[pygmyhippo]

Sorry...it's Wednesday and I just got here to the board!

[pygmyhippo]

I've been so tired from home improvements that reading has not been a priority. I've picked up magazines here/there and have been reading a lot of education-related articles due to our budget crunching activities for the school board. I've been researching other districts' approaches, news coverage, and pouring over internal documents to make decisions regarding personnel this week and next week.

[clang18]

I'm on R is for Ricochet. But I better get going because I just got notification that U is for Undertow is in and waiting for me!! But now that the boys are done with basketball, I have lost out on my reading time. Baseball has been cancelled too many times.....lol!

[camry1029]

I have read "The Bone Collector" and "Roadside Crosses" by Jeffery Deaver lately. I find his books to be great "filler" books as I wait for the bestsellers to come in. I am now reading "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" to see what the big fuss is about. So far it's pretty good.

I have Sue Miller's new book "The Lake Shore Unlimited" waiting for me at the library. I love her.

[mom2emnkate]

I just finished, "Bloodlines" by F. Paul Wilson. I have two more of his "Repairman Jack" novels to go before I have read them all. Like crack, they are. lol

Today I am looking at "Capturing the Light" by Peter Watson. For you camera types, this is beautiful book. Full of beautiful landscape photographs, along with a commentary on the conditions and situation present when he took the pictures. Most helpful is that he added pictures that were not perfect in his eyes, along with (arrows to areas) what he would have changed, cropped out, framed differently, used a different filter on his camera. It is really an accurate view of how a landscape photographer is often at odds with the light available. incidentally, his view and philosophy of landscape photography is similar to mine: trying to capture mood and exactly what you see (which is not all that easy)...So much of the writing about photography today seems to push the envelope towards photography-art and post-production rather than working to capture what we're seeing.
Whoops. soapbox off/

[brenintx]

mom2emnkate, on May 2 2010, 12:15 PM, said:

I just finished, "Bloodlines" by F. Paul Wilson. I have two more of his "Repairman Jack" novels to go before I have read them all. Like crack, they are. lol

Today I am looking at "Capturing the Light" by Peter Watson. For you camera types, this is beautiful book. Full of beautiful landscape photographs, along with a commentary on the conditions and situation present when he took the pictures. Most helpful is that he added pictures that were not perfect in his eyes, along with (arrows to areas) what he would have changed, cropped out, framed differently, used a different filter on his camera. It is really an accurate view of how a landscape photographer is often at odds with the light available. incidentally, his view and philosophy of landscape photography is similar to mine: trying to capture mood and exactly what you see (which is not all that easy)...So much of the writing about photography today seems to push the envelope towards photography-art and post-production rather than working to capture what we're seeing.
Whoops. soapbox off/

This is something I have noticed on Pioneer Woman's photo contests lately. So many of the pictures are so photo-shopped that they don't look real. I usually post all of my pics SOC or just with "auto-fix". I think natrual pictures look so much better than uber photo-shopped ones do.

[mom2emnkate]

brenintx, on May 2 2010, 09:48 PM, said:

mom2emnkate, on May 2 2010, 12:15 PM, said:

I just finished, "Bloodlines" by F. Paul Wilson. I have two more of his "Repairman Jack" novels to go before I have read them all. Like crack, they are. lol

Today I am looking at "Capturing the Light" by Peter Watson. For you camera types, this is beautiful book. Full of beautiful landscape photographs, along with a commentary on the conditions and situation present when he took the pictures. Most helpful is that he added pictures that were not perfect in his eyes, along with (arrows to areas) what he would have changed, cropped out, framed differently, used a different filter on his camera. It is really an accurate view of how a landscape photographer is often at odds with the light available. incidentally, his view and philosophy of landscape photography is similar to mine: trying to capture mood and exactly what you see (which is not all that easy)...So much of the writing about photography today seems to push the envelope towards photography-art and post-production rather than working to capture what we're seeing.
Whoops. soapbox off/

This is something I have noticed on Pioneer Woman's photo contests lately. So many of the pictures are so photo-shopped that they don't look real. I usually post all of my pics SOC or just with "auto-fix". I think natrual pictures look so much better than uber photo-shopped ones do.

I admit, I play with the saturation and contrast *a bit*, but it's to enhance to how the photo looks and to bring it closer to what I actually saw. I am going to learn to use GIMP (like photoshop), but for learning how to mask out unsightly power lines (when cropping them out isn't possible) and stuff like that...or to totally make art...not make a landscape look "too perfect" or the equivalent of a model being airbushed. I am so turned off by the other pictures being entered in these contests, that I am not even trying to enter, even though I feel like I have good pictures for their theme. If this is the style that's popular now, I can wait until the pendulum swings back...it seems faddish and overdone. I can wait until my style is back in style.