Greetings! Thanks for visiting my site! I am a semi-retired programmer/analyst and instructional designer who loves to dabble in photography and poetry and of late, scrapbooking - both paper-based and digital. For many years my husband Benny had an antique and furniture refinishing business called Second Looks and I put up this site to complement his business site by offering free wall-paper.

Although I have had a "smidge" of training, I am more of a "point-and-shoot" photographer than a real pro. My photos tend toward journalistic and street photography, as well as toward nature. As early as I can remember, I loved to to draw stories and characters, and later, to read. I don't know what that means exactly. I never became an artist or a professional photographer or a writer. I did, however, work art classes into my elementary, secondary, and even higher education, and have taken one introductory photography class at our local community college. We were required to use a completely manual 35mm camera and slide film for that class but the community college didn't possess a dark room at that time where we could learn how to develop our photos. Since then the advent of digital cameras and the digital "darkroom" (or "lightroom") has opened up whole new worlds of possibility and has put the capability to achieve absolutely fantastic results in the reach of the casual picture-taker.

We've come a long way from the little "box" cameras of my youth.

In 2010 (many years after my initial photography class), I took another introductory course at the community college, this time in graphics design. In the process I became much better acquainted with Photoshop, even though I had been dabbling in it for many years.

Of course achieving the right exposure and shutter speed, 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. Being ready for the demands of any occasion, however, can be tricky, especially for an amateur who struggles with time to learn the capabilities of her equipment.

But here is where my personal philosophy comes in: 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 released the shutter 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.

Photography for me is a mix of training, practice/experimentation, happy accident, and interesting subjects from day to day life. 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, Olympus C3000 and C5050 Digital cameras,various lower end HP digital cameras, Kodak single focus 35 MM, and now a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35. 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

With the advent of tablets and smart-phones and their wonderful little cameras, and with the advent of social media sites, there are many more ways to share photos with an audience these days, and I find myself not adding photos to this site as often as I used to. Still, there are plenty of photos here! A couple of years ago, I re-did Ben's site and mine as a project to learn css (cascading style sheets) - and to better adapt the sites to all the different devices that now access the web.

I still dream of getting my 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 to program in php or some web-based language and to make the site more accessible and user friendly. But eventually, I will probably just try to re-imagine the site in terms of scrap-booking, photo-retouching, and creating photo "art," rather than maintaining a strictly online photo album in which to dump my good pictures, my so-so pictures, and my memories.

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 or larger - and I have several of these. Also 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!

I also keep a blog about my personal journey in photography and photo retouching (among other things). You are invited to check out my latest article "How to Get the Most Out of Your Casual Snapshots with Photoshop."

Jeanne

Now! On to the Galleries!

(or check out some of my favorite products!)

Jeanne's Favorite Products and Services

Improve your photography skills, win awards, find and give encouragement and inspiration, and enjoy a wide, appreciative audience for your photos at YouPIC! Unlimited and Free!

Adobe Lightroom - a fabulous way to develop and organize your digital photos - click for a trial download!

Photoshop Elements - get creative with your photos!

Learn how to turn your photos into art with Stephanie Laird's eBooks

Join a Wonderful Scrapbooking Resource community Get It Scrapped (DebbieHodge.com)!

Seriously, I can't praise the GIS website enough! Well worth your time!

Want high-quality digital scrapbooking software that will let you design in Two-Page-Spread mode?

Download a trial copy of FotoFusion v5 from Lumapix.

Make beautiful photobooks at Mixbook

Mat your photos professionally and reasonably at Nations Photo Lab

Download versatile and highly rated free HTTPhotos Gallery software for your website at http://www.Digicamsoft.com and check out their other free products

Creative Memories

List your photography site at photographysites.com