O What a Night!

Well, I have just returned from Atlanta, Georgia where I attended the Tots to Teens Photography seminar taught by Sandy (Sam) Puc. And oh what a night! The trade show began at 4:00 p.m. and the seminar started at 5:00 p.m. Both shows were jam packed with information on just about anything a portrait photographer wanted to know. The show ended at 11:30 that night, but as I said before the show was jammed packed with information right up until the very end. I was amazed at the information she was willing to share with other photographers. Marketing plans, shooting "secrets" such as how to maintain a child's attention, and posing secrets as well, equipment information, etc. She certainly inspired this photographer as I had been very frustrated with my lack of creativity lately. She plans to do "families" next year and you can bet that I will be there if I can! Let me recommend that you attend one of her seminars in a town near you. It will be worth the time. O what a night!

Spring is coming!

My husband and I went to Panama City Beach this Friday to check on "our place". Friday was a beautiful day and Friday evening on the beach was beautiful as well. You can tell that Spring is on the way! Recently I have tried my hand at some night or late evening photography and I have found that I enjoy it. It is a bit of a challenge until you learn the principles behind it. As I stated in an earlier post, I have been frustrated with my photography work so I was wanting to do some fun shooting. I am very fortunate that my husband understands my creative nature and he gives me the freedom to be who I need to be. We wandered down to the beach about 6:00 Friday evening just as the sun was setting and I was able to capture some shots. I decided to change the lens on my camera and use an old 50 mm lens that I had not used in a while. I have become more accustomed to using my 18-200 lens. The 18-200 lens is a good lens; however, the 50 mm lens has an aperture of 1.8. Yes, I was able to shoot at very, very low light without loosing any details and/or also using a flash. This photo was taken through my husband's truck window.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed using the 50 mm lens. Matter of fact, I believe that it will have a permanent place in my camera bag.

Frustrated Photographer

I suppose that there is a time when all photographers become frustrated with their work or their skill; however, you would like to put it. Recently I have had a strong sense to photograph a landscape image that can be printed and framed as a beautiful piece of art. A fine art piece created from one of my photographs. Yes, I have many photographs that are framed, even printed on canvas, but I want a fine art piece. So to make a long story short, I have been trying my hand at landscape photography. My neighbor has a flower bed that has beautiful tulips and daffodils blooming and I thought the flowers would be a wonderful subject to create my art piece from. Late yesterday my husband I decided to take Grand Dog for a walk and I carried my camera with me. As we got closer to my neighbor's yard, I could see the tulips and I begin to vision in my mind the art piece that I would create from the digital images that I would take. I had my favorite lens that I consider to be my "workhorse lens", Nikon 18-200 (telephoto lens) 3.5 -5.0. I checked the settings on my camera and changed them to meet the time of day that I was shooting. As I begin to shoot, I quickly came to the realization that I was not doing something right. The depth of field was wrong, I had some tulips in focus, some were out of focus. The more I tried to correct what I was doing, the worse I got. Here I was down on my stomach, crawling on my knees, sitting on the cold ground and it seemed the more I tried the more I failed at trying to photograph these beautiful flowers. Finally, I was able to get what I thought were at least 10 good images. That is until I got home and downloaded the images. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as I reviewed the images. As you can see from the photo below, the out of focus stem and the fuzzy tulips. As I viewed the images I was thinking to myself,"what were you doing?!" I have managed to salvage the same image by retouching the image in Photoshop, but I have not found my art piece that I had visioned. I hope that the tulips will last until Saturday when hopefully I can try again. However, I do plan to use my "normal" lens which is a Nikon 50 mm, 1.4 lens. The vision may have become fuzzy, but it is not dead. Yet.

A New Thing

Well, I have created a blog for the photography website. This is a new thing for me, but I am trying to learn to let others know about what is going on in the world of Vickie Oakley Photography. I just recently posted the portraits that I took of several church members that were attending the Valentine's Banquet at my church. I really enjoy portraiture work. There is such satisfaction in creating a portrait that people enjoy. I know that it is true for photographers the world over. And.... there is so much to learn about photography. I do not care how long you have been shooting you can still learn something new about photography. This is a new day, a new time to learn a new thing.