I guess you didn't give me a chance to tell you about my regular Blog. You probably wouldn't understand about regular blogs either. Even though you claim to be so wise about the Internet.

I know that doesn't make much sense to you. But there may be one person that gets it, although I doubt it.

I was out this afternoon during golden hour, the optimum time for taking images with a camera. The setting sun just throws off such a nice golden glow and does wonders for photography. So I am out getting some more shots for my Photo blog, I am walking down an alley in old town Kern, an older part of Bakersfield that is seen it's better days. There was great hoopla of getting this part of Bakersfield back on it's feet, but that was before the economy turned upside down. Now it is just sad.

I came across some Iron grating that made for a neat shot. I took it. I then walked a few feet and there was the back of a 2 story house with doors leading to nowhere. The upper floors were there but there was not a thing past the doors for anyone to walk out on. It looked scary and ridiculous. It was unusual and it ended up in my camera.

Two dogs came running as I am taking the shot, followed by two guys.

One of the guys said "Can I help You?" over the loud barking dog. I already had my shot.
I asked him what just to make sure of what he said.

"Can I help you?"

"Nope." I reached for my wallet to give him one of my free business cards I got from Moo. It's not really classy but it was free, so I can't complain.

Part 1 of 3 parts.

I hijack this blog for my own self serving interest, ok, ... maybe I haven't done it in a while But this is something I need to work out - Tripods.




As you may or may not know I have a photoblog. And as such, I take a lot of Images. Some good, some great, but some are an amazing disappointment. I shall show some examples and try to figure out why what happened happened.


These first four images are taken at night or late dusk. I used a tripod on them as I did the last image that went wrong. I was careful with all the shots, took my time, double and triple checked my settings, carefully pushed the shutter, and with some very little cropping - success:










This is not the result I was hoping for - Blurry, almost out of focus. Something was moving when this photo was shot - But what? I set the tripod on top of my car, parked. The tripod appeared to be still. I took my time, set up the shot very carefully slowly pushed the shutter button - But this was the end result:



What was the difference?

The tripod. I used the round black tripod on the first four shots. A small, but extremely stable tripod that allowed for some freedom as far as moving the camera into the angle I wanted. It was really the first time I had used it. It used to belong to my mother. In fact all 3 of these I inherited from her. The problem with the last shot I do believe is I used the black very adjustable 3 legged tripod. It is basically a flexible wire setup and very easy to get the camera to the angle I need for the shot, but I believe the end result screams at me - lose the tripod. I'll hang onto it for day shots, maybe, but no more night shots with that puppy. (by the way, there were 4 other shots taken with that same flexible tripod I had to literally throw away. They were much worse than what I displayed here.)

Ok, so I have amassed this huge photo collection. And this is just going to be the start. There are going to be many years I shall be doing this, I Hope. Right now mostly everything is how the camera has downloaded the images in to the camera: By date. That is great. But then I have the images that I post produced to make them worthwhile to post on the internet or Flickr or elsewhere. And these images are spread across 2 computer and some of the images on the one computer are duplicates of the other cause only one has access to the Internet. And so on and so on...


So I found this site:
Photo sense on two fronts and will see how things develop on it. Should be interesting. I just wonder if having a cluttered computer affects your Fung shui.

I keep wanting to wait till I have some thing substantial to say before posting here. I think I may take a different route for a while. Start posting little thoughts as well, less substantial. We shall see.

One of My Flickr pages.

Beamer

I joined up this group that allows for me to post something every day for the next year. I truly doubt it will be here, more likely the Photo blog, but we'll see.

In a way, I am sad to see this year go bye bye, but as it is ending (me being unemployed) I am definitely looking forward to the coming year. I should be getting a new SLR camera here very soon, A Fujifilm s700, which will allow for a much broader range of photography than my previous point and shoot, which actually has been broken for the last few months, but luckily still takes pictures (the screen has been toast). So that will be nice.



My eldest son should be moving into his new house (the house isn't, but it is new to him). So a lot going on. Here comes the New Year, ready or Not.