i learned to set my white balance using a grey card, and that makes a world of difference.
i learned that my camera's pictures look best when set +.03 or +.07, unless they are closeups. since you can't bracket for BOTH of these, i set my camera to default to +.03, and then bracketed for +.03, so i wind up with one of +.03 and one of +.06 (although the photo info always says +.07, so i don't understand that!). if i have to do closeups, i guess i'll have to set the default back to normal exposure.and keep up the bracketed exposures, because i like it.
as for what i shoot in, after tearing my hair out with manual for a while, i've decided to LET IT GO. instead, i see what the camera thinks. then i put it into aperature priority mode and shoot. i think it's a happy medium.
anyway, this is the result of playing with the lighting and the above-mentioned white balance and exposures. obviously, my focus was not on composition nor on choosing a subject which would not REFLECT EVERY DAMN LIGHT IN THE ROOM ON ITS SURFACE, but hey, whatcha gonna do?
i found out today i need a cream background to shoot the cakes on. the camera store only had green. ha ha ha! so i get to figure out now if i can use something from the craft store or something.. i have the perfect seamless background for something smaller (scrap large-format printer paper from work.. huge, huge pieces of it, but nothing for a job this big) but i'm kinda stumped.
I'm Stacey. I'm a 31(!)-year-old Wisconsin girl living in sunny South Florida. The highlights in my life are my lovely boyfriend, my aloof cats, my adorable/adoring stepdogs, my two lumbering tortoises, select family members, being outside, being underwater, taking pictures, yadda yadda. Stay tuned for lots of babbling!
A small boy lived by the ocean. He loved the creatures of the sea, especially the starfish, and he spent much of his time exploring the seashore.
One day the boy learned there would be a minus tide that would leave the starfish stranded on the sand.
When the tide went out, he went down to the beach, began picking up the stranded starfish, and tossing them back into the ocean.
An elderly man who lived next door came down to the beach to see what the boy was doing. Seeing the man's quizzical expression, the boy paused as he approached. "I'm saving the starfish!" the boy proudly declared.
When the neighbor saw all of the stranded starfish he shook his head and said: "I'm sorry to disappoint you, young man, but if you look down the beach, there are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see. And if you look up the beach the other way, it's the same. One little boy like you isn't going to make much of a difference."
The boy thought about this for a moment. Then he reached his small hand down to the sand, picked up another starfish, tossed it out into the ocean, and said: "Well, I sure made a difference for that one!"
