The other day I stumbled upon a blog that talks about how to make changes in your life.  One of the main points is to make things a habit and to start small.  I find it interesting that just after I figured this out with my desk, I come across this blog!  Funny how things work out like that.

He began the event by going over some basics about digital photography — what things mean, what settings to use, etc.  But, the best part to me was when he talked about different techniques in Lightroom and Photoshop.  I am pretty familiar with Photoshop and know how to do just about everything I need to.  But, Lightroom is fairly new to me.  There sure are a lot of nice features built in that you can only discover by messing around a lot or by learning from someone like Lewis.  I have to say, after attending this event I am going to get more out of Lightroom than I have been.  Also, I think this will motivate me to finally setup a workflow in Lightroom to auto import my photos and automatically send them off to a backup drive.  I have been doing this manually for a long time, which always makes me put off importing photos.  Hopefully, Lightroom can make this whole processes faster and easier!

This got me thinking.  Since a navel orange has no seeds, the trees do not reproduce naturally.  The only way to make more of them is to graft part of an existing tree onto a normal orange tree.  Essentially, all of the oranges we eat are genetically the same (until genetic engineering came around).  So, in the most natural way of growing navel oranges if a disease arose that targeted the navel orange there would be nothing to stop it.  Every tree is the same, there are almost no variations that would make some trees resistant to the disease.  Although, now that genetic engineering is around, I am sure there have been trees produced that are resistant to most diseases.  But, still, I want my seeds.

Edit: It’s live!  Let me know what you think.

About a year ago I started a project exploring light in photography.  Well, I continued that by experimenting with a lighter.  It took quite a few shots trying to see what interesting effects I could get.  This is one of them.  It is one of the simpler shots that I took, but shows the dancing sparks as you light the lighter.  I will post a couple more shots that give a different effect soon.

Well, I tried my hand at some wood working this past week.  I made a couple of picture frames for some of my photos.  I decided since you cannot buy a frame the size I want, I guess I just have to make them!  It was a fun experience, and it makes the end result even more special.  I took the picture, printed it, built the frame, and framed the picture all myself.  And, now that I know how to do it, I can make some whenever I want to hang a new picture up.  Who knows, I might even give some away as gifts, or maybe even sell a few.

I also built a shamrock for our flag pole.  We have a sign that we have hung up for Christmas for several years.  Last year my dad made a heart for Valentine’s Day and was thinking about a shamrock for St. Patrick’s Day.  Well, I made it!  What should we make next???

I have also been looking at a lot of photos on Google+, and I must say there are some amazing works on there.  Everything from splash photography, to black and white photography, to urban decay.  If you love photography and have not used Google+ to follow photographers, I highly suggest you start.  I also came across this guy somewhere else, but he makes daguerreotypes.  This is a almost forgotten process and it is interesting to see people still doing it.  It is kind of strange seeing modern technology photographed using this process.