Journal: Not much shooting

Huh. The weather's been sucky for shooting outdoors most of the time, and the couple times I've been out since the last journal, there have been no crows and nothing worth showing. I've been working on learning to process RAW files off and on.

I've started hauling my camera with me on my commute... bought a $22 Lowepro holster bag to make it more convenient. (It is a lot nicer than hauling my full bag with lenses and flash.) But I've realized that unless something just jumps out at me, I don't stop, even when I take the "long" way home and watch for something to shoot. I'm in a hurry to get home because my family's waiting and I already have a 45 minute commute.

I'm not shooting at home because the house is in transition and I don't have a good space to set up even for still-life right now. So I feel like I'm in a holding pattern... waiting for good weather, waiting to get rooms rearranged so I have space for still-life again.

Crows Project: First Outing

Well, I got out for a few minutes to shoot crows the other night... as predicted, all I had to do was walk down to the river and there were hundreds of them.

I learned a few things:

• Charge the battery! I got only eight shots before my battery died.
• 300mm can't really be hand-held at slow shutter speeds. I'm going to work on using the monopod, and if that doesn't help, I'm going to have to lug the tripod. That means driving down to the river, 'cause I ain't going to carry that thing down the street.
• The Canon does well at high ISOs... use them. I could have used a higher shutter speed and got sharper images if I'd set my ISO to 800 instead of 200.
• Birds in flight are a pain to shoot with a long lens.
• Crows in huge flocks aren't as skittish as a lot of birds, but they still evacuate the area when someone walks through.

Now I'm just waiting for free time and acceptable weather to coincide so I can go shooting some more.

Journal: So much has happened

I've been busy with a lot of stuff, but photography is happening. The Wichita Flickr group is pretty active... we had an informal workshop a couple weeks ago. Jackie there in the blue flowers modelled for us. She was fun to shoot.

So did Blythe, though she didn't know she was going to be modelling. She was just tagging along, but she was really cooperative and I think she had a lot of fun.

I'm not sure that I learned a lot... other folks set up the lights and once they were set up they really didn't change. I saw a problem or two solved, but I didn't have any questions about what was being done. But it was still a lot of fun... I got to socialize with members of the group and shoot with them. I got some nice shots, too.

I've started shooting crows, though I don't have much to show. I'll talk about that in the next Project post.

Tomorrow night we have the first meeting of our critique group, so I'm gathering some images for that. I really don't have a lot worth sharing at this point, but the Wichita Flickr group

I'm wanting to get out and shoot portraits of my son again... I'm thinking down by the river where there's a lot of new stone work and stuff. I'll be glad when the weather gets a little warmer and the sun isn't setting before I get home in the evening.