Christmas Lights Bokeh

I pinned this picture on Pinterest awhile back and totally forgot to try it last year.  I decided to give it a whirl. Looks easy, right?  Just cut a design in the center of a circle, tape it on your lens and shoot.  

Me being, well, me, (i.e., impatient and never one to read directions first) I cut out a circle with a design in the center, taped it to my lens and shot a couple of pictures.  They didn't come out good at all and I deleted them.  Then I went back to this original picture, HERE, and decided to read the comments under this picture.  Most people that tried this effect were not successful based upon the photograph.  In the comments I discovered a link HERE on how to do this correctly.  

To obtain these results you need a tripod and to manually focus and control the shutter speed.  You also need to build a little 'hood' for the camera lens (with cardstock taped around the outside of the lens).  The first circle design I tried was a heart and I shot directly at the tree lights, but I didn't control the shutter.  They look more like triangles than hearts!!

Upon closer inspection, the heart that I cut was not very good at all, and looked like a triangle.  So I cut a new design, a 3 tiered tree and the results were much better.  Again, I just used the 'flash off' setting.  I did try a shot using 'bulb' but it really made no difference except making it brighter.  

I think with some practice, and a better template - perhaps a small hole punch design - this would be a cool way of taking Christmas light pictures.

New Year, New Name

I have decided to change the header name of this blog to 'Tahoma Beadworks and Photography', because, for the most part, it's been more about photography and less about beading these days. The URL remains the same.  

I shot this at my mom's house of a heart shaped wrought iron planter and its shadow on the barn, for one of the Project 365 entries.

I took the Bean for a long walk on January 2 around our part of BBay.  This car has seen better days.

So has this boat.  Anyone else think "S.S. Minnow/Gilligan's Island"?  I sure did.  And about as seaworthy as the Minnow too.

It was a toss up whether to use this one for Project 365....

...or this one, which is what I ended up using.

What a difference a day makes!  Temps began to fall on January 2, after our gorgeous New Years Day, and has turned icy cold.  It was as cold and windy as this picture looks.

All is Quiet on New Years Day

Well it's 2012!  Did everyone have a nice New Years Eve and Day?  NYE here was cold and rainy! We did a couple of errands in Sandwich in the morning and were safely ensconced at home by 11:00 a.m..  My squeeze was in his happy place, cooking in the NuWave Oven we just got.  We had a stocked fridge, and the Amazon.com box had arrived with the afternoon mail.  

We watched my fave John Wayne movie, "The Cowboys" and then we watched another Duke movie, "Hellfighters" (my honey is a HUGE John Wayne fan).  We managed to stay awake till midnight to watch the ball drop in New York City, and it was a treat to ring in the new year in his arms, making out like schoolkids.

We woke up after 8:00 on New Years Day to the most amazing weather, especially for this region and this time of year!!!  It was over 50* and clear.  The breeze was even warm!  Puttered around in the morning then went for a walk at Scusset Beach.  He brought the metal detector, but it either needs new batteries or just likes to let off false alarms because every 5 steps it beeped, then we'd dig in the sand to find nothing.  I found a couple pieces of beach glass and some more pretty rocks.  I even discovered that I can still skip stones on the water, despite my bad shoulder and not having done it in many, many years.  

Here are some pics of this glorious New Years Day.

Not our chairs.

Pepper's shadow.  I wanted to let her off leash but there were too many other people on the beach with their doggies.

Spotted this cedar tree in the parking lot for the trails at Sagamore Hill so I had to shoot it.  Wonder why it grew crooked? The others in the lot grow straight.

I've decided to start participating in 365 Project, which is a photography website where you take and upload one photo per day, for a year.  We'll see if I actually manage to follow through on this daunting task, but I invite you all to participate and/or follow me there.  Since this is a Leap Year, this is actually going to be 366 Project.

This was my entry for January 1, 2012.  The roof over the walkway to Scusset has large holes in them and I liked how the blue sky looked.

We're off and running!

Camera Catatonia

In the early/mid 2000's, I swore up and down, to anyone who would listen, that I would never quit shooting film and go completely 100% digital.  I bought my Pentax istD in early 2006, and although I took it with me to Vancouver, BC that summer, I didn't use it at all.  I was still had my snobby film 'tude, so I only used my Pentax ZX-M and older K-1000 (as you can see, I am brand-loyal).

Flash forward to 2011, and I take my istD EVERYWHERE.  I really need a do-over trip to Vancouver, now that I'm shooting exclusively digital.

Unfortunately, after a ton of use, I started to notice debris in my photos.  It's been very distressing and I had to do some creative photography up in Victoria to minimize the spots.  I shot this picture of Mt. Rainier and some more cool lenticular clouds on January 26 and the spotting in the sky on the upper right is very bad.  

I assumed it was stuff on the lens, or inside the camera on the mirror.  I decided that I could no longer shoot with it in that condition.  So I took it to Robi's Camera in Lakewood.  This is one of the only camera shops in the area, so I have no choice but to deal with them.  I called to find out the info on having my camera cleaned and was told "In by Wednesday, out by Saturday."  So I decided to bring it in on Saturday, Feb. 5, figuring I would get it back the following Sat.  It was a looooong week without my camera.  We had some really cool sunrises with "Maxfield Parrish" skies.  I went into withdrawal without it.  I jetted back down on Saturday morning when they opened at 10, only to find out that "out by Saturday" means by close of business day.  I was more than slightly annoyed, but resigned myself to going during lunch on Monday.  I'd had a great opportunity to go to Mount St. Helens on Sunday because the weather was perfect.  That was part of my malaise:  Not having a camera on such a capital day.

Needless to say when I arrived on Monday only to be told that my camera hadn't even been worked on, nor could they find it, I. Went. Off.  I have spent THOUSANDS of dollars at that shop, between equipment, repairs and photo processing. Including the brand new zoom lens I picked up when I dropped the camera off to be cleaned!!!  And they are telling me that, not only hasn't it been cleaned, but they can't locate it either?  The salesclerk said the manager should have been in by then, but he wasn't, and so I'd need to call him later that day.  I also left my number and name for him to call me.  Did he call?  Nooooooo.  Of course not.  So I called and had to leave a message on his voice mail.  Did he call me back? Nooooooo.

I called Tuesday morning and was told he was with a customer.  I explained to whoever answered the phone what was going on and that I would hold until such time as the manager became available.  The guy put me on hold, then came back a few minutes later and said that they promised it would be ready late that afternoon, oh and by the way, the batteries were dead and had to be charged.  I was apoplectic.  I snapped, "Well they were fully charged when I brought the camera in over a week ago!"  I also said, "You know you really shouldn't tell people 'in by Wednesday out by Saturday' if you really mean that it takes 10 days."

Anywho, when I finally did get it back, I was given a photocopy of what the sensor looked like before it was cleaned.  Pretty gross, eh?  That long hair in the upper left corner showed up the day I was shooting Rainier with the clouds.  

And this is how the sensor looks after being cleaned.

This is the first photo taken with my newly cleaned camera and brand new zoom lens.

I'm so happy to have my beloved camera back!!!!!

How I Make A Travel Album

I was bound and determined to finish the Victoria album, and I worked on it all New Years weekend.  Sorry about the crappy photo quality!  This is a small sampling of the finished product.  

I was about halfway through it when I realized:  HORROR OF HORRORS!!!   I completely forgot to type up all of the different place captions, that I always do for all photo albums!!!!  How could I forget??  Fer cryin' out loud I've been doing it since the 80's, when I used to have to use a typewriter!!  I nearly brought this entire project to a screeching halt to do them.  I agonized, and I admit to much hand-wringing, internal conflict and debate with myself, but then decided that it was going to take way, way too long.  And besides, I know where I was, I know what are in the pictures and where they were taken...there's really no need to caption them.  

I knew I'd finally find good use for this Canadian flag paper!  I stuck it to the cover of the album.

51 pages, front and back (102 pages!!!!) and 4" thick.  If I had a scale I'd weigh it, b/c it's wicked heavy.

Inside the front cover, I used a piece of glittery paper that says "Off On An Adventure", then stuck my leftover Canadian coins on the cover along with some felt fall leaves and other Canadian-themed stickers.

First page, features my boarding pass, along with the note I left Brian on the kitchen table that morning when I left before he got up. He wrote "Wah!" under it after I left. lol

I like to use travel-themed ephemera on my pages, in addition to stickers and cut up bits of travel brochures.

The hotel brochure on the left is actually stuck onto the outside of the page....

.....so that I can open it up and read what's inside.

Page layout showing some cropped pictures and stickers.

I saved the 2 Woofles doggie treats bags after they were empty, cut them up and put them on the Market Square page.  I also used the map portion of a Market Square brochure.

These are the receipts of my souvenirs, organized by time-stamp.

When I got to the Craigdarroch Castle pics, I cut up the self-guided tour brochure about all of the different rooms and used them alongside the photos of those rooms.

Here's the last page of the album, with my return trip boarding pass, and the note from Brian that I found on the kitchen table when I got home late that night!

One of my travel ephemera bits had a Top Ten Moments list.  It was hard to pare it down to just 10.

I had the back side of the last page to fill up so I used a postcard of Clipper IV and a couple more Canada stickers to complete the album.