The Simple Photographer

If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times.

When having your picture taken, turn your body slightly (SLIGHTLY) away from the camera!

This slims your profile, and who among us can't use a little slimming. A new friend that I met the other day agreed to pose and illustrate this important photography tip.

Meet Larry the Longhorn. He's pretty wide (and horny too but we won't get into that in this post!)


With just a slight adjustment in his pose, Larry appears a little slimmer.


As he keeps turning away from you, you can see how nicely Larry slims down.


Considerably so, in fact!


Do ya see what I'm talkin' about now?

Nice job, Larry. Thanks.

The Simple Photographer goes to a pumpkin party at Jen R.'s place!

Bloggers have to be overly-creative people, just brimming with innovation and invention. Every time I turn around one of them is over the top with an idea or project.

The latest is a pumpkin party at Sanctuary Arts at Home. Blogger Jen R. is the hostess with the mostess so jump over there and visit with her and her friends.

http://sanctuaryart.blogspot.com/

My only contribution to the wing-ding is my pumpkin wagon, made with the free photo software called Gimp. Yes, I said free. Gimp is a party waiting to happen with your pictures. Download it and have some fun!

Oh, and happy early Halloween!

The simple photographer goes garage sale-ing.

I discovered something wonderful at a garage sale yesterday. I opened an old, beat-up paper box at a house off Texas Ave. It smelled like mothballs, and I immediately started sneezing. After wiping my nose on my sleeve (really, now, you know I lie! I’d never wipe my nose on my sleeve. My shirt was sleeveless so I used my arm!), I gently pulled apart the fragile tissue paper and discovered five or six pairs of old lady’s gloves, all colors - blue, black, green, and tan (great but not the wonderful part!).

Peeking out from underneath this loot was the corner of an old photograph. You know how I love photography. As I moved the gloves out of the way, I could see the banged up box held a treasure trove of old stained and weathered pictures.

The first one looked like the edge of a pond or creek. I loved the spiky plant in the foreground.

I could see the same plant in the next photo, but there was a statue in the background. (Maybe St. Francis of Assisi?)

The smiling man in the next picture looked huge. He dwarfed the rifle next to him.

When the next photo showed the big man with gun at ready, I was astonished. What could have made the guy turn from a happy tree-leaner to a cautious hunter?

I realized it had to be something small because the next picture showed the man was aiming downward. But this guy looked so big, he could have been shooting at anything!

He certainly wanted to make sure it was dead, whatever it was!

Oh, my! I think I understand now. In those days a snake bite could be deadly.

Especially a rattler, and that's what this one looks like. I'll have to show this pix to Mindy's Snakeman at http://snakelover61.blogspot.com/. He'll be able to identify it.

That snake looks kinda funny, though. Rigor mortis so soon? Or did the photographer go back later to take this shot. I couldn't wait to get to the next photo.








Wait. That's my own stupid stuffed snake that IT Guy shot at our farm years ago. It attacked him when he was cutting trees for a road. Luckily, he always carried a gun 'cause this one was mean and big. But pretty, as far as snakes go - which isn't very far. Yuck!

And that was Greg, my new friend, playing the part of the hunter.

I love Gimp, the photo software, don't you?

And I'm starting to love lying, too. It gets easier with practice.

The Simple Photographer

These are the greatest pair of vintage sunglasses. I picked them up yesterday at Round Top/Warrenton and enjoyed wearing them the rest of the day.

Are they funky or what? There are no arms to the things, just chains with disks on the end. The chains hang over the back of your ears. The weight of the disks keeps the sunglasses in place and look like earrings. You can even bend over and tie your shoe, and the glasses won't fall off of your face. I love them because I can wear them over my own real glasses.

A fun gal named Anna Harney was selling them. She says email her at aesler@airmail.net if you'd like a pair. No, I didn't get a discount for saying that!

But only half of this post is about the sunglasses. The other half is about photography. As lovely as this stranger and I look wearing our bling, something is different about that woman! She has an orange and black bubble hat on that I didn't notice when I was talking with her. And I have wood shooting out of my head. My photographer didn't realize that the objects in the background would attach themselves to our heads.

Another example of background 'noise' ruining a photo is this picture of our cousin Mark in front of our longhorn over the mantle. With ears dripping strands of barbwire, he's totally oblivious to how foolish he looks. Remember, it is up to the photographer to make sure his/her subjects look presentable.

So, photographers, take the time to check backgrounds in your pictures. Also observe and fix crooked collars, necklace clasps in the wrong place, messy hair, and even smudged makeup and taco salad in their teeth.

Oh, and try to have your subject's eyes open. By this time we were laughing so hard at dear Mark, that we couldn't get him to stand still for another try at the shot.

You're a good sport, Mark.

UPDATE: A dear friend, who shall remain nameless, pointed out another bad shot RIGHT ON MY OWN BLOG. Now that's a true friend. I mean, who but a good friend will tell you about the spinach in your teeth or the snot in your nose! (For the other bad shot see Theresa on Sept. 28. She has a doll coming out of her head! Too funny.) Thanks for the laugh, friend. It's another case of do what I say and not what I do!

The simple photographer

Email is very efficient, but unless the verbiage they carry is a lot different from the ones I get, email is not a very romantic form of communication - not like these postcards that I rescued from my m-i-l’s house in Brownwood years ago. Notice the back of one of the postcards gives the date as 1909 on the postmark.

So, how does one go about taking closeup photos with a point-and-shoot digital camera? Here's how I do it. If you already know this, or don't care to know this, or are a Mac user (I don't have anything for Mac users. Sorry), just enjoy the pretty postcards.

First I put the object to be photographed (the postcard in this case) at my feet. I'm standing, trying to keep my shadow off of the card. You could sit and take the picture, but if you are using a flash, you might get a hot spot across your object. Taking the picture outside, where I took my photos, eliminates that problem. I then use the zoom feature on my camera to get closer to the object, trying to keep the card as straight as I can in the viewfinder.

I take the flashcard out of my camera, stick it into my laptop, and open my menu by pressing the Window's symbol on the lower left of the keyboard and alphabet letter E button at the same time. I then browse to the flashcard drive, click on it, find the photo I want, and double click on it. This opens the photo in Microsoft Office Picture Manager. I click on Edit Photo which opens the toolbar, and then click on Crop. This show the edit marks on the sides of my photo. I then pull in those marks by putting my mouse over the marks. When I get the size to my liking, I click OK. I then go to Resize to reduce the amount of pixels (making it easier and quicker to open on the web or in email), find which size I desire, click on it, then click OK. I then go to Save As to save the photo where I want it.

And there you have it, a nice closeup without a tripod or fancy lens. And you've cropped your feet out of the picture.

The Simple Photographer

Apparently, I don’t look as good as my About Me photo, or so several friends (yah, friends. Right!) have insinuated. You see, these people know the real me, bare-naked except for a swimming suit, my white hair in pig tails.

(If someone had told me when I was younger that I’d be wearing a swim suit to work everyday when I was 62-years old, I would have laughed my you-know-what-off. But back to the photograph...)

Admittedly, the picture is a couple years old, but also, there are tricks to be learned here.

As I said (and you can see) my hair is white. My face is pale. I usually don’t wear makeup. It’s washed off my face after being in the pool a couple of hours anyway so why bother? Even IT Guy doesn’t see me in makeup often. So when I needed a more formal photo, I piled on the makeup, took a self-portrait (read on for more about that), then turned that photo into a black and white picture. The resulting contrast gave my pasty face the appearance of more color. A simple trick, really.

But the good stuff is this: when I turned my body slightly away from the camera, giving myself a thinner profile, I also lowered my shoulder closest to the lens and leaned into it. This movement stretched out my neck skin and any double chins hanging around. Try it in a mirror and see for yourself. It works wonders. You'll want to walk around like that all day!

Notice my face was straight-on towards the camera, though. This did two things for me. It hid any crow’s feet I have (well, almost), denying the flash an opportunity to highlight them with cast shadows. But also, (and here’s a biggy, folks) it hid the fact that I had elevated over my ears the arms of my glasses! This trick gave a slightly downward tip to the lens which resulted in less of a reflection from the flash. Any reflection that might appear, could be gently cloned away later with GIMP, the free photo manipulating software I told you about in an earlier post.

A big grin on my face hid any smile wrinkles in my cheeks and under my eyes. A hat framed my face, something my white hair doesn’t do. It also would hide thinning or messy hair.

So how did I take a picture of myself? Digital cameras make that so easy. First, read up on the self-timer built into your camera. Then pile books onto a tall dresser or bookcase, placing the camera on top of them. Set the self-timer, and quickly get into your shot. You probably have much more time than you really need. Running back to the camera, you can immediately see your sample portrait and estimate where you should stand for the next shot, how good the focus was, and if the top of your head or the bottom of your chin was cut off. Now take several more shots, experimenting with posing as you go.

The shot I'm using for the About Me was my fifth exposure that day, but I took many more, trash canning the hideous ones so IT Guy would never see them. He did notice I was in my pj’s, though.

I guess eight years of owning and running a photo studio finally paid off with this photo. But let’s face it...wet and bare-naked in a swimming suit, I look a lot different.

The Simple Photographer

IT Guy and I woke up Saturday morning on the shore of Lake Fort Phantom Hill near Abilene.

It wasn’t a surprise. We’d traveled five hours the day before to get there. Going anyplace in Texas takes a while.

The dogs got us up at their regular time, and, for once, I was happy about it. The sunrise was lovely, so I grabbed my camera and walked from our RV to the water’s edge.

Much to my delight, the unexpected happened. Four ducks swam out of the undergrowth at my feet. Immediately I started shooting with my little camera, letting it sort out apertures and focuses on its own. I didn’t even take the time to get my horizon line straight. Camera stealth and speed meant I would get the ducks in my shots. If I had to quickly set dials and adjust my stance for the horizon, the ducks would have been long gone.

Back inside at my laptop, I opened each shot in Microsoft Office Picture Manager. If you have Microsoft Word, you probably have that software already installed on your computer. It’s a powerful tool for the Simple Photographer.

First, I clicked on Edit Pictures. This brings up a toolbar on the right. I then clicked on Auto Correct which brought the photo back to the color intensity of the original sunrise.

Next I clicked on Rotate and Flip, where I turned the photo from a sideways picture to an up-and-down one. While there, I used Rotate by Degree to straighten out my horizon line. Boy, did it need it. I then cropped the photo with the Crop tool to make the picture rectangular again. Back I went to Edit Pictures where I resized my photo to a small web picture for easier opening on your website.

I did all that with a photo tool from Microsoft that I already had. Pretty neat, huh?

I believe in keeping photography simple. I owned a one-hour photo and portrait studio for eight years; and believe me, things back then weren't as simple as they are now. God bless Bill Gates!

Secrets!

We all have 'em. And I’m willing to share a really big one with you, mainly because IT Guy shared it with me, and I want to pass it on.

Photoshop is expensive. Oh, you knew that already? Well, here’s the secret part: did you know that GIMP, a photo software program that rivals Photoshop, is absolutely FREE? Yes, I said FREE! And, my goodness, you can do everything in the world with GIMP. Several Photoshop plugins work with GIMP, too, or so I’ve read, anyway. I'm still working on all the things GIMP already has, like the old photo button (results above) and the cloning tool (see below. I took that strange woman right out of the photo).

There are tons of tutorials about GIMP on the web, so you won’t be alone in learning it. Just like Photoshop, though, there’ll be a learning period as you plow through your first experiences with photo enhancing. As with anything you do nowadays, read up on GIMP on the Internet. Then, if you decide to try it, go to http://opensourcewindows.org/rcewindows.org/ and download it. I’ve read about GIMP being difficult to download, but we had no problems at all, and it wasn’t because IT Guy is so gifted in that department. It’s just that no problems appeared during the download.

While you’re at OpenSource, look at all the other free stuff that’s there. You might just find something else you can use. Here’s a big thank you to all you code-writing geniuses who gave us GIMP and all the other free software in cyberspace.

I did my header in GIMP yesterday, and slapped it up so you could see how versatile the program is, but it can do much more everyday things than the header.

Do you have any secrets you'd like to share?

Sometimes ya just need a potty break!

Have you ever been garage sailing/saling for so long that you just had to find a potty?

That's the way it was this morning for Ren ...a...er... oops, I promised her I wouldn't give her name with this photo, but here's a hint for you Round Top/Warrenton sellers: she's in the Bar W Field!

Ren...a...er...I mean, this stranger found the long sleeve shirt and hat at the garage sale across the street from these potties and wouldn't pose until she'd bought them as a disguise for her incognito moment.

You're a good sport, Ren...a...er...Stranger!

Young Love

C-Bear and Sally Sue.

QUESTION: Why would I want more grandchildren with this young fellow around?

ANSWER: Because I'm greedy!