Some Interesting Links For Your Bookmarks

I was just browsing around the web looking at various photography sites and thought I would share some of what I found with you.


How To Win Photo Contests


30 Beautiful Examples of Christmas Photography


Top 10 Cameras of 2012


How To Photograph Christmas Lights


Vintage LA Holiday Photos


20 Christmas Lights Photos With a Twist


How to Take Great Photos of Holiday Lights

By George I Think She's Got IT!

Well at least I got something tonight.  It's 2:31 a.m. and I am figuring out something with my Corel Paint Shop Photo Pro X3 that previously has been giving me trouble and causing much stress since I need to figure it out so I can make the Christmas presents for my kids.  The grandkids have been helping me and without them the presents would be not presents at all, totally unfinished...and really totally without ideas for presents.  This year the presents for my children are planned to be a large series of portraits that the grandchildren and I have made without their parent's knowledge...well they know that I took pictures but they don't know there is a project in the works.  So tonight I learned how to extract one of the lovely faces of my grandchildren from one photo and make it all ready to move into another picture so I can make digital scrapbooks for their parents.  Still have some bugs to work out as I figure out how to work some things on the program as well as figure out where part of this program is since I paid for the full program, I should have it all.  But it appears I am missing the Project Creator that is part of the program.  I certainly hope I don't have to buy that separately.  If so, I will need to do this all on my own and will take longer.  So now it becomes a fun time of using many of the graphic designs I made as scrapbook pages while extracting t of their original photos to place them onto the new scrapbook pages.  Then I have to learn how to tie the book pages all together to make the actual digital book.  And hopefully it can also be printed so that they can see it held in their hands.  But that will be at their expense.  I'll be giving them the CD.  They can go from there with what they want to do with the regular photos as well as the scrapbooks.  I have just a month to learn how to do all this, do it well, and get it completed to be ready and wrapped for Christmas Eve.  Wish me luck.  I just overcame my biggest hurdle tonight, so it shouldn't be bad from here on in.  At least not until I am ready to tie the project together and finish it.

I will do my best to keep up here with the details of my progress while I make these digital scrapbooks.  Pretty ambitious of me to have my very first digital scrapbooks become gifts for family members.  Hopefully they will like them. (I won't be able to show the finished pages here because of their requests of which I am in agreement to keep their children's photos and names off the internet unless it is a locked page that is for family and friends only.)  But I will write about the steps taken and what I have learned with each step.  For now, my sleeping medication and my pain medication is doing their proper job on me so I best stop typing now before you can't read anything I type. 

~~Happy Thanksgiving One and All~~

Gourds of Autumn

The other day I got the opportunity to take some photos of a bunch of large gourds.  Such pretty fall colors.  To see what these gourds became as graphic designs, visit this page of the second blog.

He Called My Name...

I've been trying to get some good photos of this cardinal all summer.  This morning while I was outside with my dog, Jonah, the cardinal called my name.  Well actually, it was more like he was saying, "Aren't you and that dog ever going inside so I can get some food?"  We were sitting on the front steps too close to the bird feeder to satisfy the cardinal.  Although the sparrows are getting used to Jonah and me being there, the cardinal is a bit skittish about us.  But, he posed for me and these are the photos I got this morning.

The Capirani Name

It has come to my attention today that there is another Capirani out there.  Let this be known that I am the only Capirani connected to this blog and my other blogs Talking It Over  and Creatively Writing and page two of this photography and graphics blog Capirani Photography & Graphics as well as my Squidoo lenses with my own Squidoo Lensmaster profile at Capirani's Lensmaster Page and also on Twitter @CapiraniPhotography. If you see any website or profile page on any other site using this Capirani name, please check with me to find out if it is mine or someone else using the same name.  There are reasons that I think it could be an attempt at identity theft since I have specific reasons for choosing this name that only those who know me personally would understand.  Today I found at least two other websites including YouTube where the user has been using the name Capirani.  Yes I do have a YouTube account, but NOT with this name.  The other sites where I found the name being used, I have no connection to at all.

Bubbles

A couple of photos edited with PaintShop Photo ProX3.  I was asked if this was a real bird or if these were snow globes.  They are real photos that I took.

More Filter Experiments

These photos are some that I experimented with lighting filters and color filters to see what would happen.  These are the results.

The skittish cardinal came around today and I got him mid-flight.  This is the original shot, taken through my front door screen.

The following are what I did with the original.

Well, what do you think?

These next photos are of one of the many sparrows that visit my yard and bird feeder.  The difference today is that I pushed the limits on the zoom control of my digital point and shoot.  I had the zoom indicator into the red zone and took this photo through the same front screen door.

First the original, then what I did to it.

 

Another group of three sparrows from the same distance and pushing the zoom limits on the camera.  The original first.

It's interesting that even though the background is a city street, it looks almost like water in these edited photos.

Learning What PSP Filters Can Do

Tonight I've been experimenting with color and lighting filters on some photographs from as far back as 1986 up until this past year or so.  The older photos were with film and my Canon AE1 while the newer ones were with the digital Kodak EasyShare Z885.  I'm not saying any of these are worthy of publishing or sale.  They are basically just checking what my editing program can do.  This first set is from Lake Erie 2011, digital.

This next set is from 1986, film.  Location was Venice Beach, California.

This final set was just for fun. Digital photo from near Port Clinton, OH of the David-Besse Nuclear Power Plant and my colorful interpretation just playing around with the editing software.

Winning a Local Photo Contest

It's a first for me.  But that's because it's also the first time I have ever entered a photo contest before.  But I won a local photo contest...just a small one...but I enjoyed participating.  It gives me a bit of a boost in confidence and morale as well.  My winning photo was put in the local newspaper and online paper as well today.  The contest was last week and part of the activities of our local Camera Club.  It was my first time there.  Each month they have a theme contest and September's theme was "Hats".  Tonight I will post a few of my photos on this theme, but the photo I won with has children in it.  I did get permission to allow the photo to be published in the local newspapers and online paper but I have not discussed it with the parents for posting it here.  I'm excited about it and of course love getting to brag about it.  
October's theme is a spooky theme for Halloween.  It is "Transparency-Shadows-Ghosts" and I probably won't have anything to enter for October.  Halloween is not my thing.

Okay, so here are some of my "Hats" photos, although none of the ones I took with the kids in them, and not the winning photo.  If I get permission, I will post the winning photo here too.