Saturday, May 24, 2008

New hobby.

The photo above is of my kitty Lill, on a glorious sunny day Last September.
IN case you were unaware, I spend a LOT Of time alone at home with just the baby, my thoughts, the cats and anything creative I can get into. For the last 10 years this has been miniature tack.




Starting with the camera (Canon EOS Rebel XTI 400D)that hubby gave me for my birthday, it now also includes photography. I've found some photography websites here recently that allow uploads and critiques of photos as well as monthly photo contests. This has been a BLAST because as a lot of folks know, I tend to take a gigantic amount of pictures. I wore out my Sony DSC-v1 at the arabian horse nationals in 2006. IT no longer pre-focuses when one pushes down the shutter button which is why most of my pictures in 2007 kinda stunk.



In fact, we have an entirely separate drive for our computer with about 150 GIG on it that I Get to fill with pictures. We have 116 gig left now. Yes, I filled it with pictures. Everything from model horse shows, to real horse shows, to my cats and my son. My husband and I also like to shoot ominous weather photos. Big thunderhead clouds or some flooding in the back yard.
I try really hard to get good pictures of the wildlife we have hanging out around my house but I'm not very good at it yet. My goal this year is to get some good pictures of the hummingbirds that enjoy our bushes near the garage. No clue how I'm going to accomplish this but it may involve me sitting by the retaining wall for long periods of time with a camera.




The photo sites that I go to that I really enjoy are: http://www.betterphotos.com/ (Great for amateurs and professionals alike) , http://www.photo.net/ (warning, not for the faint of heart. Mostly professionals) and of course http://www.flickr.com/ and http://www.webshots.com/ I have photos in all three places and I'll spare you the urls. Remember if you're putting photos up on the internet and you'd rather not have them used elsewhere, it's a good idea to put a watermark on them. I'm finding more and more my photos being used and posted in different places without any acknowledgement. I am watermarking all of my photos from now on with the exception of in progress photos.



........And speaking of in progress photos, the below photo is of the headstall to the Mother Hubbard II set. (I have now officially been working on that set for over a year) I'm really pleased with how it's turning out so far. I wish that the knots were a little farther down onto the tassels but otherwise I like it. There will be a browband and a throatlatch on it when I'm done. I'm really happy that I finished the reins already.. that would've taken me another eternity to finish!


I am also diligently working on a woven/silver show halter to fit the ISH mold in blue. I've just been moving very slowly because my son requires more of my attention now. NO more long naps to enable me to work in the studio uninterrupted. Sometimes I only get about 20 minutes in the studio which is about how long a foundation knot takes if everything goes well. He's worth it though. The smiles and giggles alone make me happy for days :-)

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12:00 AM

    nice and cute. a have a site talking about miniatures
    its nice and informative.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for saying so!