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the chicken or the egg?

Krystal & Vic (Miniatures Effect, edited to B&W)
Krystal & Vic (Miniatures Effect, edited to B&W)

Its a well known fact that I am NOT a portrait photographer. Its just not my thing or my specialty and I will be the first to admit that there are way better people out there to do your wedding, baby shoot, family portrait- whatever involving humans. Sometimes I wonder if I am not good at portraits because I hate them or if I hate them because I am not good at them. What came first the chicken or the egg? Either way I have no problem admitting my faults in this area of my life. I give so much respect to portrait photographers because their job is infinitely more difficult than any other photographers’. Portraiture is not only about composition and lighting, but you also have wild cards which are the very much alive and constantly moving, breathing, and blinking subjects. Throwing kids into the mix? Screw it, better say your prayers.

Out of the many and many photos I snapped of my godson and his family up at Apple Hill a couple weekends ago, the only ones that were acceptable were the ones of the adults. I wasn’t really trying to do portraits, I was really just there to help my best friend get an acceptable shot for her annual Christmas card portrait and I was vlogging the whole trip. I didn’t even bring my cameras (big mistake). Luckily for me my vlog camera, a Canon PowerShot ELPH 340 HS, has some fun settings (Toy Camera Effect, and Tilt Shift aka Miniatures Effect). For the record I am very much against copping out of taking real honest to god photographs and overusing filters or heavily photo-shopping your work. But if you aren’t doing it seriously or proclaiming it as art- I am totally fine with that. Anyway, I was able to snag a couple photos I liked using these in-camera filter settings which were fun to mess around with.

The Toy Camera Effect gave the photos a really strong vignette, a cool hue, and some minor blurring. The Miniatures Effect aims to achieve that tilt-shift effect everyone so loves that creates the illusion that regular sized objects on the horizon are miniature. In reality its an in-camera digital filter that just blurs out the top and bottom very heavily- but it was still pretty fun to play around with especially considering when I actually use my real cameras to shoot I always play with the depth of focus, sometimes annoyingly so.

Long story short, I ended up with a couple of fun photos and I hope you like them too.

The Calderons (Toy Camera Effect)
The Calderons (Toy Camera Effect)
Victor Thomas (Miniatures Effect)
Victor Thomas (Miniatures Effect)
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Its so hard out there for a pimp…

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happy breast cancer awareness month! Some lovely soul left some BC awareness bracelets on the mailbox today in my building and I wanted to hug them, seriously. (taken with the Droid 2 Global)

Sorry, that kind of ran through my mind as I remembered how much I miss blogging. I’m still without internet unfortunately, technically I’m paying for it (or will be once I get the bill), but my signal sucks so bad I have to buy a signal booster…blah blah blah long story short, I should have my precious internet connection back within the next 2 weeks. Sigh, its times like this I wish I had bought a laptop instead of a desktop.

Its also times like this that I am extremely grateful for an unlimited data plan. Since I have no internet and my external hard drive with the majority of my entertainment is packed away in a box in my moms garage for temporary storage until I finish unpacking what’s here (holy run on sentence), my mobile netflix has been saving me from many nights of boredom.

But anyway! Enough about boring crap! Istillshootfilm posted a review of the toy TLR camera I’ve been drooling over today. If anything her review only makes me want it that much more. And if you want to learn more about the TLR Blackbird Blackbird Fly you can read all about it on her tumblr…seriously I’m going to have dreams about this tonight probably. I promised myself though that I’m not buying anything photo related until I buy that film scanner I’ve been meaning to get. If things go according to plan I should be able to get it as a christmas gift to myself. :) I love playing santa.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I swear to god if it kills me, I will have internet by next payday. If its the last thing I do.

UPDATE: When I awoke from my slumber this morning…guess who had full on internet? My friend Biz had been on the phone with comcast all morning to set up the internet for her apartment and somehow my signal went from “poor” to “excellent” and voila! No booster needed! FINALLY.