Little Corner of Ania

It's no secret that I love Jessica Claire :)
Here she shows how you can turn a blah photo into a wow photo...in four simple steps!

More editingstuff: overphotoshopped? Yes imo...but still - there's nice techniques to learn here.

100 things I've learned about photography. Oh lookie, 76. Re-check your ISO-Settings. It’s aweful to detect the wrong settings on your screen. SO friggin TRUE!!!! And oh, so easy to forget! (at least on my d70s - I hear canonusers are better off because it's harder to miss for them). Some others that caught my eye:

7. Write tips about photography, because writing is also learning - Mhmm guess that's why I'm tryin to share stuff here even though I'm no pro and prob may be wrong a few times in the process

25. Get feedback from your lady nu uh

30. Take selfportraits don't really wanna!

35. Always shoot in RAW Hmm I just switched back to JPGs for everydayshots because I feel I rely too much on RAW atm.. it's my way of forcing me to become a lil better. I think. But heck yes - RAW is freakin awesome!!

38. It takes time to become a good photographer What if I'm in a hurry? ;p

39. The best equipment is that what you have now Yeah yeah..;p
42. Pay attention to the different way that light falls on different parts of your scene Good one, it's noted. Will try.

60. Post processing = Optimizing your image to the best result And that is totally okay! (repeatx1000 times in my head)

66. It’s who’s behind the camera, not the camera Or behind the photoshop?
71. Shoot as often as possible yes, Id love to shoot more often though

73. Don’t be afraid of getting dirty *snicker*

100. Write a 100 things list No wai!

On the subject of lightning - or more specific - backlightning; I find this interesting and would love to try it out sometime myself.

Am downloading this atm. And hopefully reading it aswell. What I've seen so far is that it's superb - lots of questions answered about the digital workflow. Only looked briefly thru it though. *need to make time to read this properly* It's mainly for Canonusers but has great informative stuff for "everybody" still.

Re. RAW. I've had several questions from different people about this format. And seriously, I just have to say this about RAW. It ROCKS. *and* it SUCKS. Some (personal) notes about RAW:

• The like, bestest thing about shooting in RAW is the awesome flexibility it gives you. It allows you to tweak the photo and retrieve wonderful and so many different exposures (or is it called exposes? hm). I think my favorite - when I'm "seriously" working with a photo and it has areas which have severe umm, contrasts in it (like some of the weddingphotos - where you easily get either blown areas for the weddingdress or very dark faces kinda) is to save two different exposures of the photo and blend them together into one in Photoshop. That way I am able to "save" the photo even though it had very blown areas (over-exposed) and daaaark areas (underexposed) - I save one file with "correct" highlight-exposure and one file with "correct" shade-exposure, blend these together in layers and use layering mask to make the final photo look much better. Kinda a bit like what you do with HDR-photos afaik. This is however a bit hassle and just something I do with the real real "important" photos just to practice. And you can ofcourse do the same with plain JPGs, but the quality wouldn't be as good I think. Tho it depends on the photo in question I guess...(but yes have done that too and to me who's not a pro it have looked okayish as long as the photo isn't that severe damaged)
  
• Changing the whitebalance with just one click!! Or slider :p Ooohhh love this! You know how sometimes your camera detects the whitebalance totally wrong (because all light have their own temperature) and you get photos with yellowish hue or blue hue and stuff? Sure, you could correct it to a certain degree with either the useage of levels or curves and/or use digital photofilters to cover up - but again - for "true" and oh so easy adjustment of the light-temperature of the photo: tadaa - use RAW. I also use it to add intentional warmth to a photo if I find it a bit "cold" and stuff - you can use it creatively ...simply because RAW stores so much data about your file that gets lost when you save it in jpg because it's such a sizesaver kinda.....so it only keeps the needed info and cuts loose the other....
• Changing the exposure..... oy....I love over-exposing if you haven't noticed.....so easy to correct the overall exposure....yey!
• I don't know if it's specific stuff that's possible with CS3 or if it's available/common for RAW editing-programs.... but in addition to easy access to exposure and temperature...you got "friendly" sharpening, contrasting, brightnessing, fill-lighting, adding of black ..uh..I dont know...something..which adds to the black pigments or something I think...love it but have to be sooo careful to not overdo it :p ... and so on and so on
• They say B&W converting is best done in RAW and that it's excellent - with the possibility of true two-toning etc - but I don't know - haven't tried it too much and the little I tried was a bit messy and stuff - I guess I need to properly learn it and pay attention - but I love the B&W-converter in CS3 so I'm satisfied with doing that kinda thing in the JPG-file anyways.
• You can even add realistic vignetting in the CS3 RAW thingie! Fun :D
• I've noticed it seem to be much "easier" to use some actions when I have a "perfect" photo just needing to be brushed up a bit kinda - less individual adjustments involved when I save the photos at a certain exposure kinda. Or it could just mean I'm starting to learn how to properly get the most of the diff. actions I have and what kind of photos fits to what kind of action.
  
• And simply: With RAW there's so much smaller margin to screw up a photo... if you normally shoot decently I guess it's pretty hard to discard a photo due to technical things unless you really did a totally unfocused photo or wrong cropping or the people you shot was looking other ways etc....
• The negative things? You always have to go through the RAW-converter first before entering CS3/photoshop.... which means...you have to chose what information on the picture/file you want to highlight and use... so if you aren't the editing kind of gal and/or satisfied with your photos as they are... just go for JPGs.. the RAW-converter, although helpful, do take some time even though you just click the "auto" button and are satisfied with the following results..lots of loading (although it could very well be my pc too :p) and stuff and then you have to save in jpg or tiff.
• To me, RAW makes me a bit slacking...lazy.....I'm not too "ooh need to get the correct exposure" anymore when shooting RAW (ok I lie, I still am, but not as viligant *cough*) because I tend to think; Hm, that can probably be fixed in CS3 anyways as it's shot in RAW. Don't get me wrong, thats great for very important shots..... but for everyday shooting....I want to improve myself.....I need to learn the hard way...discard photos because I did the wrong choices etc...... RAW doesn't really help me doing that when shooting in RAW... so for that reason....I shoot in JPGS for everydayphotos...and RAW when I feel this is a special situation where I don't want to miss anything.... or for photosessions...or when the lightnings just crazy silly stupid aka not ideal ;o
• And oh. RAW-files are huuuuge compared with the slimmer JPG-files ...just so you're warned ;p
  

But seriously. There's nothing "hocuspocus" with RAW. It's just a format. Try shooting in RAW and do try out the RAW program in Photoshop. It's quite easy....just a bit more timeconsuming which isn't for everybody I know... I know the CS2 and Elements ones were very decent (in my humble, limited experience ;p). Just be aware that if you installed your cameras special programs it might have installed their specific RAW programs aswell - and told Photoshop to open it every time you wanted to open/edit RAW-files. I've read that nikons RAW-program is superb and great but the version I got on my CD was...uh...veeeeery simple and uhm... well...needless to say I turned that addon off and reenabled Photoshops own RAW-converter and got pleasantly surprised of the possibilties with RAW (it didn't seem "all that" with the NIkon program I had)

Oookaaay enough photobabbling!! (yes I'm posessed by/about photography sometimes ;p)

On to scrappy things...just noticed this morning that I was the September-winner of Lifetime Moments Designing with 2007 gig. How fun! I won back in May and was fortunate to win again...yeah! Hopefully I'll be able to do most of the weekly assignments rest of the year so I'll be eligible to win a RAK aswell ...that was the goal when I signed up for joining this thing so winning the monthly contests is just a sweet, sweet bonus :D

The Bad Girls Academy contest is down to ten finalists, and wow..seriously this judging-thing is killing me, it's so very impossible to decide because there's too many damn good scrappers around! And to think we have to pick just one next week...yikes!! (yeah, don't envy our positions atm :p) Personally I'm so sorry to see all the Norwegian scrappers go this week....*sniff* but that's life....you can only have ten on that top list.....when you in reality needs to like, just nominate everbody as winners :p I am however very exited to see what layouts these top-ten will deliver.....no doubt it'll be dazzling and stunning! Which in turn will make our work even more of a nightmare...eek...:p

Hmmmmm must.adhere.some.photos!
Have I told you how much I LOVE Stavanger??? Sooo many yummy eyecandylocations and odds and bits! Seriously! There was this street with colorful treehouses (and I mean colorful! Pink, purple, bright blue, limegreen etc etc colors on the walls and windows and doors....oooh joy!)... lovely and charming small streets.... and this trashcan...♥


Have a happy weekend y'all and thanks a lot for stopping by! :)