Things I've Seen. . .
http://blog.pamelacasey.com
Things I've Seen . . .
Academy Awards & Circles of Light
Hi there---Did you see the Academy Awards?
Nice show....I love the way they have now set a limit on how much a winner can talk.
Last night they still had trouble getting out on time, but they were close. We're glad that
Sandra Bullock won & Jeff Bridges, too. Now we'll have to go see The Hurt Locker--
winner of Best Picture & many other awards. I appreciated the way they dedicated the award
to all who are serving in uniform to keep us safe here and in the war zones far away.
I hope next year The Book of Eli will get some attention. Denzel Washington is always good.
This movie he co-produced. It's a world that is in ruins, and he is protecting one of the few
books left on the planet. Some violence & bad language, but the message is powerful.
Backlight is beautiful, but ever wonder why you get those little circles sometimes?
Well, it goes something like this...an image is created by light, and light is made up
of various wave lengths. Different waves lengths translate into colors. Like you can
see in a prism. Light changes when it passes through different materials.
These big fuzzy round circles are caused by the sun hitting the edge of the glass lens &
bouncing around (refracting). It forms the shape of the aperture, almost a circle, but actually
the flat edges of the shutter opening. Look closely and you can tell it's not a perfect circle
Compare it to the purple one from I created in Photoshop.
PHOTIP: Use your lens shade to prevent the light showing up unexpectedly as little circles
in your pictures. Don't let the light hit your lens directly, unless of course, you want the effect.
Blessings!
P.S. Last chance to see THE BEAUTY & THE BEASTS
Visit my website
Nice show....I love the way they have now set a limit on how much a winner can talk.
Last night they still had trouble getting out on time, but they were close. We're glad that
Sandra Bullock won & Jeff Bridges, too. Now we'll have to go see The Hurt Locker--
winner of Best Picture & many other awards. I appreciated the way they dedicated the award
to all who are serving in uniform to keep us safe here and in the war zones far away.
I hope next year The Book of Eli will get some attention. Denzel Washington is always good.
This movie he co-produced. It's a world that is in ruins, and he is protecting one of the few
books left on the planet. Some violence & bad language, but the message is powerful.
Backlight is beautiful, but ever wonder why you get those little circles sometimes?
Well, it goes something like this...an image is created by light, and light is made up
of various wave lengths. Different waves lengths translate into colors. Like you can
see in a prism. Light changes when it passes through different materials.
These big fuzzy round circles are caused by the sun hitting the edge of the glass lens &
bouncing around (refracting). It forms the shape of the aperture, almost a circle, but actually
the flat edges of the shutter opening. Look closely and you can tell it's not a perfect circle
Compare it to the purple one from I created in Photoshop.
PHOTIP: Use your lens shade to prevent the light showing up unexpectedly as little circles
in your pictures. Don't let the light hit your lens directly, unless of course, you want the effect.
Blessings!
P.S. Last chance to see THE BEAUTY & THE BEASTS
Visit my website
My Dog is a Raccoon
Did you think I was kidding?
Hi there--hope you're doing well. It's been cold again, but warming up now--no telling what the poor
bushes & trees are thinking---hope we'll have some flowers left when it counts a couple of weeks
from now.....
Actually, my dog is a raccoon. What I mean by that is we have no actual pet at this moment,
but we have had several loving dogs and cats in our lives through the years. We live on the marsh,
as I've mentioned and there are all kinds of wild animals & creatures out here by the water.
Unfortunately, rattlesnakes (large eastern diamondbacks to be exact) birds, squirrels, raccoons and
the neighbor's cats all come into our yard. I love animals, trees, water but not snakes....especially
after one killed our dog some years ago.
Right now we are content to feed our little masked friends who call on us for daily sustenance.
It started with some pregnant ones & literally multiplied from there. We have a couple of special racs
that we give treats to & this is one of them. (The others are quads born late in the summer.)
Just wanted to share an idea to take some funny pix of your favorite pets.
PHOTIP: Put your camera down low and set the focus as close as possible.
Then fire away as they come to eat.
I saved the best shot for last.....just never know what you'll get...enjoy the process, that's the point.
SMILE NICE FOR MAMA!Which pose do you like best?
(And, no, I have never been attacked or bitten by any of them. They just want free food.)
Visit my show in your 'jamies 24/7 or stop by to see THE BEAUTY & THE BEASTS in person
for a few more days. It's at Ponte Vedra Presbyterian Church on 210.
Run with Donna 26.2 Marathon
Wow, we're back into the nice weather after a week of below freezing temps at night. The weather
made a turn for the better just in time for the RUN WITH DONNA 26.2 MARATHON yesterday,
February 21st. They had a fantastic turn out of marathoners & half marathoners. Traffic was stopped
for 7 hours while the thousands of participants crossed the intra coastal waterway where people are
normally going 60 mph.
It's got a spectacular view of the water. Part of the run was along the beach on the sand. I hope to
participate fully next year because so many of my loved ones have died of cancer. My cousin is a
breast cancer survivor, though! Most of the money from this race will go straight to the Mayo Clinic
here in Jacksonville for breast research. Here's the link for more info.
This picture was from the end of the race--about 1:20 pm --it began at 7:30 pm. She's probably a
walker (as I would be for the half marathon at best). I just love her determination and the fact that
she's decorated her outfit with a tutu. That shows great spirit!
This is another crop of the same picture. One communicatesto me that she has accomplished a lot (top) and the other that she is determined to finish what is ahead (Lower).
PHOTIP: Cropping---what you leave in or out of an image---determines what your viewer will see or feel.
Crop carefully.
BLESSINGS!
The Beauty & The Beasts
Hello world!!!! Okay, that's probably not quite realistic----hello United States of America!!!
Okay, maybe that I don't have visitors from every state, but that doesn't mean it can't happen
one day...
The Reception for The Beauty & The Beasts show was great fun & fellowship as promised.
We had about 60 people show up to network, make new friends, see ones (old as in established)
& enjoy some beautiful images. I had affordable small items for sale, too. (Thanks patrons of the
arts.) We had our visitors vote for their favorite beauty and beast images. A pelican won the
most votes for beast, a wave crashing onto a rock won the beauty and a heron catching a fish
received votes for both. So maybe it was a beautiful beast? Hmmmmm.....
Click here to see the show. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED ME!
Here's a shot from my friend Diane Wingate at front of the Bethel Gallery early in the reception.
The lovely Ponte Vedra Presbyterian Church will host the show through March 14th.
Please come visit if you get the chance. It's located on 210 in Palm Valley and is open
Monday - Friday 9am-4pm because part of the exhibit adorns the area where the church offices are
located. For more info call 904-285-8225.
The cool thing is this church has a regular schedule of art shows--some group and some individual
shows. They also have open painting on Tuesday mornings---just BYO art project to work on. It's
a nice small group of "Dabblers" and PVPC sometimes offers art classes. They also create the City of
Bethlehem in December of each year & it's absolutely fantastic!
PHOTIP: A show & reception is a wonderful way to meet some great new people. It is a lot of work
and quite an investment of time and money. Make sure you have a good marriage before starting
the venture.
Blessings!
Yikes! The Reception is tomorrow night...
MARSH MELLOW MAN © PAMELA CASEY
Hi---Hope you are warm & well.
The Reception for THE BEAUTY & THE BEASTS is here---Tuesday night. It begins at 5:30
and I am barely going to have time to get there early from school! Hope you are planning to come
if you live nearby. It's at Ponte Vedra Presbyterian Church on 210.
I have another site just for the show: www.sharktoothgallery.com
You can visit it in your pajamas, if you can't make it in real life.
I'm going nuts trying to get everything done for that, so I will have to share my adventures with
trying to paint on YUPO paper next week. It's plastic (or acrylic?). Would be cool if you could
actually print on it with the old inkjet, but it's doubtful. Very slippery stuff. The Creative Arts 150
group in Mandarin was where I met YUPO. They are a cool little bunch of artists who meet
monthly. It was so much fun---just don't know what you'll end up with because the paint sits on top.
PHOTIP: Try other artistic endeavors to improve your brain power & become a better photog.
Blessings!
A quick photo lesson on cropping, framing & placement
Hi---Hope you are well. We're much more comfortable now with day temps in the 50's. A nice Florida
winter like it's suppose to be! Just enough for a sweater with a short 30's here and there thrown in.
I've been going crazy to get my new solo show (first time on this scale) printed, matted, framed & delivered
to open on Sunday in the Bethel Gallery of Ponte Vedra Presbyterian Church.
WHEW! More info to come.
This image was taken in Georgia on a dead end street in the middle of nowhere---kind of a nice country
road scene. It was nice angled light, but as we kept walking, I saw something I liked better.
This tree had leaves which were lit by the sun. I got down close to the road & shot vertical to accent
the long lines. I liked the road, the fence & the shadows from the fence.
We were closer here and I move over a little to get more of the shadows as they curved onto the grass.
You can see the tree much better & I'm not down as close to the road.
As we got closer to the tree, it was lit nicely and the bending shadows from the road seem to detour
interestingly around it. (I think it was because the tree was on a little rise...or baby hill to the uninitiated.)
This is cropping by moving in on a subject. I like this image the best.
PHOTIP: Keep exploring your options with different framing, cropping & placement of your subject.
Blessings!
Frozen in Florida
Hi there! Hope you're staying warm----we are, but just because we're staying inside.
As you can see, I found some ice----here's what happened. Over the weekend the weather was the big
story and has been every day now for the past week. It's crazy that in the northeast corner of Florida, it's been
below freezing every night for a week now. I think it went down to 19º last night.
The farmers a little farther south are worried about the strawberry & orange crops. They have elaborate sprinkler
systems for the strawberries & sometimes intentionally wet the plants to form a sheet of ice over the fruit.
I, personally, don't understand how it could work but it seems to do the job.
On one of the newscasts over the weekend they showed a photo of actual ice that formed on top of some
spot on the intra coastal---but said it had to be s fresh water source because salt water doesn't freeze.
Anyway, I got the idea that I would go out and look for some kind of frosty, wintry image to blog about.
Unfortunately, I didn't remember my plans until about 10:30 this morning when the sun had been shining
brightly for a few hours. So, I decided to look in the shade & hope for the best. I still had on my pajamas, because
for some reason I really hate getting out of a nice warm bed and abandoning my nice warm clothing.
SO, I just put a sweatshirt on top of my pj's & pants over the bottoms, added a hat & mittens and hurried
out the back door toward the water. The air was so cold, it was shocking!
Thankfully, I found a little patch of ice still frozen in the dark oozy brown fiddler crab inhabited, covered up at
high tide, marsh grass sustaining edge of the tidal creek mucky stuff. Then I quickly ran back inside because
I was freezing.
PHOTIP: Don't put clothes over your pajamas to shoot a picture--clothes made for that purpose really
do a better job of protecting you from the elements...
Blessings!
HAPPY NEW YEAR PHOTOGS!
amusing and/or helpful here. I would love to have a comment from you.
Hope 2010 is much, much, much, much, much, much, much better than 2009.
May your Blessings be multiplied tenfold in this new year!
Even though I think some good has come of the economic crunch, like an evaluation of priorities &
employees, and appreciating & being thankful for what we have.
We had lots of family fun over the holidays. It was really nice. Well, with the exception that one
family member lost their job because the place closed.
Now we're freezing! Literally, in the low 30ºs all the way down here in Florida. And it's supposed to be this
cold all week with possible sleet on the weekend. (What was that about global warming???)
Well, maybe the ice will create new photo opps for me...
THE SHOT: The first one was taken in the a train station in Italy. Looks like the metering is on the tracks, so all the
light sources are blown out. It caught my eye recently when looking for something else. I liked it because I thought
it looked vaguely like a cross or an angel.
Here's the new version where I tried to capitalize on that idea. A couple of photoshop filters and a rotation later...
I think it makes an interesting abstract. What do you think?
May your Blessings be multiplied tenfold in this new year!
So many ideas!
Wow---just sat through about 4 hours (or more---you know how it is on the internet---) of the aforementioned
"Joy of Marketing" free seminar for photographers this afternoon.
I didn't get to all 28 featured speakers, but each one was different and very inspirational. Hope you got
in on it. Each one had products for sale & special pricing, but none were too pushy.
I hope to use some of the ideas in the new year & be more profitable. But, I believe the best way for
photographers to make BIG money is to sell something to other photographers. My point was proven again today.
I'll leave you with artwork I created with some fancy cookies. I want to use it next year as a card cause I think
it's so cute.
PHOTIP: Enjoy your goodies twice by photographing them before you eat them!
I hope you continue to have a great holiday. Blessings for the new year!!!
Merry Christmas--great shooting tips & a free gift
Here's a great article about holiday lights from Porter's Camera Store's December newsletter:
Make this year’s photographs picture-perfect with a few tips for shooting holiday lighting:
Try the Long View: When photographing a decorated street or even a single home, start first by shooting at an angle that allows you to capture as much as possible in a single frame. You’ll need to experiment with where you stand and how you frame the shot; don’t settle for a standard head-on photograph.
Try capturing the street’s sentiment by playing with various angles of a single scene.
Now Zoom In: A single light or a lit ornament can hold tremendous beauty and detail but is often lost in the larger scene with so many other decorations competing for attention. Choose a favorite decoration on the tree—maybe an heirloom ornament—and play with nearby tree lights to see if you can add a bit of reflection onto the subject.
Spend a few minutes experimenting and adjusting; you’ll be surprised at the kind of results you can achieve.
Adjust Your White Balance Settings: On your camera, your white balance setting (WB) is designed to help you capture an accurate ‘white’ in your image. However, a number of things can influence the ‘true white,’ leaving the color to be more orange or blue depending upon the situation. If you’re shooting indoors and find your images are too orange, consider changing your white balance setting to ‘tungsten.’
The term ‘tungsten’ simply refers to lighting from artificial sources such as standard room lamps or overhead lighting. If you’re shooting outdoors, consider waiting until just past sunset and changing your white balance settings to ‘outdoor.’ You will still have some colorful ambient light but it will enhance, not compete, with your outdoor holiday lighting.
Get the Action: Some of the best holiday displays combine motion with lights, but this can make getting the perfect picture a bit more challenging. Try switching your camera to a motion or action mode to freeze your subject. And don’t be afraid to take several shots; it often takes a number of images to get that perfect one.
Take Your Tripod: Regardless of whether you’re using a D-SLR or a compact point-and-shoot camera, having a tripod will greatly assist in capturing the essence of your light display. The tripod will help eliminate image shake, which will be especially important when shooting in low-light settings such as this one. We have many tripods to fit every need and budget in our Online Store.
Make it a Blur: If you’d like to add an artistic twist to your photographs, consider setting your shutter speed to a lower setting—as far as a few seconds-- while moving your camera as you take the photograph. Your images will be visually interesting while still standing out from the standard litany of traditional holiday light photographs.
Attached below is a freeeeee photography marketing seminar one week from today! Sign up quickly for some great ideas.
PHOTIP: Take this free webinar!
I hope you have a blessed Christmas & know the Savior and His limitless, unconditional love for you.
Blessings!
