Needs Advice by Sunday

There is a girl from Indiana who really likes my work and is looking for a photographer for her sister's wedding. I'm definitely interested in shooting this wedding (which will be Sept. 8 of 2012), but because I know by then I will still have little or no wedding experience, I told her I wasn't comfortable doing it alone. Of course, I recommended Sandra right off the bat. I also told her I don't know what I would charge, so I would research during the week and let her know by Sunday. She's such a sweet girl, and besides, I am supposed to shoot a cousin's wedding around the same time anyway, so why not?

Well, I've searched my behind off for answers, and as you can imagine, I've gotten nowhere. Thus far, all I can think of as a compromise is to find her a photographer that wouldn't mind having me as a second-shooter or whose work would be similar enough to mine to satisfy her. Do you have any ideas/advice? Should I just throw out something like a $75-per-hour price and find my own second-shooter to give some of the money to?


Anyhow, yesterday I was supposed to post pics from orientation and, since august 5th's photos are to be lumped with a different day's photos, I would skip to the 6th's. So here are those, barely and carelessly edited because I need to get to bed. Sorry!

Waiting patiently for our first advising session at Ohio State.

Pride.

Evidently it rained a little on the 6th. I had to giggle when I saw this because I'm pretty sure I've already taken a photo very similar... Guess I just really like that, um, porch ornament?

Today, I give you the 7th's photo and two almost completely untouched photos from this evening's photo "adventure". (vignetted and shrunken. oh, the editing. lol)

It may have rained on the 6th, but the 7th was sunny and warm!

Speaking of sunny and warm.

I'm still trying to figure out how he got out there. And how he's dry.

Lastly, I wanted to post that one unedited dandelion pic. This is what happens when you crank up the saturation and contrast settings on your Shooting Mode (in my case, Landscape mode is my chosen "default").

Are your eyes shriveling yet?

Time to hit the hay! I have less than 6 hours to sleep before I head out with my friend Katie to see the Ohio State Reformatory (site of the Shawshank Redemption and numerous other famous films). They don't allow "professional" cameras, so my pics will be lower quality than usual. Still, I CAN'T WAIT! AAAAAAH!!!!!

Goodnight. :)

P.S. Happy birthday, Aunty Julie! I love you more than the sun, the moon, and the chicken wings I always beg you to make.

"WHERE'D YOU GO?!"

That's probably what you guys are asking. Well, I have almost literally gone nowhere, and I am now officially making my return to my 365 Challenge.

I owe you guys 32 photos, but today I will only post a few that I took over the long hiatus. Sandra and I have decided that it would be best to tack the days onto the end of the year instead of posting all of the photos I took or neglected to take since (1) I must definitely say I did NOT take a photo every single one of those days, though I did take one most of them, and (2) I have been extremely sick, and by the time I get well enough to make up for the missed photos, I will have a ridiculous amount of photoshoots to work on.

Let me catch you up a little.

Ursa has finally stopped looking for Roxy and now spends her time calling out to the other dogs on the block.

Daisy, my ironically named orchid, has passed on due to overheating.

I felt better for all of three days. Grandpa hit the shutter release for me because I have managed to lose my remote.

I learned how to draw with Soft Pastels for Drawing in Color class

I expressed myself in collage form for that same class using my photos and song lyrics. (Tears of a Clown and Mad World)

I finished a Drawing project in one class session, basing it off of Monet's style and JMW Turner's painting.

The friend whose maternity photos I took had her baby. Yay!!!

And, finally...

Today, I had a stalker. He watched me that intensely for over 5 minutes. The little creep.

Otherwise, I have attended more doctors' appointments than classes, begun physical therapy, gone through withdrawal from medications, come down with a sinus infection that's currently plaguing me, spent an entire day with my grandfather at the hospital, been told I am a carrier of a blood disorder, and (holy cow, GOOD news) been informed that I am an Honor student. Now I am going to be observed for two different sleep disorders this week. Life is... something. On the plus side, I've begun a tutorial that may very well become a small e-book for you all that explains (as thoroughly as I possibly can) the Photoshop toolkit.

Thank you for hanging in there with me. I pray I don't let you down again. :-(

Step On It!

Okay, I'm in a strange mood today and no longer feel like making yet another stupid photo, so I stylized it. Eventually I'll edit the original photo correctly, but until then, this is what you can ponder over if you'd like. And here are a couple of "traditional" photos, if you're not a fan of today's freak of nature.

Connection

Today, I made a very strange mental connection between the texture photo I snapped and a panned photo I took for my old digital photography class. The two were nothing alike, but once I tweaked their colors, the connection became a little clearer. Still, it's rather strange. Don't you think?

The Texture

Ye Olde Pan

Oddly enough, I just checked dailyshoot.com to find that today's challenge was to take a photo that emphasizes the horizon. Ha!

Spent the day editing photos rather than taking them yet again. I'd share, but I'm wiped. You'll see the best of them when I finish up this particular shoot! Goodnight. :)

Boxed In

A texture for you folks! Have fun. ;)

Music to My Eyes

The past few days have been photographically blasé. It feels like I've been failing all week, but today was more than I could have expected. I am so happy with this set I could squeal. If you don't like it, I completely understand, but for once I shall be content. :D

I now present: Music to My Eyes

The Conductor

The Treble Clef

La Tromba (The Trumpet)

The Diva

Smokopelli the Violinist

This is my first time trying my hand at smoke stream photography, somewhat following this tutorial Sandra sent me to. I used a flashlight to light up the smoke while I focused and then shot with the tut's recommended settings and my flash on. I set my white balance to blue intentionally and shot by hand in my poolhouse. It's definitely something I'll be trying again!

Down in the... Ditches?

Today was a great day followed by an awful night. I am very excited that I got a box full of photography supplies   I bought last week. RC paper galore!!! And my grandmother got the car fixed, so no more annoying hum all the way to Photography class. Yay!

However, on my way to class, there was something gigantic on the expressway that none of us saw until the car was about to run over it. It not only gave us a flat tire, but also bent our rims. Needless to say, I didn't make it to class seeing as we had no spare and help didn't come for an hour.

Then, to make matters worse, we couldn't get up the steep hill to our home with that donut tire they gave us, so my frustrated grandfather backed off the hill too fast and went right into a ditch. Not just any ditch, though. No, this was a ditch filled with knee-deep water, a streetlight in front of us, and a fire hydrant within four feet of our tail end. The towtruck drivers took almost 2 hours to get there, and then they managed to hit that hydrant with our car. The poor poor car.

I almost forgot to take my photo of the day because I was so frustrated. I did manage to get a semi-interesting texture photo, though. I combined it with an in-camera image overlay from yesterday's set to get this. Hopefully you'll get some use out of it.

Time to go cuddle up in bed with my teddy and my feather pillow (yes, I still cuddle with both of those. It's been a rough night. Leave me alone!). Goodnight, loves!


OH, by the way, I finally found out what model my Nikon SLR is. It's an FM. Good to know! lol

Mama's In the Kitchen

SLR shot taken this morning at school.

Can you see her? Or Do you see a Christmas tree? Or a drummer in a marching band?

Or do you just see a boring, upside-down photo?

I see me going to bed early after a long day of printing (50+ prints today! GAH) and taking photographs. Goodnight!

So Far So Good

Interesting wall sculpture at Ohio University's art building, Seigfried hall

The headache is just a headache today, not a migraine, and my prints were all really good today, so yay! Unfortunately, I have an art history midterm today that I am not looking forward to failing. Much too tired and headache too bad to remember anything. Luckily, I don't think my GPA will suffer very much from a less-than-perfect grade. As long as my photography grade is perfect, I honestly don't care.

This is my love, and even when I have bad days, I know I'll still love it tomorrow. <3


Speaking of bad days, here is an edited version of yesterday's photo to hopefully make up a little for the awfulness. Cheers!

Sow's Ear, Anyone?

I spent the day re-editing photos from an old shoot. By the time I got tired of doing that, I had an absolutely ridiculous time trying to actually TAKE any photos, so I ended up with this sow's ear of a file. Hopefully, I got a silk purse out of it, but I'm still debating.

I attempted to salvage this photo using an "action" (it's actually a psd) Sandra asked me to make for her . She has appropriately named it "She's Blushing", but you'll have to see what the action was intended to look like to understand the name. I'll be uploading the psd to my deviantART account as soon as I get to a place with better internet than mine so that you all can enjoy it too. :-)

Until then, I'll share with you a few of the old photos I've working on. Models are two out of three of my best friends since middle school, Kelly and Khalila. I met them when I was 12, and today I turn 22. Time flies!!!

Born to Blush Unseen

Today's challenge was to go abstract, so out of pure laziness, I decided not to leave my seat. I turned around and, with my 200mm lens, zoom panned on a fake cactus in my dining room. For some reason, this is what happened instead of the typical zoom effect. Guess my shutter speed was too low. Either way, I rather like it. -shrug-

Ye of Little Faith

Did you really think I'd forget you guys?! :) I just spent a long 7 hours trying to uncover the items I've been hoarding for most of my life, dragging them from house to house in innumerable containers as if losing just one thing would mean death.

Or something slightly less dramatic.

Thought I'd just confuse the mess out of you all before I finally hit the hay. Today, I felt like trying some more abstraction, so here it is. Hope you get a kick out of it! It kind of looks like a bunch of floating boxes to me. Or maybe that's what they are. HMMmmm.

Meh, goodnight!

Shallow

Today's challenge was to use a shallow depth of field, which I do pretty much always, so I decided to use today to experiment with RAW. I've only been using it for a few weeks now, so it's still pretty new to me.

First up, we have an abstract photo. I used my 3 close-up filters to get right on my (fairly obvious) subject and used the on-camera flash. In editing the photo, all I did was tweak the levels and add a vignette. Somehow, it ended up being my favorite for the day.

Next, we have the cake photos. I'm not too fond of them, but I took the time to edit them, so here they are.

Lastly, the more experimental photos.

With flash.

Without flash and color manipulated with RAW

I hope today's post isn't too disappointing. :-/