Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Smoky Mountains

We went down to Pigeon Forge, TN last week. We stayed in a cabin for a few days. My son had a ball with the bumper boats and other touristy things in town, and I enjoyed going through the National Forest.

Usually I can see something, know what I want to capture with my camera, and get it. It wasn't like that when I was in the mountains. It was so beautiful and the scale was so grand, that nothing I did could accurately capture the wonder of the nature that was before me.

The next valley was always more beautiful than the last, each mountain was so much more grand than the one before.

At one point I had pulled over on the side of the road to take a picture of a mountain. I thought, "It's going to be so easy to get a great shot, since it's so incredibly beautiful". But, like I mentioned earlier, it wasn't as easy as I expected.

The place where I stopped was at the foot of the mountain. Two huge peaks towered above me. I had to turn my head to the side to take it all in... such a huge expanse of beauty.

And the best picture I got didn't even do it half the justice it deserved.

Moar Mounts

I was excited to find a wonderful waterfall just off the road. I've always liked the water shots with long exposures, which make the water look soft. I've only done it a few times, and this waterfall was a great opportunity to give it another go.

I had to use my tripod, of course. I hate using my tripod, but that's neither here nor there. I used my wide angle lens, which i don't have an ND filter for, but since it was getting a little late in the day, and I was in the forest, I figured it was still 'do able'.

The shots are "alright". Maybe if I had taken them a year ago, I would have been super proud, but at this point, they were kinda... blah.

There's just too much going on, too many rocks and not enough fall. Yet another glorious example of nature that was impossible for me to catch with my camera. The falls were actually very spectacular. The gentle slope downward was amazing, and the green moss was beautiful. But I couldn't do it justice.

Waterfall

Well, time to plan another trip to the Smokies!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Pop

Pop Culture 2 by corinne.schwarz
Pop Culture 2, a photo by corinne.schwarz on Flickr.

I've been having a hard time taking pictures. It's the weather, I think. I've already taken 1.5 million pictures of snow, grey stuff, bare branches, blah blah blah... I am so tired of it.

And of course, my kid wont let me take pictures of him very often.

And I think we've exhausted all of the museums and other indoor venues.

As soon as spring gets here, I can take more of the cliche pink flowers, blue sky, soft tones pictures. People like them.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Pay Me

Touch it by corinne.schwarz
Touch it, a photo by corinne.schwarz on Flickr.

I was offered a job writting a blog. That would be a cool job, if it paid more than $8 per 600 words. So, instead, I'll just continue to write my own blog for...

free

I'd like people to buy my pictures. Lots of them (maybe like... 10) are being used elsewhere on the web, mostly on blogs and things like that. Surprisingly, they aren't even on sites like youarenotaphotographer.com!

Apparently, the only way to make money with photograhpy is to shoot portraits, but that is not as fun as shooting macros of cacti. So, unless I find a cactus with a fat pocketbook and a dire need for some portraits, I'm SOL.

I've learned about photography in a lot of ways... trial and error, books, online instruction, that one job, that other job, blah blah blah, but mostly through Flickr.com.

You can go through pictures all day, seeing stuff from amazing photographers, and then if you click on a link, you can see the settings they used. A few times I've sent messages to other flickr members, asking random things, and they have, without exception, been happy to help.

Which is awesome.

My son is four, and when he looks at my pictures he says stuff like, "Which lens did you use for this?". That's maybe the coolest thing, ever. If only he would let me take more pictures of him... and pay me for them.