Goals and Objectives

ZZZZZzzzzz is anyone falling asleep by the title of the post already or what? Me too. BUT, often times it seems difficult to achieve things whether it be professional, personal, fitness, saving money, volunteering, running a marathon, etc. We find ourselves so incredibly busy and focused on way too many "goals and objectives" that it's easy to give up on the ones we really WANT to accomplish in lieu of having to take care of ones that we HAVE to (i.e. work, paying bills, etc.).

One of the best ways I've made myself accountable for the things I say I will accomplish is to lay out my goals baby step by baby step. This way when I accomplish a mini goal I feel good about myself and it feels worth putting the extra time, hard work and sacrifices into accomplishing whatever it is I want to.

So now that I have everyone nice and sleepy from our lovely talk about goals, here are a few of my photography goals. Each weekend comes and goes and it seems I always have good intention to go out and shoot, but Monday morning rolls around WAY too quickly and somehow I never get the chance to do my photos sessions. So here are some goals that will me stay accountable of my overall goal - improve my photography skills:

April: Practice stopping motion. Sometimes you see photos of a waterfall and the water is streaming and blurred together. Then you'll see another where the waterfall is stopped and you can see the detail in each and every water droplet. This is accomplished by changing your shutter speed. My April goal is to work on stopping action and blurring it together for different artistic purposes. I'll keep you posted and hopefully share some pics with you soon!

May: Practice long exposure shots - both night and day. Sometimes you can opt to have your camera aperture (the opening where the light comes in) stay open for an extended period of time and capture different kinds of photos. Essentially it will blur together all of the motions that occurred within that timeframe. For example, if you leave an aperture open long enough during a night shot of traffic, you will see all of the cars blurred together. At least I think it does...? We shall find out!

June: Photoshop Editing - more and more I learn that immaculate photography unfortunately does not exist without post processing/editing. There are still many, many elements that go into creating a great photo - composition, subject, lighting, etc. However, the exceptional popping of colors or great angles are usually cropped and edited in during photo processing. Hopefully in June I'll have time to dive into the different Photoshop tools.

July: Printing and Framing - what good are great photos if you don't know how or where to print and frame them. Apparently there is more than just my usual CVS and Target trips for quick prints and a cute black frame. Supposedly there are several different professional and commercial printing labs in Dallas and online that can help process and print your photos. There are also different kinds of printing techniques and papers - metallic, finishes, etc. Wow so much to learn!

There are just a few of my goals. Hopefully, I will stick to them - we shall see friends!

Treasures

A few weekends ago, on a beautiful Saturday morning, a few girlfriends and I spontaneously decided to make the most of the the perfect day.

My fabulous and fun friends Debbie, Jamye and Katie packed the car and

headed east. With high hopes of finding treasures and maybe a golden retriever puppy, Deb Deb we know you wanted to bring one home sooo badly, we headed to Canton's First Mondays. We weren't sure whether to call it an antique shop, flea market, swap meet or even the likes of a Texas-sized state fair. This jewel of a place included corn dogs, homemade ice cream, antiques, funky crafts and home decor and even an entire animal lot FULL of the cutest little puppies - every shape, size and kind you could ever imagine.

Here are a few pics from our fun trip. I still have a lot of work to do with my day time photography. A special thanks to the crazy lady with the star-shaped sun glasses who wailed, "NO PHOTOS ALLOWED HUN!" I still snuck a few. :

Night Moves

Last week our photog class took a field trip downtown - hooray I love field trips! No permission slip required on this one :) Man I miss those days. We trekked it down to the Founder's Square, what most of you probably know better as the Red Court House. We had a great time learning about night photography. Who knew there were soooo... many different ways to take a photo at night. It was a great time and thanks to Teresa, I learned a few fun tricks and tips. Here are a few pics I captured. Not great, but definitely a work in progress from the PHOTO FAIL!

Also, thanks to my great friend John Tagle, one of my fellow nerd photog buddies, who helped edit my downtown cottage pic. His version is now my blog header! WOW photoshop is a whole other beast. Baby steps. Thanks again John!