Getting to know me

The other day at The Idea Room she had a random facts about herself up.  I thought it was a fun idea so I borrowed it.  Here we go......

• I love all kinds of pasta.  I don't think I've met a noodle that I didn't like.  
• My husband is gluten-free.  (This makes the first fact kind of a mute point.)
• I have no biological children.  I have two step children and a host of kids I've worked with at the school over the years.
• I love little dogs.  I want a papillon.  Sweetest little dog I've ever been around.
• I have two boxers and a lab-mix.  
• I have two cats both who hate me.  One loves my husband the other we aren't even sure if he likes himself.
• I love Spongebob Squarepants.  I my curtains in the bathroom have Spongebob on them and I had a toilet seat that was Spongebob.  I'm even watching while writing this post.
• I love Nascar.  I'm not one of those new fans though.  I watched Nascar before Nascar was cool.
• I'm a geek and proud of it. 
• I love to make things for other people.  I enjoy crafting.  I like getting handmade stuff too.
• I have never bought a comforter for my bed.  
• I used to live in Branson, Mo.  I loved it there and miss it.

Raw vs. Jpg - Photo Monday

I had this great post in the works for this topic.  While I was writing it though this came through my twitter stream  Raw Files in Photography .  It was exactly what I was going to say only better.  Dang it that's always things go.  I think that I have this great point of view and someone else has snatched it up.  The other half of Shields Photography suggested a flow chart was what was really needed.  While I agree it's well over my head to set one up.

What do you shoot in?  If you can shoot in RAW have you ever tried it?  What software do you use?

Top 10 Posts 2010

For a rousing 30 posts it's not hard to find the top posts but I thought I'd share them anyway in case I have any new readers.

10.  Exciting News
9. Starting New Years Day
8. Food Tuesday
7. Week 0 of 365 Photographs
6. Blog Changes
5. Photo Project
4. Finding Your Style - Finding Your Photographer
3. What Have I Been Doing?
2. How To Set Up A Facebook Fan Page

And the number 1 post I made in 2010

Hope the Giraffe

Thanks everyone for tuning in during 2010.  Let's make 2011 even better!!

Promaster Mini LED Review Part 1

Let's look at my first try with the LED lights.  At this point I've had them for a little over 24 hours and had shot a total of 4 photos with them prior to this test.  So let's see the control photo (please note these are not my best, they normally wouldn't be shown but they do provide some idea as to how the lights preform)

This is straight off the camera.  I shoot only in RAW, so this is without any adjustment at all.  (I'll post later about RAW vs. JPG I promise.)  All photographs end up being processed in some form or fashion but that's another post all together.

Now let's look at the control with some adjustments.  

This isn't the best processing I've ever done.  I was in a hurry trying to get this post done.  It's not a bad little photo though.  If I was selling that snowman I'd probably say it was a passable product shot.  (Disclaimer: Product shots are not my thing.  Really I'm clueless about what makes a good product shot.)

Now let's look at the Mini 9 LED.

First Up Straight Off The Camera Mounted in the Hot shoe:

Awfully bright for my tastes.  The highlights are really blown out.  The shadow is kinda large too.  I didn't move though from the spot I was in the control.  The only thing that changed was the exposure to attempt to get spot on exposure.  

I do post of my processing in Lightroom and it has this great function to be able to sync your adjustments with another picture.  So I did that with the control.  Let's see how that worked.

WAY TOO COOL.  The color temp is way too cool that's why the white is blue.

Now on to the the real post process.

Slightly better but I'm not thrilled with the brightness and shadows.  There was no way to balance it well either.  Ok, not in the whole 2 minutes I spent doing this photo.  Of course the lights may not be best used up close with a metal object that can reflect the light back.  The rest of the lighting in the room is not ideal for taking photographs at night anyway.

The next thing I did was take that metal bar that you saw in the first post and attach it to the bottom of my camera and attached the light to it.  This put the light on the right side of my camera.  So let's look at the finished product.

This is much better and probably could have even been better had I given it time in Lightroom.  I used that great sync feature and processed it with the first processed photo.

Next time we'll look at the larger mini LED.

Whatever Friday

Friday's from now on will be whatever strikes my fancy.  Who knows what may be here but hopefully it'll be something that interests you.

This week?  Review of my Christmas present.  I got two Promaster Mini LED Camera Lights.  I got the 9 LED  and I got the 28 LED versions.  They have bigger ones available but those were the two that the hubs saw me looking at.

So let's start with what you get in the box.

You get the light and an adapter that can screw into the bottom of your camera or on a tripod on one end and the other end has a hot shoe where you can slide the light on.  

To keep the post from being super long I'm going to do it in section.  The first section can be found here.

Week 0 in 365 Photographs

Well the first of the year hasn't arrived so it's not really the start of the 365 photographs.  I am though trying to get a blogging schedule figured out for the upcoming year.  So this is when the photos will be posted that I've taken for that challenge.  This will keep from overwhelming you guys or keeping me up all hours trying to get my photo done in time to get them on here.

Photo Project

I hope to set Wednesday aside to share a photo craft with you.  Not all of us are scrapbookers and sometimes just putting a picture in a frame won't cut it.  I don't have any projects done and I don't have any ideas for one right now either.  But it's a goal of mine to do that for you guys.  I'm bad about not doing anything with the my photographs and I have to solve this.  Hopefully this is part of the blog helps to improve that for all of us.  In the meantime check out these blog posts from craft blogs I've been stalking lately.

Photo beads
Photo Bags
Accordion Album

If you make one of these or if you have a great photo based craft post it here.  Would love to see what you all are making.