bean-stock

A visit to the cemetary with Mom + fun, ghetto ways to use cheap lenses!



I splurged and got a cheap ($40) set of lenses on eBay a couple weeks ago for the new camera.  One is a wide-angle lens and the other's a macro.  The macro I LOVE, but the wide-angle I'm none too thrilled about.  Oh, it does provide more of a shot than the camera alone, but you have to zoom in to avoid having the edges of the lens show up in your shot--LAME--thus losing about 10 degrees on either side.  That's crap!  But, like I said, the lenses were cheap, so I have only myself to blame there.  HOWEVER, I've learned to use them to create something different (here's where the "ghetto" comes in).  I take off the wide-angle, leaving only the macro attached to the camera.  Then I flip the wide-angle around and hold it up to the macro, which creates a slight fish-eye effect and severely blurs the edges of the shot.  It's awesome, but a bit of a pain to have to hold up while I take tons of shots.  I'm going to upload some of those shots to my other account  


In other news, my mom visited this past weekend, which was fabulous.  We tried out new recipes (girly!), went walking a lot, and visited the flour mill ruins that are hidden along the side of my favorite trail.  We even had a picnic there one night!  I gave her my old camera, and she and I took loads of pictures while she was here.  One of the locations was the cemetary that's right down the street from my apartment.  It's on a steep hill, and is pretty much always void of other people, so a great place to hang out with a camera and take creepy pictures of tombstones.  As you will notice now that I've uploaded some new stock, I took full advantage of the fact that no one was around.  There are some KICKASS things to take pictures of in a cemetary, dudes.  I'm sure you all already know that.   So, all in all, a great visit from mom!


Lastly, it's freaking HOT HERE.  Ugh.

What is this, how you say, 300dpi??



While my camera is, admittedly, way more advanced than any camera I've ever owned, it still isn't so hard to use that I have an excuse for not shooting in a larger and more quality format.  So, I'm sorry that my recent uploads were smaller than usual and less quality!  I've yet to figure out why the camera isn't automatically shooting at 300dpi, but I've at least made a mental note to set the size larger in the future (and I know what you're thinking, but changing the size doesn't necessarily make the dpi higher for some reason).    I'll get the hang of this yet...


That said, I still had way too much fun taking pictures today.  That big, ugly yellow house that has taken over my uploads?  It sits in the middle of a new-ish shopping area not far from where I live.  For the past couple of years it's gone from being out in the open to being completed covered with ugly white and blue tarps to back in the open again--and I've always wanted to take pictures of it!  Problem is that the area is really popular (there's a Wal-Mart just across the road from the house) and the area is posted for no trespassing.  But today I was so inspired by the nice weather and the rays of sunlight that showered down from the heavens (sappysappysappy) that I disobeyed The Law and wandered around taking bazillions of pictures.  For me, the fun is TAKING the pictures.  I could do it for hours!  Sigh...such a great hobby.

My other boyfriend is Canon.



It's Springtime, and everything is flowering--including my love for my new camera!  A Canon PowerShot G9, 12.1MP.  I'm happy with it so far, though I've only figured out how to use .000000001% of its features.   I will study and become an expert, in time!  So far I've just tested it out in various lighting conditions and on my cat (he loves the attention) and I have to say I'm happy with it.  If anyone else has one or has owned one and has any helpful pointers, I am ALL EARS!

If you'd like to see it in action thus far, I've made a couple wallpapers with the test photos I took and uploaded them on my main account--beanhugger.  Only two, since I have nothing of interest to take pictures of here at my apartment. I think tomorrow is supposed to be very nice here, so maybe I'll go do some exploring in the Pennsylvania wilderness and see what I can find.  Oooh, exciting!

SPRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING.



It was almost 70 degrees here yesterday, and all of the trees burst suddenly to life as if they felt like they were missing something important.  So today I stopped by a park while in town and caught some decent "Spring-ish" pictures for you!  Here are some samples:


      


I love this time of year ALMOST AS MUCH AS Fall.  ALMOST.   I'm going to visit many more parks before summer hits, so be prepared for lots of flowery goodness from me in the next couple of months.


yana-stock, I PROMISE I'm going to take your tag shuffled music challenge!  I just won't have time to sit down and concentrate on it until after this weekend.  I gots me a wedding to go to!  Not my own--don't even suggest it.   After that I'll have all the free time in the world for awesome, frivolous things like tags!

But I'm willing to risk sounding positively silly for the sake of art.



I can't remember ever seeing this, but if it's been done someone please tell me!  I'd like to hold my very first ever dA contest--all very well and normal, right?  Nope, and this is where I might sound silly: my idea is that, for said contest, the contestants will have to choose from 3 or 4 "stock kits".  These "kits" will consist of one or two model stocks (depending on what type of kit it is), a couple of choices of background images, a couple of objects, brushes, and some textures.  The contestant will then use only these stock images to create whatever comes into their very talented minds--be it a manipulation, a digital mix, or a painting using the stock for reference.  I figure it's different than most contest rules in that everything is already provided for the artist.  Any thoughts/suggestions/flaming comments about my mother's morality being questionable due to the way I turned out are welcome!  I'm just curious to see if this sounds reasonable to any of you experienced contest-holders out there who might see this journal.  I kind of hate giving away the proposed "theme" of a contest, but I'd hate to do all the work in holding a contest that everyone thought was ludicrous!  

Please let me know what you think!