It's Spring In the Valley. Time for Nesting!

It's Spring time in the Shenandoah Valley and all the birds large and small are breeding and nesting. Spring is off to a chilly start with some night time lows in the 30's and the chance of snow this weekend but the little bursts of color from the flowering trees and the breeding wild turkeys confirm that "yes it really is Spring" even if the weather says otherwise. Happy Spring everyone! :-)



I'm a hobby photographer with professional dreams and my photography is self sustaining at this point but if you wish to contribute to funding my dreams, prints and greeting cards are available below, just click on the images below.  Any little bit is much appreciated! :-)  :

Beauty In Our Own Backyard

Sometimes you don't have to go as far as you think in search of photo inspiration. I was recently lucky enough to make a new friend  who told my hiking buddy & I about a trail that we didn't even know existed that ends at this beautiful little spring. I was super excited when I first found out about it and and wanted to check it out to see if it was worth bringing my SLR camera and a tripod and it turns out it is! I shot this with my my phone but I'm definitely going to return with my big camera and tripod soon. It's a good work out too. It takes a total of about 2 hours round trip from the woods behind our house with a good deal of it going up the mountain and then down the other side so I'll be getting back in shape in my quest for beautiful photos too which is a win win! :-)

How To Get Nikon Optional Picture Controls Onto Your D300

Sometimes it's the little things that either drive you crazy or make you happy depending on the outcome.

I just spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to load the Nikon Picture control landscape setting onto my Nikon D300. I love nature, I love photographing nature but I am no programmer. All the computer jargon took my poor brain for a ride. What's a "root folder" anyways? Through trial and error I finally succeeded in getting this onto my Nikon D300 and I can now shoot using the landscape mode if I so choose. Here's one of the first photos using this mode:

Ahh greens look ...well green! And I have nice saturated color but not too saturated. I'm not exactly sure why the camera didn't come with this and also the portrait mode but it didn't. I tried following the instructions on the Nikon website but they were as clear as mud. I'm pretty sure the newer Nikon D800 and 810 comes with these already in the camera but I'm still saving for one of those. If you want to contribute to my new camera fund you can buy something Here or Here  :-)

So for anyone else who has pulled their hair out trying to figure out how to add the Nikon optional picture control settings onto their camera, here is my non-programmer minded explanation for the rest of us.

First you go to their website Here

Next I went onto my main drive on my computer and created a folder called PICTURECONTROL. I don't think it matters what you name the file but I put it in all caps because I read another tutorial somewhere that had it in all caps so I did this just in case it did matter. I don't think it matters what you name it either. Then I went back to the website and selected the one I wanted (landscape in my case) and then I found my camera model and operating system which was Nikon D300 and Windows and I clicked on the button to accept the download. Then I navagated to the folder that I created and clicked inside it and made sure it downloaded there. I have Windows 7 so it may be a little different on windows 8. Your computer may default to another place for downloads but you can change it to get it into the new folder you created by navagating there.  Once it downloaded, I then had a file in my new folder. Next I double clicked on this and it created a Nikon folder with the picture control inside.

This is where it got tricky. At frist I just put the file on a formated Nikon CF card using a card reader but my camera wouldn't recognize it. *Note I think it's important to start out with a formatted card (card that has been formatted in your Nikon camera).  It said "no file on card" or something to that effect.  I finally figured out that I needed to copy that whole Nikon file that contained the picture utility file. Once I copied the Nikon file with the picture control utility inside, I pasted it onto the Nikon CF card (not in the DCIM file but just on the card.

Next I put the card into the camera and in the menus found the little icon that looked like a camera. Under that I went to manage picture control and then load/save and then copy to camera and OK. Wala! Now I have more options to choose from on my camera.

I hope this is helpful to anyone else who was pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to add these onto their Nikon D300 or other Nikon DLSR Cameras.

Point and Shoot Macro Photography Tips

My new to me but used 105 mm 2.8 lens for my SLR camera will be arriving tomorrow. Technically it's sitting in the local post office but they didn't deliver my pick up slip until later in the day so I don't get to pick it up until Monday now. 

In the mean time as I anxiously await my new lens, I decided to look for bugs in our yard with my point and shoot set to macro this morning.  I didn't find any bugs so I opted for an easier choice and I "stalked" the flowers in our yard instead. 

I'm discovering that the little point and shoot has a really great macro setting that shows good detail but the only draw back is that the depth of field is so deep that the background tends to look a little busy. I found a way to remedy that in these two photos though. The daffodil was a super easy fix. I just cropped way in and that eliminated the busy background.The ornamental plum however required a little more work and Photoshop technique.

Recently I discovered a technique to manipulate a point and shoot photo's background to look like it was taken on an SLR camera with a shallow depth of field.

Here is a description/tutorial of this technique and how I created the shot of the ornamental plum blossoms.

Since I shot this on my point and shoot camera the original shot looked like this:

Using a Photoshop program (I use Photoshop Elements 11) I first made a duplicate layer and did a little cloning on the petals to clean up some of the harsh shadows since I shot this in direct sunlight. After I was satisfied with that I did a select all and copy. Then I hit control D to get rid of the selected area (since I had hit copy it's in the program's cue and still ready to paste). Then, working on the new duplicate layer that I created I go into Filter and then Gaussian blur. You can adjust the amount of the effect while in Gaussian blur to the degree you like and you can also adjust the opacity slider  for this after you apply the effect since it is on a layer. Next I click on edit and paste. This will make the non-Gaussian blur layer the top layer. I prefer to work with the Gaussian layer on top and then use the eraser tool to bring back the parts that I don't want to be blurred. To do this you will need to click on to the non-Gaussian blur layer and drag it down on top of the Gaussian blur layer. Now you will see that the two layers have changed position. Click back onto your top layer which should be the Gaussian blur layer now. Next use the opacity slider to pull the percentage down far enough so that you can see the image underneath it well enough to work with an eraser tool. The next and tedious part is to erase the parts that you do not want the Gaussian blur effect on. In this instance it's the flower. Once you have all the parts erased that you want to show through just adjust the opacity slider again to the degree you want for the background. For this photo I was able to eliminate our chimney and the trees in the back ground which makes the flower pop a little more now. And here is the result:

I hope this little tutorial was helpful. Stay tuned and as I learn more I'll share what I learn. Thanks for stopping by to read my blog. Happy shooting.