Colors and Textures of Fall

I had an ice cream picnic and photo session with a friend last week as part of my resolution to take more pictures.  Here are some of my favorites of the day:

I love the colors and textures that come with Fall, its so interesting to watch things change.

What's your favorite part of fall?

The Louvre

We returned to the Louvre on Wednesday after our fail on Tuesday (see yesterday's post) and it was well worth it!  We saw so many beautiful statues, sculptures, paintings and drawings.

(Click to make the image larger :))

 

Of course we made our way to the epic Mona Lisa,

No, no, I meant the painting, not my pup (hehe)

I highly recommend spending as much time as you can at the Louvre if you're ever in Paris, you won't be able to see everything in one day, your feet and back will probably be killing you, but it will all be worth it!

Flashback Friday - Stretch!

Welcome this week's installment of Flashback Friday!  Don't know what Flashback Friday is?  Check out Christopher and Tia's Blog to find out how you can participate!  Now for this week's picture:

Clearly I am too young to remember this situation, but I remember parts of it.  The table in the background is the family table I grew up with, in fact my parents still have it.  Its been reupholstered, has a number of scratches and other lovelies that could only come from the hands of a set of growing children anxious at the dinner table. 

I wish I was that flexible still....sigh

Flashback Friday - Doing Homework

 Welcome to this week's Flashback Friday!  Don't know what Flashback Friday is all about?  Check out ChristopherandTia's blog to find out how to participate!

On to this week's photo:

My grandparents emailed me this picture last week, I've never seen it before!  I don't know where we were, but it looks like a hotel.  My haircut is the same as many of my other young pictures and I have my fair share amount of pens!  I wish my homework now was as easy and fun as it looks here!

Migraine Remedies

Do any of you suffer from migraines? I sure do. I started having them when I was in fourth grade, I remember my first one very clearly.

I was in gym class and we were playing volleyball. I was doing terribly regardless of the fact that I am not athletically inclined in any way, shape or form and my teammates were getting on my case. I pulled my best friend aside and told her "I can't see" She was freaked out, naturally, as was I. I really couldn't see! It was like I had zigzags across my vision.

She walked me to the nurse and I laid down on those awful cot thingies they have and then the headache came on. Oh those headaches. They are in a realm of their own.

My parents took me to various doctors to see if my vision was screwed up or if it really was a migraine and sure enough, the devilish little headache monster won.

Since then, I've gotten them off and on and don't really know what causes them but I had one the other day that came out of nowhere and left me in the fetal position surrounded by pillows, blankets, comforters and Lisa for hours. I'm sure laying down in this little paradise woulda done the trick too, but I take what I can get ;)

What? You were expecting a beach scene? The pounding of the waves would've made my head split!

How to you remedy your migraines? I'm always up for new techniques to make the buggers go away as quickly as possible.

Flashback Friday - Teenage Days of Summer

Welcome to this week's Flashback Friday post! Haven't heard of Flashback Friday before? Head on over to ChristopherandTia's blog and find out more :)

Now, to my picture:

I know, it doesn't look like much to the naked eye (or to any eye but mine, I'm sure) but this picture makes me happy and makes me want to reminisce about easy summer days with my friends. Ok, so the rundown of the picture: I'm the one driving, it was my first car (a 1991 Ford Tuarus Station Wagon, I was so cool), a hand me down that used to be a family car, then my older brother's first car, then mine and so forth. I was driving my best female friend (in the passenger seat) and my best male friend (who took the picture) in to town to pick up a poster that she had gotten framed.

Nothing crazy or super fun right? It was just running errands with some of my favorite people in the world, people who I don't get to see anymore and our lives have grown apart so we don't get to talk very often either. But looking at these random pictures really brings it all back and makes me want to go pick up some friends and do all sorts of fun nothings.

Actually, I've gotta go pick up a new friend to go to the thrift store right now! Fun nothings, here I come!

Make up your mind weather!

Its a rainy, gloomy day here in New Mexico. I wish the weather wouldn't play games with us like it does, one day its sunny and gorgeous and spring-like, the next its cold, gray and wet. Make up your mind weather!

So here are some sunny pictures to help us all think of the coming spring :)

Sun Flower by janeheller

Le Soleil by honeytree

Summer Road by judemcconkey

Flashback Friday!

It's been awhile since I've participated in ChristopherandTias Flashback Friday posts and I am looking forward to it this week!

Now, I'm thinking that eventually I should find and post a picture that I actually remember...well. BUT in my defense, I do remember *parts* of this picture. I remember that truck in the background that my older brother and I were washing (I promise the truck was the original target...he got in the way). It was huge. Even when I got bigger than I was at three years old, it was still a huge truck. I remember taking a lot of family trips in that truck and camping and trying to drive it. We had it a long long time. I also remember the house that this picture was taken at. We were living in Idaho at the time. I'm pretty sure my momma made the outfits my brother and I are wearing (not sure where my little brother is, but I'm sure he has a matching outfit too).

Polaroid Love

Earlier this week I was looking for a working, vintage polaroid camera to add to my very lonely digital camera so that she would have a friend. I found a few fantastic ones on Etsy, of course but in the search for film for said cameras, I discovered that there was basically NO WAY I can afford this hobby. The film for these cameras is quite expensive (especially to my on-a-college-budget-and-uploading-digital-pics-to-my-laptop-is-free diet) so lets just enjoy some these pola-lovelies for the day.

Autumn Reprise by jiorji

Polaroid Print by futurowoman

on the line by alicebgardens

Polaroid Diptych by samophoto

Wise Wednesday - Taking Better Product Photos

Today's installment of Wise Wednesday is brought to you by the husband and wife team of Nomadcraftsetc and Nomadglass as well as a new shop opening in March, Nomadcraftssupplies. After reading a very useful post they had written in the Etsy Forums, I asked if they would be willing to write a guest blog post about how they take amazing shop photos and they very graciously accepted! In the following article, they describe in intimate detail how they set up for the best product shots. Be sure to check out their shops, their website and their blog!

My husband and I have had our online Etsy shop for one year(January 7th is our etsyversery) and have always struggled with pictures. Look at our first few sales and look at our pictures now and you will see we have come a LONG way. (by the way I say we, it is my hubby and I that acted like contortionists so I will talk in the 3rd person)

We have played with every sort of lighting source, been outside, inside, daylight, moonlight and spotlight...EVERYTHING you can think of for taking a great picture we have tried. We finally decided to stop over thinking the whole picture thing and decided to make it simple. VERY simple.

We have a LARGE window in our kitchen(small kitchen) and our dinner table is right next to it. PERFECT. Our camera is on its last leg. It is a hp photosmart r837 with 7.2mega pixels. We have it mounted on a $12.00 tri pod which we use to carry the camera. It cost, maybe, $80.00 about 2 years ago. This just proves you don't need a fancy camera. We put the camera on close up mode, with the flash off and set the exposure compensation to +.5. This effects the white balance and how steady the picture is.

For setup, all we do is prop up a piece of black or white poster board that we have folded in half (cost = $0.50) on the table with a coffee canister behind them so that they don't fall flat.

We use the (natural) light from the window as our lighting source. The best time of day is usually noon, but we can get great pictures in the morning and in the afternoon too. Depends on how well our camera is behaving! One of us will sit in a the chair on the side opposite where the light is coming through the window and get down to eye level with our product, this is the best position to get all angles.

Then we take 5(no more and no less) pictures of each item. We don't spend more than 2 hours per week actually taking pictures-we go with the philosophy that time is money.

5 pictures gives us room to fill all picture spots on Etsy if they are all good pictures. These 5 pictures include: 1 focal shot, 2 angle shots, one shot of the back side of the piece and one size reference shot(like the items you see in a hand).

If one out of those 5 pictures isn't perfect we delete it and will replace it with one of us working in our shop.

Oh, and the only thing we have to do to our pictures is crop them-rarely do we have to lighten, darken or manipulate the picture in that way. We use Photobucket as our photoshop program. FREE and easy to use-plus online storage for all of our pictures so we don't ever lose anything.

We do about 250 pictures per week for 2 shops so this method is what has worked for us as far as getting good pictures and time conservancy. So, our 5 best tips for getting a good picture(or what has worked for us anyways): 1. Have consistent backgrounds-depending on your items a neutral/plain colored background is great! 2. Natural light, whether from the window side or outside, works well. An overcast day seems to work the best. 3. TURN the FLASH OFF!!!! 4. Get pictures from all angles, this will let the viewer "Feel" the item with their eyes. 5. Once you find something that works-run with it! Don't change a thing!

Thank you so much for this post, I will be trying out your techniques as soon as my studio is unpacked!