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A Small Frozen Rose
I just wanted to thank each of you that commented on my photos. I am not a great photographer by any means. I do enjoy it though. That is what a hobby is... something you enjoy.
As you can tell I like nature... even creepy crawly spiders :-) I have a hard time with the portrait of a person.
Frank, my husband, also enjoys photography. Isn't it nice when you share a hobby :-) He likes his film camera and shooting with black & white film. He develops his black & white photos in his darkroom. I don't go in there unless the doors are open... so I never get to see the process. He tries to teach me a bit here and there about photography.
My shoulder is not doing great. In a few weeks I will have surgery. The doctor is booked and it also has to go through insurance approval, so I don't know the date yet. It will be arthroscopic surgery to clean up around nerves and if there is a tear that will be fixed. I will also have a release done at my elbow... the ulna nerve has pressure on it.
So I pretty much won't be able to take photos in July and August. Hopefully no longer than that, but it depends on what the doctor finds. I wonder if I can operate the pocket camera one-handed :-)
Some of you take wonderful photos. I enjoy looking at them and some of you have asked my advice. My best advice is to take as many photos as you can. Pay attention to your backgrounds. Try several different compositions of your subject matter if you can. Try different settings of your F stop... yeah try manual settings, you will come out with a better photo most of the time. Don't be afraid to use your digital darkroom. Frank sometimes uses the same techniques in his real darkroom as a digital darkroom has. He crops, he dodges and burns,and some other adjustments that I don't know what are.
With my insect photos I most always have to crop the pictures. I do not have a lens that will get that close to the subjects.
Do you need the expensive Photo Shop editing program? Nah.. you don't. Google's Picasa program does some of the basic editing. I would spend money for a program that can crop and straighten a photo. There may be a free program that I don't know about that will do that.
I use an old Microsoft program called Digital Image Pro 10. Not many of the Digital Image Pro programs are compatible with Vista. Picture It! which many of you may have gotten free versions of with a program you bought became Digital Image Pro. I have not looked for a new photo editing program yet, so I cannot really suggest a program less expensive than Photo Shop. A lot of programs do offer free trial downloads... and that may be a way to go in trying to find an editing program that does a bit more than the basics and suits your pocketbook.
Again thank y'all very much for your wonderful comments on my photos.
