Back again! (This time to stay)

All right, this is getting silly. It's been over a year since I've posted on this blog. I took some time off to really get a handle on taking pictures and creating art. So from now on, I promise I will be updating at least twice a month. I've learned a lot over the past year, and I want to share as much as I can. Let's start with this one!

This photo was taken in Port Hardy BC. I had just received a Canon EOS 40D for Christmas, and I wanted to try it out. The way the sun was trying to come through the clouds on an otherwise dreary day on the North Island, looked interesting to me. So I stopped near the end of the boardwalk to try a few shots. Since I was new to the camera, I didn't realize that the ISO setting was at 1600, or that my exposure time was at 1/3200 sec. And my F-stop was at f/20. I just sort of turned my camera on and went for it. I'd never owned a DSLR before, what the hell did I know?? In the end, I wound up with an interesting shot (once I changed the filters around and edited the photo in Paint.Net) that will always remind me that, sometimes even when you don't quite know what you're doing, not many pictures are unable to be saved or appreciated :)


Okay. Well, I will have another update in a few days. Again, to those of you that were reading this blog, sorry for the long unexplained absence. I have returned and am around to stay! :D

Update (Finally)!

Well. It's been over a year since I've updated this blog. But now I feel I finally have some pictures worth adding to the site. I have been very busy with work and travel as well. Around this time last year, my mother aunt and I went to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This picture was taken in Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Our tour group was meandering its way through the temple and I saw this woman walking away in this hallway. She was framed nicely, so I took the shot on the fly. When I looked at it later on my computer after we'd returned from our trip, I realized that she looked as if she wasn't quite there, almost "ghost-like". Now the original  photo was in color, but I felt if I changed it to black and white and upped the contrast a little bit it could be so much more. And so here we have a photo I like to call, "Ghost in the Temple". Enjoy! :)

Sometimes it just happens

Sometimes you get lucky and get that perfect shot the first time! This is my mom and I think she looks beautiful here. We had stopped at a little cafe in Seville (Cadiz) and my father had run off to use the washroom somewhere. My mom had slipped into the cafe to grab some coffee and I was standing a little further away having a cigarette. My mom came out of the cafe and was just taking a drink when I saw the perfect opportunity. When I first took the shot, I'd thought I'd missed it. It wasn't until I uploaded the picture that I saw how great it actually was. All I had to do with this one was adjust the brightness and contrast slightly to bring out my mom's best features! It just goes to show you that people are easier to photograph they're caught off guard. I find that most posing looks a little silly, but if you catch them in a pose that looks natural, it usually turns out pretty great!

Trevi Fountain

This was one of the places I was thrilled to see; the Trevi Fountain in Rome! I adjusted the color saturation and the brightness and contrast to really bring out the blue in the water and the golden color of the stones that usually get washed out by the blazing hot sun. It actually hurt my eyes a little bit while I was taking the shot, but it was so worth it! I also used the sharpening tool and I am quite pleased with the result. Sure this picture may have been taken by a thousand other people, but this one's special because it's mine!

Lovely Wedding

This is a photo of my beautiful cousin Christine Braiden (now Christine Thomas). She picked one of the most gorgeous places to get married. And I love her so much that I wanted to make her look even more beautiful! I used the Glow feature in Paint. Net and adjusted the contrast to highlight the nicest features on her face. The next pictures are just to showcase the happy couple!

Gecko Art!

I took this picture when I was in Tortola, BVI. The original is much different than this one! I wanted this one to look more like art, something you would want to hang on your wall and have people go "wow! Where'd you get that??" I change the hues and the saturation and then used the Posterize feature in Paint.Net and played around a little bit with the settings and finally settled on this one here. I love bright colours and while we were on our cruise in the Caribbean there was no shortage of that! The photo below is the original, which I love as well.

This little gecko just posed perfectly for me. I think he thought he was camouflaged lol, because he didn't move for a good 10 minutes! Once again I was incredibly blessed to have such a wonderful subject. Hope y'all like it! That's enough for now, I should've been in bed hours ago!