Britts Photos

It is so hard to get shots of animals. Anyone who has ever taken a picture of an animal that isn’t sleeping or really old can tell you…it’s extremely hard to get shots of them that aren’t blurred or messed up in some respect. On my camera it has a special feature that can take action shots of course, but sometimes this doesn’t work. I have taken maybe 200 shots of my cats and got maybe 5 really good ones out of that. It’s not too bad, but it just goes to show you how hard it is to take pictures of animals since they never really hold still. Here are my two favorite shots of two different cats.

Also, I’m trying to come up with a few more things to blog about. I’d love to hear your feedback, ideas or even some of your experiences with photography. Please leave comments and let me know what you think of my blog and photos.

Wow, I have not blogged in such a long time. Forgive me.

I guess I got a little discouraged because I thought something was wrong with my camera, my batteries kept dying on me. But I bought a new kind of battery and it looks like they’re not dying on me yet. So that’s a good thing :D. I use rechargeable batteries, because those are the best kind for me to use with the amount of photos that I take. Before, when I had my old batteries, the charger was a type that didn’t have the light that would tell me when they were done charging. So I never knew how long to charge them. I guess I overcharged them or something because after that they didn’t work well at all. I’m not sure if you can overcharge batteries or not, but that’s what I’m going with. So I guess this is a good tip. When you buy rechargeable batteries, buy the charger that has a light that tells you when they’re done charging.

I’m still a beginner at this photography stuff, so if anyone reading this has any tips or would like to correct me on anything. Please, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. I welcome any comments, tips or correction. I love to learn new things, especially in anything about photography.

Digital cameras versus film cameras…
Of course, I love both…but…I’ve grown to love digital better than film, my big reason is: because of how many pictures I can take!

With a film camera there’s always that chance of not enough pictures left on the film, so then you have to be sparing with your picture taking. So that’s not fun, what if there was an awesome shot of a sunset and you only had one picture left! So you take it because there’s no way you would ever get that shot again…but wait! Oh no, the sunset looks even more majestic than the last shot you took….nooooooooo, my film is gone! Ok, so wait, you have more film right there in your bag…no biggy. So you take the time to put the film in the camera, and you think your golden…but then you look up to see that the sun is already down and that priceless shot is gone forever.

But of course, digital cameras are alot more expensive and more complicated to use. While film cameras are easier to use and cheaper. Most film cameras may also have better quality sometimes…but with digital you can tweak your photos in a simple program instantly, and can view the pictures just after you take it on the LCD screen (the tiny screen that usually is on a digital camera). So there are pros and cons to both types of cameras. It usually depends on what you are using the camera for. I may go into the pros and cons of both types later, but this’ll do for now.

You know, most people would say good photographers have good cameras. But my opinion isn’t that they have a good camera, it’s that they know their camera. A new photographer can get quite frustrated with the way their photos turn out, which can get them discouraged. They most likely will blame it on the camera first (well, at least that’s what I do sometimes still), but really the fact of the matter is that they don’t know how to use the camera properly. Now of course all of this is my opinion and what I guess I’ve learned from what I’ve been through, but still…beginner photographers need to be patient and just try to figure out their own camera. Each camera is different so when you’re just beginning it’s hard at first to know how your camera works. Of course there’s the basic stuff how all cameras work…like the lense, flash, time it takes to capture the actual photo, etc. But camera’s seem to have their own personality sometimes (that may sound a little crazy but that’s what it seems like to me) so take the time to get to know your camera and don’t get frustrated. Since I’m still relatively new at photography and owning my own digital camera, I’m still trying to get to know my camera…and I do still get frustrated…shhh…but I just gotta remember that these things take time.
Plus, it’s my own fault if I can’t take good pictures…I’m still developing an eye for things and figuring out what makes a good photo and what doesn’t. So it’s not the camera’s fault (at least not all the time)

Wow, I haven’t blogged in a while! Terribly sorry about that! My weekend was quite busy. I did manage to take a few photos which I will work on very soon and post as soon as I am able. But for now I’ll post a couple of my photos I took a while back.

This next photo is kinda different. I thought it was rather cool, almost abstract the way the moon and jet were positioned in the photo.

This next photo isn’t the greatest but I still like it. The frost shows up rather well on the leaves.

I’ve been working on a new header for this site, what do you think? It’s a collage of some of my own photos that I’ve taken.

Today I was working on a new header for the site. I put together a few of my photos and made a collogue. It will probably be up in a couple of days.

Here’s a tip on how to take a better photo. Get in closer! Simple as that. For instance, If you take a photo of a young child in a pool from far away you would get alot of unnecessary water in the shot, but if you move in closer whether by zooming or just moving in yourself, the picture would turn out much better. This tip will usually only work if you have a specific subject that you are taking a picture of. If you are taking a landscape photo however, of course, being closer will not give you a good photo. So if you are taking a picture of a certain person or thing, get in closer. If you’re taking a picture of a landscape, get as much of the scene as you possibly can.

That’s just a small tip that I learned from the e-book.

I didnt have a chance to work on any pictures or even take pictures today. So of course I will post some quotes! Ive decided that if I am going to post quotes that I should do a specific person. So today its Ernst Haas.

Today I just worked on a previous photo I had taken. I added some words to it. I’ve just recently learned how to add words to photos and have effects on the words. So I’m still learning this process and trying to figure out how to be creative with them. I’m doing pretty good, but I still have a ways to go.

Today two deer were in our side yard so of course I had to take a picture of them! Since deer can get scared by any little noise I had to take these through our window, but they turned out great. I only got three pictures of them because they moved so quickly; they got scared of something and ran. So the pictures were just taken quickly and I wasn’t paying attention too much to if the camera was centered on them or zoomed up enough. I took them from exactly where I was so there was no zooming involved, that was just how close they were!

I’ve provided two copies of the three pictures because I wanted to share the joy of digital photography and using a picture editing program.

The original picture is first with nothing done to it except the resize the entire picture, because the actual original size of the picture is about a small poster size and that’s a little too big for the internet. The next is where I cropped the picture and since I have a camera that takes large, good quality pictures, I can do it and it still turns out great and sometimes better!

As you can see, the first one is the original photograph and the second is from the same photograph, it is only cropped and appears to be zoomed up. That is because of the size of picture my camera takes. Personally, the lighting is not that great in this picture so the closeup of the deer doesn’t look very good…but it’s still cool to be able to crop the photo, it gives it a whole different view.

These next two photographs seem to have better lighting.

See, in the first photo (original) you can’t really see the deer as much but it’s still an okay picture, it just has a different flavor and view than the second photo. You can see the deer a WHOLE lot better in the second picture that I cropped which in my opinion makes the photo alot better and keeps the focus on the deer. And all I had to do was crop and resize! How cool is that! I love digital photography :D.

These next two are action shots, they turned out nicely considering it was through a window and deer move SO fast!

As you can see, the original photo has alot of distractions in it! The sign in the background and whatever that red thing is on the top right of the photo are quite distracting. So it’s not a very good photo at all, although the deer is very beautiful you can’t really tell in the first picture. So I cut all those out by just cropping the picture.

There are all sorts of photo editing softwares out there. I use Macromedia Fireworks MX which I don’t know if it’s the best one to use for pictures but it’s all I have for now and it gets the job done. The photos still come out clear and that’s very important.

Just look up some different programs on the internet, do some reading, and find one you like!

Here are a few of the pictures I took yesterday:

This photo is great. The detail on the leaf was just too cool. The leaf was fuzzy and the camera caught that!

I cropped this one. Ahh the joys of a photo editing program. Makes the photo turn out even better when I can edit it :).

I cropped this one as well. Pink weeds… they are actually quite small, but you can’t really tell that from this photograph.

Saved the best for last. Great color and lighting, my opinion. Pretty flowers. Mums.

I haven’t really been blogging any good information, mostly just blogging about my own things I thought I should share a little info.

If you are using a film camera there really is no need to pay attention to the difference between digital and optical zoom because a film camera always uses optical zoom. Which is great! Because that is the WAY better of the two zooms. Optical zoom brings the subject closer by using the camera’s lens, while digital zoom really just enlarges part of the photo. For example, a camera using it’s optical zoom will just bring the subject closer in the photo, while a digital zoom will still bring the subject closer…but there’s a catch…it just crops the picture and enlarges the image. So it just takes part of the picture and resizes it to the same size picture as before. So the result is just a more pixally (not a real word…but still…) photograph. In other words, it won’t be a good quality picture, not a clear, crisp photo. So if you are buying a digital camera, the key is to find one that has alot of opitcal zoom, and very little digital zoom.

I hope that you’ll be able to use this information. I just learned this not to long ago so it’s pretty cool!