photI am obsessed with taking photos of flowers. This means I've taken many, many fewer photos this winter than I take during the summer, given the dearth of flowers in Utah County in the winter. (The temperature outside also has something to do with this.)

But what I've realized looking at the photos I have taken is that I apparently also obsessed with taking pictures of branches. Lots and lots of branches.

Flowers and branches. I wonder what that says about me.

I really envy people who can take great candid portraits. Okay, I also envy their cameras, because mine doesn't get fast enough in indoor lighting to do good portraits--I have to use a tripod indoors always, which kills the candid thing. A lot. I'm best at direct-sunlight macro photography, though I take some wicked mini shots in my nifty-snifty lightbox too. 

Maybe I just need to play with my camera more.  I haven't used the manual setting much--maybe I could come up with something that it won't do automatically--something with the aperture way up and the shutter speed way fast.  I've been trying to come up with some photography goals for the summer for myself (lest I spend the whole summer working and playing video games and watching Angel and forget that I do in fact have hobbies that I don't expect to make me any money) so maybe I'll put some people-shot goals in there.  I need to branch out a little.

Er.  No.  Not branch.  [insert more appropriate idiom here]

Between May 2007 and December 2007 I took 5,500 photos. 700 of those I decided were good enough to go in my portfolio file on my computer, and 350 of those made the cut to my photo journal.

I think this means that I made the right decision last year when I decided to buy a camera with my tax return.  That was money well-spent.

Yesterday I learned about the wonderful world of white-balance. No wonder my indoor pictures always come out crappy. I wish I'd known about that a long time ago.

Digital cameras are fantastic.

I woke up this morning thinking about photographing fruit.

I had a dream about a photo of strawberries, plump and ripe, embedded in a red substance of the same color. In my dream I remarked on the shadows around the strawberries (lit from the side) and the bits of green from the leaves, the way they made the strawberries stand out even though the background didn't provide contrast. I can still see the image in my mind.

When I woke up I lay in bed, thinking about a fruit photo shoot, with lots of textured backgrounds and arrangements. I thought about photographing apples, oranges, pears, bananas, jumbled together and set apart, manipulating the lighting to create dramatic shadow, changing the backdrops and putting props underneath to provide depth and contour.

All of this means that I am very strange. And I may have to get myself some fruit.

I found some cool frames at the dollar store, so I finally framed the 8x10s of the pictures I had printed several weeks ago. I hung some of them on my wall (had to take down a quilt, but I was sick of it anyway), and they look awesome. This makes me very, very happy.

I've been noticing a phenomenon lately, something Drew pointed out to me that I can't believe I didn't notice before.

People come into the store all the time and stand around for a few minutes, watching us paint. Often there's a crowd of five or six of us, all painting various minis. People wander over to the case with the finished figures and admire them. Some of them, though, make this comment: "Wow, you must have really nice paint."

Um, yeah. Right. And the minis climb out of the packages and paint themselves. It's the PAINT that does it. Forget the fact that Drew and RJ and Howard are freaking FANTASTIC painters.

Ahem.

Whenever this happens Drew turns to me and says, "I like your book. You must have a nice typewriter."

More disturbing, though, is the number of people who look at photographs (particularly mine) and say, "you have a nice camera." The sheer numbers of people who have made this comment to me astound me.

Yes, so nice it walks out into the world and takes pictures by itself, then wanders back with a memory card full of shots for me to post.

Please. It's not the paint that makes the minis great. It's not my word processor that makes me a good writer. And it's certainly not the camera that makes a photograph good. You need sufficient equipment, sure, but after that, it's not the equipment that creates the art. It's the artist. If you don't like the paint job, or the book, or the photograph, that's also the artist's fault, not the camera.

It's not the equipment, people. Really.

/incredulous rant

So, I'm realizing that I take pictures way faster than I post them. I have 54 pictures all uploaded and ready to post, and they are slowly trickling onto my photo journal, except that I keep taking more. At least this way if my picture taking slows down after school starts, I can keep the journal going. If I don't slow down, I'll have to become more selective than I am.

My good-picture ratio is still pretty good. One in fifteen of my photos is good enough to go into my portfolio folder, and one in 25 is good enough to be posted. Those aren't terrible numbers, I think, partly because I tend to shoot 10-15 pictures per subject, minimum. :)

In totally innocuous news, I have finally found a new conditioner that works. This makes me happy. Since Thermasilk was discontinued I've tried Suave, Fructis, Lorial Pro Vive, and Herbal Essence. None of them worked very well. Someone had graciously left an unused 2 for 1 coupon for Panteen Pro V on the shelf, so I grabbed it and bought two bottles. The stuff works almost as well as the salon quality Lorial stuff that I can get at Taylor Maid but can't afford to buy very often. This makes me happy.