpened along with a few other things. I enjoy playing with the “bad” shots as well as the good ones just to see what my favorite editing programs can do.

In case you don’t know, I’m now using Adobe Lightroom to process my raw photo files and tweaking there, but I still bring them into Paint Shop Pro Photo X3 to resize for the web or printing, fiddle with them a bit more and then finally save. All could be done with Lightroom, but I am a creature of habit and I just can’t let go of my beloved PSP!