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!