Vintage.

The other day I went to the Saginaw Career Complex. I went there for my junior and senior year of high school for the Graphic Arts program where I learned how to take pictures and use all the Adobe programs. I've been visiting that class a lot more lately to help out my teacher. The other day when I went there I was uploading some of my photography to her computer for her to use them as examples for the students. I looked behind me and there was a box of old cameras. I sifted through them to find an old Nikon FM10. This camera is a throw back from 1995. It looks relatively new because of the lens but it still operates on film. After playing around with this camera I fell in love with it. I immediately jumped on craigslist and started searching. I found a Minolta SRT 101 for $25 in Burton, MI. I didn't skip a beat and drove down there and bought it. This camera is a bit older dating back to 1966. It works beautifully though and I am inspired to start developing my own film. After I bought the camera I noticed that half the roll of film was already used up. The thing about using these cameras is that you can't view any of the pictures until the film is developed. This is going to take a lot of getting used to because I quickly took the rest of the pictures in the roll and ran them over to Meijer in hopes that there would be some really old pictures on it from the previous owner. I feel like I wasted half a roll in my excitement because the first half of the pictures were just taken at the garage sale that the woman that sold me the camera had. Oh well... I love it!

In This Lovely Little Village

Deckerville. Have you ever heard of it? Do you know where it is? Not very many people do. Well it's way out in the thumb of Michigan and it's very much full of farm land. I know of this place because someone I know lives out there. I used to give him so much grief about this little place because it was something so new to me. I'm used to street lights at almost every corner, busy traffic, fast food joints, and 7-Eleven's everywhere. Here in this lovely little village there is only one stop light, one McDonald's which is combined with a marathon gas station and loads of farm land. When you hear people say that the city lights ruin the stars at night, they're not kidding. I walked outside around 10:00PM and looked up to the most beautiful sky I had ever seen. I have fallen in love with this place. It's like a photographers dream (besides traveling the world). It's also a pretty short drive to Port Huron so you're not completely cut off from city civilization. I took a little over 200 pictures over the weekend and I'm very glad I did. My pictures are from various parts of Deckerville and a few that are a little more out of town.

There are so many more pictures but that would get pretty ridiculous to put them all in this single post. These few pictures pretty much sum up my weekend. We woke up early Sunday morning to watch the sunrise (last 2 pictures). This is what ended my wonderful weekend. Driving away from this beauty was torture and entering back into the city of Saginaw just wasn't the same.

Fall Beginnings

Finally the color of the leaves are changing to various warm colors of burnt orange, maroon, and browns. I very much enjoy the fact that I can wear jeans and a long sleeve and not be too hot nor too cold. I'm a winter clothes type of girl anyways. As for the view, the colors of the trees make for beautiful and wonderful landscape photos. I will probably be working on a lot of fall shots, seeing as my aunt is my biggest photography fan and she likes to print off my pictures and decorate her home with them. It is quite flattering actually. Apparently the color scheme of her living room is a range of orange and warm colors so she told me to strive for some fall pictures so she can decorate her living room also. There is not enough change in the trees yet to accomplish the pictures I know she wants, but it is still very wonderful outside and I just could not pass up the moment to take some random pictures of the fallen leaves that signal the beginning of fall. The photo above was taken using my fish eye lens that I talked about in my very first blog. That is what a picture looks like when the lens is actually connected to the camera and I'm not just holding it in my hand. I found out after I purchased the lens off the internet that it doubles as a macro lens. Macro shots are really close up shots on a small subject. This lens actually gets some pretty good detail for the low quality that it is. This picture is of a leaf that is starting to change it's colors.

These last couple pictures are just some random ones that I took of the fallen leaves. It was nice just sitting in the sun snapping pictures... one of my favorite things to do in the fall.

!thor.

I've been pretty low on ideas lately for photography. All this weird crummy weather does not really make it easy. I'm also very timid with taking my camera out in the rain. So while sitting at home I was drawn back to stumble upon out of boredom. Ironically I kept getting photographers web pages and online portfolios. I stumbled upon one that looked really familiar to me, not because it took me to a facebook page, but because I've seen these pictures before. But where? I kept looking through the albums on his page of all of his great photography. Then I ran across a picture that I was in. It was one of those "oooh yea" moments. Me and some old friends of mine went to this young couples house because they were having an ice cream social. It was pretty random but my friend knows them because they are neighbors. The father of the family is a quite the artist and photographer. It took me a good amount of time to quickly sift through his pictures. There is so many.
If you're interested in looking through the pictures go to his facebook page. After creeping on his facebook for a bit I found his web page. It's called thorthought.com. If you actually go to this web page and click on the Saginaw Happening button, it will take you to his blog. It goes through blogger, so if you enjoy his pictures as much as I did you can follow his blog. It's all about events that go on in Saginaw. He takes some pretty amazing pictures. He inspired me to at least try to take some pictures. So I just went outside (after the rain let up) and I got a few good pictures.

Only At Night

A wonderful photography experiment turned out amazingly well. I greatly appreciate the help I had while doing this.

What gave me the idea for this experiment were a few pictures I took at night while I was waiting around Thursday night at Wheelers Landing Marina. Who thought the Saginaw River could look so good. It might only be at night.

 The next night we walked to the park across the street and I used the concept of slowing down the shutter speed on my camera to capture light even though it is pitch black outside. Using my tripod to make sure my camera is steady so it doesn’t turn out really blurry, I came out with a few really cool pictures.

After these pictures we went back out the night after and took a lot more pictures only this time I decided to buy some glow sticks from Michaels for a dollar.

We also went to one of the bridges to capture the lights of the cars passing by and some of the lights across the river.

I think all these pictures turned out really well and I'll probably use this technique a lot more often. It was also really fun doing it. Going for walks at night is extremely peaceful. Hopefully I'll come up with a new idea for an experiment next weekend. If anyone else has any ideas or photography experience, input would be very helpful.

Stumble

I'm sure a lot of people know what Stumble upon is (Stumble Upon). If you don't, it's a website that navigates you to high quality (no spam) websites that are relevant to your interests. You make an account for free and you put checks next to all the categories that you like or interest you. My checks mostly have to do with art and photography, obviously, and some other nerdy things that interest me. I was stumbling this morning and a ran across a music video that I would would fit in with my blog. The song is called Holocene by Bon Iver.

Not only am I in love with the song, the music video is just so breathtaking and beautiful to me. I like the idea that they used a little boy in the video. To me it shows the side in everyone that just wants to explore and be a kid. This music may not be everyone's cup of tea but at least watch the video. Mute it if you have to. Try to put into words what the song or the video says to you. Of course I went for a walk with my camera after watching the video a billion times. I put the song on my iPod while I took picture and i think it really helped my creative eye.

Also, if you don't have one already, make a stumble upon account. It's a good time killer and can sometimes be a good tool for learning. I get a lot of my photography experiments from it along with art techniques. If you're a huge computer nerd like me there are a lot of how-to's and tools that can help with technical problems. Or you could just watch people get hit in the face if you check the "humor" interest box.

Expermiental

Photography has always been my main hobby that I am able to do all year around. It's nice to just get out of the house for me in any kind of weather because I love nature so much (maybe a little too much). While I walk I would get so bored just looking around and listening to my own foot steps. So whenever I go for a walk I always have my camera. Then I can at least capture the beauty on my walk so that other people can see what is out there. After being an active photographer for so long I began to get bored of the typical point and shoot method (although I still enjoy it). Experimental photography became quite a passion for me when I started learning a little more about my camera. For those who know little or nothing about the subject of cameras, experimental photography is pretty much using the cameras basic settings differently than most people would or exaggerating the purpose of the setting. So today I decided to experiment with one of my lenses. Instead of attaching it to my camera I thought it would create a cool effect if I just held it away from the camera and used a different perspective. The lens I used is a semi fish eye lens that I found for a cheep price. You can tell what a fish eye lens does by just looking at what you can see through the lens that it gives a much larger range of view compared to just a standard lens.