Life Update!

I've seriously neglected my blog for several months, but I want to get back to it! Since my phone has a camera on it, I've used my Nikon less and less; add to that my computer is old and I've been procrastinating on getting a new one; and Instagram makes it too easy to post pictures right after I take them on my phone. So all of those excuses have made it easy to add to my photo project. Shameful!

I have a lot of photos on my phone that I can share and I hope to get my Instagram feed up as well. Here is a photo that I was inspired by Instagramer, purposeofenvy. I couldn't edit this on my phone the way I wanted to, so it never got posted.

Summer Blooms

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.  ~Walt Whitman

Faithful Recreation

Well, I figured it out! The last time I tried this the sun was not in a good position because it was a little late in the day.

Attemped Recreation

I've been seeing the same kind of cool flower picture on Instagram lately, so I decided to try it myself. Below you can see the vastly superior inspiration photos:

Water Marble

I can't stop looking at this manicure blog! This lady loves to do her nails and she takes pictures and videos of all her manicures. A lot of what she does is water marbling (which is what I attempted on my nails in the picture) and it involves dropping nail polish into a cup of water, making a cool design then dipping your fingernail into the design. You will be amazed at what some people who have practiced this art can come up with!

I've been longing to try this out on my nails, so one day, I painted my nails white, combined some pink, red and (what ended up looking like) clear polishes, swirled it around in the water, and when my fingers came out of the water, this mess was the result! I thought my pointer finger came out pretty neat, but my mom just thought my hand was bleeding!

I decided I didn't like my first try but before I took off the polish (I didn't even bother to clean up the edges of my nails) I decided to document my experiment. I will try this again at some point.

Tilt-Shift:: Nets Vs Celtics

There was a tilt-shift craze last year that I really wanted to try out, but my photo editing software was too basic. Today, I found a website where I could edit online, free, because I needed to blur the background of a photo for work. Once I was done, I couldn't wait to get home and try some more editing on my own pictures.

This is my first attempt at tilt-shift, which is basically editing a picture of a wide shot to make it look like it's a macro of a miniature model. Basically, you blur almost everything but the part you want to focus on. I'm going to try this again soon!

My muse: 50 examples of tilt-shift photos

For Mom

I used my cell phone flipped open to write this sentence. The keypad has a blue back light, so that's how I got both colors!

Another Amanda

More light writing, in a mirror.

AMANDA

Just used a little flashlight to write my name. I like how there's light all over the floor, table and chair. If I had been very careful, I could have had a completely black background, but I think it looks cool to have my name floating in a room!

Light(ning) Write

It's easier to do light writing when you can control how long the shutter stays open for. No more trying to draw something in under 4 seconds!

Inspired by a Giraffe

Inspiration: "Giraffe"

My version:

Light Write II

My new camera does not have a long time exposure, which means I don't have a lot of time to be elaborate with my light writing. Basically I waited until dark, turned on my camera and forced the flash off. I went crazy with a little flashlight as soon as I tripped the shutter, just to see what would happen.

my original Light Write
Light writing on Google image search

Norman Rockwell's Girl at Mirror

I checked out a book about Norman Rockwell on a whim and it was actually very interesting. He used to take photos of his subjects then paint and draw his famous images referencing the photos. I decided to take a stab at being the Girl at my Mirror and it was hard! I had to get into position in time, make sure it was focused, the light was adequate, make sure my expression was right, make sure my hair looked ok... and then run back and do it again!

• Rockwell's original

• A recreation

And finally, my attempt...

I had a hard time deciding which of two of my best shots to post. One was better with the light, my hair and less clutter but I decided to go with the one where my expression better matched the original Girl. I figured that was the point.

And in case I forgot what image I was trying to copy, a picture of me in the mirror, looking at the picture I want to star in. Whew!

Catch a Jet Stream

This is another attempt inspired by SKYplay.

Light Write

Ahh, light writing! I finally decided to try this trick with my camera and I am so happy that it worked! My camera has a long time exposure maximum of 4 seconds ("long," sure) but that was still enough time to make some fun squiggles and shapes like the star you see above!

If you have long time exposure, you can make some pretty amazing pictures. You need a flashlight or other light source and then just set your camera up in the dark. I saw this project called energie-in-motion a long time ago but didn't think my camera was up to the task. Google "light writing" to see some more coolness.

Just Finished the Clouds

Inspiration: I saw on Flickr a whole collection of even cooler pictures where this guy is interacting in some way with the sky and clouds: SKYplay. I saw the photos, took some of my own then tried to find them again (so I could add the above link) and the searching took me FOREVER!!! And it was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be to get my arm in the right place and even then, it's a tiny bit off. Whatever though, I think it looks cool!