Get a Load of Faux's Face

As you may know, I occasionally post to a photo contest called "Farktography". I used to try to post every week, but I realized that I would get pretty upset with myself if it was Monday and I had nothing for the Wednesday contest. I decided that this is not a hobby with which I need to obsess. Carole and David are superb photographers with brilliant imaginations. I merely take photos to illustrate the blog. If something comes out that's suitable for a Fark contest, great, but I had to stop obsessing about it. Making peace with this eased my stress level.

Plus, I can't compete with Carole and David in the kinds of images they produce. I don't see myself as an "art" photographer. I see myself as a "documentary" photographer. This is what the image is. I don't retouch. I don't play with the camera settings. I know I've got the capability to produce different styles of images. That's not me. What I see is what I shoot. That's it. If I get red-eye, well, I get red-eye. The most I do is crop the photo.

This week's contest is to shoot your family. One of my entries is this one on the right from my visit with Carole and David in November. This is a nice photo of them with Faux, of course.

But I did think about entering this one. What stopped me was that Carole's glasses reflected the camera flash and both her and David look kind of bored. I wanted to enter this because of the look on Faux's face. Speaking of bored. It's a look that says, "Jeeze, take the picture already. I want down but I know I can't get down until you take it. Just do it. I'm so tired of photos." He's such a photogenic cat, however.

The photo isn't drawing tons of votes as my stuff almost never does, but I like it. It's one of my favorite photos of Carole and David and it's my vote that counts.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

Do I HAVE to clean here?

I took a photo off the wall of the living room in order to scan it. Carole got me involved in Farktography, which is a weekly online photo contest. There is an upcoming contest which I feel this particular photo exemplifies.

When I removed it from the wall, I found the residue you see there. Obviously, some spider had made a home behind this photo and had a small repast before either expiring or moving on. I dusted off the wall and rehung the photo once I'd scanned it.

But it got me thinking. How many of my readers remove the photos on the wall and dust behind them? I dust frames, even clean the glass on the photos once or twice a year. But take them down and dust behind them? No.

I looked around my house. I have a lot of things hanging on the wall. I'm fond of displaying things and the walls are festooned with photos, knick-knacks and art. I could take it all down and methodically clean behind it, but that's not exactly something I want to do. Still, thinking about what could possibly be behind some of these photos has me considering devoting a morning to deep dusting. This is something I could do during Saturday's football game. I wouldn't have to leave the living room, although, if the Hawkeyes play badly, I might want to leave the living room.

Beverage: Hot Apple Cider

Deb

Works like a dream.

Remember me mentioning I dropped my old digital camera? Thanks to Niles and newegg.com, this arrived in the mail on Tuesday afternoon before I left. I opened it up, looked it over and, there's no memory card. Um... Plus, the software enclosed is for Windoze. Double um... Oh well, I have a regular camera that shoots good old fashioned print photos. I have 4 rolls of film to use up. I'll just use that until I can get to Carole's and they can help me buy whatever card I need.

Carole and David snickered at my camera. They use Nikons exclusively and consider those the best cameras. My former camera was a Nikon. It was a good camera. But this was on sale and there were no Nikons in the same price range.

I asked about the memory card. "You can get a 4 gig card for $20," he says. "So how many photos does that hold?" I ask. "Oh around 3,000," he replies.

Now, if I was a serious photographer, that might be a good thing to get. But, I use my digital camera to document my life, my cats' antics, snow and rain, my friends and family, in short, not the serious kind of photography that Carole and David do. I do enter photos in the Farktography contests, you'll find them under "Gimmlette", but I shoot what I like. Three THOUSAND photos is way too many. David actually had a small card he wasn't using that holds 300 photos. That's more than enough for me. Possibly, had I had use of the camera on the way to Connecticut, I would have used up the 300 photos, but, as it was, I shot 271 and a few of those, now that I've uploaded them to my computer, are destined to be deleted.

This is a great camera for me. The downloading cable from my Nikon works with this camera. It takes a bit longer for the photos to upload but it's very easy to do. It fits in my purse and is palm-size. I kept it on the dashboard of the Jeep on the way home. When I get the photos from the trip up on Flickr, I'll provide a link. I like the quality and the camera is fast, in bright light as well as low light. It was easy to learn to use, too.

So, that was a good way to start the trip, with a camera that turns out to be a good fit for me. I'll be taking more photos now. I may need to stick some from my iPhoto libraries onto CDs to make room on my hard drive.

Beverage: Apple Cider tea

Deb