Self teaching photography
So in the last couple of days I was working on bringing my photography up a step. First of all, I figured out exactly what the difference between shooting in JPEG and in RAW is and took my first couple of pictures in RAW. Then I’ve downloaded Lightroom and spent a couple of happy hours figuring out how it works and then watching loads of excellent tutorial videos on [Slr]Photography (a site which I highly recommend btw!).
So far I don’t have much to show for it as I was mostly playing and learning what all the various functions do, but here is one developed image I am proud of -
I could never have gotten the image to come out so well without taking it in RAW and using Lightroom. It was very bland at first, but I worked on it – recovering detail in the highlights and brightening the shadows to make the picture look more alive.
This is a bit of my street btw.
Yesterday I went to volunteer at the wild animal hospital again. Since the hospital is in Ramat Gan and I live in Haifa I have to wake up at four o’clock in the morning in order to be in time for my half past seven shift.
It is a very odd feeling, waking up so early, getting ready while the whole world is asleep, leaving the house and getting on the train while everything is so dark outside. It is odd, but very peaceful. All the people on the train are half asleep or sleeping. Every once in a while you can hear a misguided alarm clock going off.
I spent this train ride deciding which texts I want to choose for a paper in my American history course (finally chose three texts against slavery from three different eras). The rest of the ride was spent studying and perfecting the notes I took in one of my lessons (I am very anal about my notes!).
There were a lot of volunteers signed up for today so we went through the cleaning and feeding pretty quickly.
When I arrived back in Haifa I took a short stroll on the beach before heading home. Haifa is a city which is situated on a sort of little bump of land into the sea, so that we have both a natural harbour, and lots of beaches. When you step off the train all that is needed to reach the beach is a one minute walk.
It was a cold grey day, so there weren’t a lot of people around. It was very calming, and quite a new experience for me, walking alone by the waves in my boots, looking at the waves crushing around me (and running from them laughing from time to time so as not to get my socks wet) while listening to my Harry Potter audio book (by Stephen Fry, which I also highly recommend btw!).
I haven’t been reading a lot lately, but in the last week and a half I have finished the Gerald Durrell biography which I am holding in the first post, and the second and third books in The Hunger Games trilogy (Catching Fire and Mockingjay respectively).
The biography was excellent and at the end has brought me to tears, perhaps I’ll write a post sometime soon expanding on that and explaining who Gerald Durrell is and his importance to me. Right now I will just say that that biography is exquisitely written. As to Suzanne Collins books – I was much more impressed with the second and third books. I liked the first one but felt that it was a bit too “light reading”, the next two books were heavier, even downright depressing at times. I actually cried at the end (this is becoming a bit of a motif here – me crying at the ends of books). Highly recommend.
Since I recommend so many things in this post, here is a short summary-list to finish the post with -
1] [Slr]Photography - an excellent site with lots of video tutorials (lots of them about Lightroom)
2] Harry Potter audio books, read by Stephen Fry – the man is a genius and it is so much fun listening to him
3] The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins: 1. The Hunger Games, 2. Catching Fire, 3. Mockingjay
Until we meet next,
Leore Joanne Green
