I’m not sure what really pulled the plug on the awesomeness I was achieving. I’m going to blame the trip to New Mexico though, because it’s nice and handy. Come on, it was so freaking hot and we ran around so much.  Who wouldn’t collapse after six days of that?  The point is, since we got back, I haven’t done almost anything. Oh sure, I baked a loaf of bread and some granola bars…big whoop.  But it was yesterday that really put the icing on the cake.  I unpacked…sort of.  And then I spent almost the entire day reading.  I was at the endish of the fifth book of the Harry Potter series and now I’m well into the sixth.  I don’t even have the excuse of having never read them before as this is my third time through.

And now, I’m forced to tell you all of this to kind of explain the lackluster photos for the day.  Oh, I think I got a little lucky on that first one, but overall, these aren’t anything I’m writing home about (nope.  I’m just writing to the entire population of the internet instead).  So I’m thinking a little about priorities this morning.  I decided at the beginning of the summer, back when I was kicking butt and taking names, that it was important to me to photograph everyday.  Here is my reminder: it is not a good decision to not photograph until 7:30 in the day, and then only for five minutes.  Especially when you have nothing else AT ALL going on that day.

The one thing to be said about my photographic habits yesterday is this: I picked a fine time of day to photograph.  I love the end-of-the-day light that’s long and buttery.  The shadows start to stretch and everything gets a lovely glow about it.  I love just looking outside at this time of day, photographing is even better.  As much as I encourage shooting with plenty of light on hand, you want to avoid (generally) shooting at high noon.  The sun is directly overhead, and therefore, at it’s least flattering.  Things look a little worse-off in that kind of harsh lighting, especially people.  Just something to keep in mind on your next photo adventure.

Whatever fuels my acute perception of light, it was not happy with the situation yesterday.  I prefer, as much as possible, to use natural light in my photographs. An overhead, interior light isn’t going to cut it in most cases and I’m not one to spend a lot of time fussing with a lighting system.  It seems my attention to detail stalls and then completely dies in the face of technical things like reading my camera manual or learning to set up studio lights.  That stuff cramps my style, and it’s where editing can save the day.  I spent more time than usual with this portion of the photo process on this last set of images because I just didn’t have the quality or quantity of light I was looking for.  The lack of light also necessitated the use of my flash which I didn’t like at all.

In terms of editing, I’m a big fan of Adobe Photoshop.  And trust me, I’m not being paid to say that (although, I wouldn’t mind being paid to say that.  It’d still be true and I’d have more money.  Win-win).  In fact, I technically paid to say that; Photoshop is not an inexpensive program, although discounts are available if you are an educator or student.  However, if you have a program on your computer like iPhoto, Picassa or some other editing software that you use and get along well with, I am absolutely in support of this.  I still use the edit button on iPhoto sometimes when I’m feeling lazy or pressed for time or even just curious.  The main advice I would give about the editing software you use is that you should feel comfortable with it.  Photoshop offers an incredibly wide set of options and tools and that can be overwhelming.  I’ve taken a Digital Photography class and a Photoshop class just to figure out what I’m doing.  Of course, it’s also my job to teach it and I got kind of sick of looking dumb in front of 20 some-odd students everyday.  If I was going to be playing the fool in private, I might not have minded remaining self-taught.

And speaking of editing, you might have noticed that little, old Photodork.org has had some major renovations recently.  Dylan is to thank for these changes, as well as for his patience, as I was quite specific about the way I wanted things to look like around here (I know.  Me.  Being particular about something.  It is hard to believe).  In any case, I am very happy with the new changes, and I hope you are too.

One of the flowers we chose to plant were poppies and so far they’ve been kind of droopy, making me fretful and anxious which I usually save for later on in the growing process when I’ve neglected to water things for several days.  Today, however, Dylan came upstairs and presented me with the shell of the poppy flower.  One of them has hatched!  Or whatever it is that flowers do between the time they shed their pods and bloom.  I’m pretty excited about it, if you couldn’t tell by the fact that not only did I photograph said pod, but also devoted an entire post to it.  Oh well…it’s not like you visit my site just for the stories, right?