undefinable

[w4nderluck-blog]

tradingig

Are you really? I'd love for you to be real (and therefore legitimate) but youre not giving me a lot of confidence. 

[textfromdog]

[asteria-faunus]

Just finished this up. I thought it was pretty appropriate to draw.

Here’s the full sized image. :3

http://samoubica.deviantart.com/art/Loki-and-Tony-s-Face-Off-308074313

[muchymozzarella]

YOU

ARE

THE

MOST

WONDERFUL

PERSON

IN

THE

ENTIRE

UNIVERSE

[tlcplmax]

Truth.

[w4nderluck-blog]

Awesome.

[w4nderluck-blog]

mind stfu?

I am 8.5 months pregnant. I have enough stress simply being pregnant.

I do not need your "helpful advice" on epidurals, labor and delivery, or my choices for diapering/feeding/child-rearing. You had your chance, and made your choices, and now I get to make mine.

More than that, I especially don't need my own fucking family, in-laws especially, mocking my decision on epidurals, feeding, or cloth diapers; or making less of it than what it is. I'm having a hard enough time adjusting to the fact that I'm about to be a mom, and you are less than a help as it is.

If I want an epidural, I'll make the decision. If I want to feed my child shitty food like you did, I'll make the decision. If I want to wrap my child's ass in newspaper and duct tape, I'll make that decision. It is your job to support me. Do your fucking job.

[w4nderluck-blog]

31 Days to a Better Photo

Day 12: what's white balance?

White balance is what allows your camera to balance out colors by having a set "idea" of what neutral is. Most DSLRs have an option to set white balance manually using white balance cards; not my camera. I have a choice of the following:

"Auto," which allows the camera to choose what colors are supposed to look like; 

"Daylight" for shooting in natural light; 

"Tungsten," for shooting in incandescent lighting because it attempts to neutralize the yellow tone of indoor photos by adding a (very) blue cast; 

"Fluorescent," for shooting under fluorescent lights, which are generally cool and the camera adds warmer tones; 

and "Open Shade," for shooting in natural light with shade, and is intended to add slightly warmer tones to some of the grays in that situation.

Of course, the Open Shade and Daylight are the best options for my white balance setting; I've been shooting on auto up until now. I need to do a test run on indoor shooting and see what I come up with. But I'll have to edit this with those results at another time, because I killed the last set of batteries with this shoot. (I really should get some rechargeable lithiums.)

[w4nderluck-blog]

31 Days to a Better Photo

Day 8-11: the exposure triangle | scales | in camera metering

These three days are all about how ISO, shutter speed, and aperture fit together to make a picture properly exposed, and technically lovely. While I understand that ISO 200 is half as sensitive as ISO 400, and 1/1000 is twice as fast as 1/500... it doesn't help my comprehension and application of the concepts. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. Instead, I can remember this:

ISO adjustment should be a last ditch effort. Higher ISO makes for noisy photos - undesirable.

Motion shots are best at 1/250 or higher, especially with kids and pets.

Shooting multiple subjects on multiple planes requires a smaller aperture, preferably a smaller number than the number of subjects in the photo. Remember: # of subjects x 1.5 = ideal aperture.

"Sunny 16" rule: start shooting at f/16 with a shutter speed of 1/ISO#. "Cloudy 8 rule: starting at f/8 with a shutter speed of 1/ISO#.

Underexposed? Slow shutter speed, increase aperture, or increase ISO. Reverse for overexposed.

[w4nderluck-blog]

If anyone else made this, it would be a bucket list. But this really isn't a bucket list - just a reminder of all the things I want to do before... whenever. Definitely before I die, but preferably before the next ten years go by. Maybe even the next couple of years.

This is, of course, ever-evolving (I hope). As goals are met, new ones are made. It's what keeps us alive. Stop moving and die.

Stop biting my nails.

Learn the basics, at least, of graphic design.

Update and further my working knowledge of web design.

Be a decent photographer.

Grow a garden with a reasonably sustainable harvest.

Get debt-free.

Start a home bakery - make a sustainable profit in three years.

Learn to sew decently by hand, and/or use a sewing machine.

[w4nderluck-blog]

31 Days to a Better Photo

Day 5-7: understanding aperture | tackling depth of field

(view photos from L-R, top to bottom) 

While I don't fully understand aperture (yet), thanks to these pictures, I get bokeh and depth of field (sort of). I need practice, obviously. I mean, I get that aperture is how wide the lens is open and that depth of field is affected by the aperture because of the amount of light available to capture the shot. But somehow... it's just not clicking yet. Maybe with the next lesson, it will.

[w4nderluck-blog]

Sláinte mhaith!

Since everyone thinks you ought to be drinking yourself stupid today, as all good Irishmen should, I think a good toast is in order. "Erin go bragh" is overrated.

"It's Irish for, 'you're fucked'." —Murphy MacManus

[w4nderluck-blog]

31 Days to a Better Photo

Day 4: controlling the faucet - learning ISO

(Woo hoo! Batteries in the camera! Maybe one of these days I'll start up another stock of rechargeables - I'll need them for the kid, anyhow.)

"ISO is a measurement of how your camera responds to light." Low ISO = sharper photos; high ISO = grainy or noisy photos. The lesson this time was more of an observational exercise - lock your shutter speed and change ISO by one 'click' per photo, then see what shutter speed your camera has chosen. 

Alternating from top left: ISO 80, 1/500; ISO 80, 1/750, f3.2; ISO 100, 1/750, f3.2; ISO 200, 1/750, f4.5; ISO 200, 1/1000, f4.5; ISO 400, 1/1000, f6.3

I'll be honest, this exercise didn't do much for me. I don't know if it's because I moved my shot too much (shaky hands, even perched on my knees), and therefore changed the lighting; or because I still haven't permanently grasped shutter speed. I still keep having to remind myself. I'll probably go back to shutter speed tomorrow, then re-do Day 4 with a steadied camera. 

Day 5 is Part I of Understanding Aperture; there is no lesson, so I'll just use that as my Day 5 tomorrow, and mash Day 5 and Day 6 together.

[kerosenekate]

If you live in Colorado or know someone who does, preferably on the Denver side of the mountains, could you recommend a cat rescue or shelter, or someone looking to adopt a cat (preferably with no other pets)? I have to surrender a diabetic cat with territorial urinating issues very quickly or she...

[w4nderluck-blog]

31 Days to a Better Photo

Day 3: shutter speeds: shooting fast vs. shooting slow

(Lucky for me, my self-study calendar is like IDL college classes - I don't have to show up every day, but it helps if I do it in order. With the storm cell that moved through, plus three days of garden planning and nursery building, I feel that I'm excused.)

I'll be honest: the hardest part of this for me was to remember that shutter speed and aperture/f-stop are not the same. Somehow I managed to always get the three confused in the middle of shooting.

Fast shooting is to capture moments in time, and is best for motion stills, and for bright light shots. Slow shooting allows in more light, since the shutter is open longer, so it's good for shady spots and motion shots that you want to show in motion.

The 'practice' for this was to lock ISO and aperture, and shoot several photos of a single subject, changing speed by one click every shot. All this to see the effects of speed on lighting and motion (if the subject in question was moving, of course). I took what I had to work with at 2000 on a Saturday night, and was pleased to be able to tell the effects of lighting as my speed decreased. I also learned I need a tripod, or a steady surface. I am one shaky-handed bitch. XD

All photos taken with a Kodak Z740; f/4, ISO400, 6mm, no flash. Shutter speeds are: 6", 4", 3", 2", 1.5", 1", .7", .5", 1/3, 1/4.

[w4nderluck-blog]

WP.com vs. Tumblr?

If you had both a Tumblr and a WP.com account already, and wanted to add a new blog to the Internetz realm, which platform would you choose?

Tumblr has customization options that WP.com doesn't, (or more accurately, you have to upgrade to WP.org to get), and allows comments/replies, multiple posting formats, and a user-friendly dashboard. It's seems to be a lesser-used medium (to a degree, I do see a lot of reader/SEO growth at a glance), imo, which is good and bad.

WP.com is the platform I'm more familiar with; I've been blogging through it for almost 4 years. I like that it provides more as far as spam protection and built-in SEO tracking (to a degree). I don't want my original blog necessarily associated with this one as far as being linked through the user profile I already have created. Obviously, that means creating a new login, and a little more of a pain.

Opinions, comments, anything? All appreciated.

[topshotpicks]

[xvvhitenoise]

trjhobo:

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog.

I feel like I’ve been preparing for this image all my life.

The internet is over, everyone can go home

[didielovestea-deactivated201208]

Haha! This made my day.

[w4nderluck-blog]

31 Days to a Better Photo

Day 2: find your camera manual.

Fortunate that Day 2 is this little gem of instruction, because I'm posting this from my phone. Our wifi is out, so thank God for an HTC and an unlimited data plan. I managed to find the manual to my camera (a Kodak Z740) and transfer it, roundabout, to the laptop. I've had the camera for almost five years, and learned most of its functions much the same way as I learned a computer - by playing around. I'll admit, so far I've learned the flash-to-subject distance (though I don't often use flash), and when my optical zoom is effectively utilized. Good to know!

Unrelated, I initialized Disqus comments yesterday. I don't know if it does me as much good as I think, but at least I can comment back on a note.

[w4nderluck-blog]

31 Days to a Better Photo

Day 1: take the photo.

I am determined (finally) to stop fucking off and learn to use the DSLR I have. I'm not to going to be able to afford the camera of my dreams anytime soon; or better yet, have a decent understanding of how to properly utilize the camera of my dreams, without learning how to take a decent picture in the first place.

So I took the photo.