| Greetings!
Thanks for visiting my site! I am a programmer/analyst
and instructional
designer who loves to dabble in photography and poetry
and of late, scrapbooking
- both paper-based and digital. My husband Benny has an
antique and furniture refinishing business called Second
Looks and I've put up this site to complement his
business site by offering free wall-paper. I've only had
one photography class through our community college -
that was several years ago and, unfortunately, they didn't
have a dark room where we could learn how to develop our
photos. So I'm strictly an amateur. :) But since then
the advent of digital cameras and digital "darkroom"
tools such as Adobe Lightroom 2.5, Adobe Photoshop, and
Macromedia Fireworks has put wonderful picture taking
within the average person's reach more than ever. We've
come a long way from the little "box" cameras
of our youth.
Of
course achieving the right exposure, as well as optimal
composition, framing, and focusing of our subject is essential
when taking a picture. These processes must occur when
the shot is taken - but the final result is a matter of
interpretation of an image's "soul" - or perhaps
the soul of its creator - the details and effects that
caught our eye and were the reason we took the picture
in the first place. That's not to say that photographs
don't sometimes take on a life of their own or that a
professional might not tell us that the more setup we
do with the camera, the less work we require in the dark
room. But still, the "digital dark room" allows
us all, amateur or professional, to bring out and to give
weight in many different ways to what inspired us in the
first place. When
we send our pictures away to be developed, so much time
elapses that we forget the details. Someone else makes
all the decisions, and our labors of love may be still
born.
Lately,
I've been introduced to the wonderful world of scrapbooking
and have come into my own. I realize that I am really
more of a "point and shooter" and a "photographic
journaler" than a serious photographer. So eventually
I think this site will take on more of a scrap-booking
look and feel. Stay tuned ...
Photography
for me is a mix of training, practice/experimentation,
happy accident, and interesting subjects from day to day
life - photos of "ordinary beauty." When these
features all come together, then you get a picture to
die for! But that's a rare occurrence. The photos in these
exhibits have been taken with a Pentax K1000 35 MM manual
SLR camera, an Olympus C3000 or C5050 Digital camera,various
lower end HP digital cameras, or a Kodak single focus
35 MM. The non digital photos have been scanned at some
point with hp desk scanners or a Polaroid Sprintscan 4000
slide and negative scanner - but scanning's another story
altogether. =:o
Anyway,
feel free to drop in and browse for computer wallpaper
in the galleries below. When they are of adequate quality,
I make my images 1024x768 - and I have several of these.
I also have images 800x600 or smaller depending on what
size they look best. And as my "developing"
skills and tools improve I revisit pictures on occasion
and try to improve upon them.
Also
feel free to visit our fabulous guest galleries and blogs!
And please bear with me - I hope eventually to get the
gallery images loaded into a database to be available
at different resolutions via scripting and to make the
gallery sizes more manageable - just for the sake of learning
how, because it's a cool thing to do, and to make the
site more accessible and user friendly. I would also like
to start a blog
of my personal journey in photography and scrapbooking,
but for now, you know how that thing called life gets
in the way ... ;)
Now! On to the Galleries!
Jeanne
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