Cheers,
Anna
Friday, August 5, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Monday, August 30, 2010
Anticlimactic Sunset
Cloudless skies are great for tourists and beach goers but not so much for photographers. During my latest visit to Rehoboth Beach this past weekend, there wasn't a single cloud to be found in the sky for the 3 days I was there, day or night. Without them the sky has no drama or interesting coloring and it produces rather uninteresting pictures, especially those at sunrise and sunset. This was the best I could do and if it wasn't for this little sail boat, there would be not much to the picture at all. Hoping for a better luck next time... :)
Monday, August 23, 2010
Back on blogger.com
I’ve come a full circle it seems and I’m back on Blogger.com after trying other options with rather disappointing results. They mainly have to do with my photography site speed and performance (and mind you it’s not like I’m getting any web traffic). I have been using GoDaddy.com to host my own site. It is powered by Wordpress engine. The page loads are increasingly slow and the site is really unusable. I believe its due to how GoDaddy allocates resources to its client's sites, but whatever it is or not, I've had it with them. I decided to move my photography website to a hosted solution powered by Photium.com.
So far I really like the Photium. I signed up for their basic service (they have 3 options available). My new site is very fast, it was very easy to setup and manage and the service is also reasonably priced. Sure, I do give up control over a number of configuration settings I had at my disposal while hosing my own site, but I will gladly sacrifice that for much better page load speeds. I also don’t have to deal with upgrades, code management, etc. It's just easier.
I am now working on finding the best best solution to incorporate a new blog with my new photography website (by the way, you can check it out here) . Photium does not have a very a strong built in blog and therefore I returned back to possibly using blogger.com again. I think this will work pretty well.
My old website at www.annawrobelphotography.com is still alive as of this writing but it will be eventually redirected to the new site on photium. I am also hoping to be able to export my existing blog posts out of wordpress.
Flying Circus Hot Air Balloon Festival, Bealeton, VA (August 2010)
Monday, June 29, 2009
What to do when you are asked to sell a picture on Flickr
Not too long ago, I have been approached to sell a picture of mine that was on my Flickr site. I was just as excited about the request as I was nervous. Some actually thought my picture was good enough they wanted not only ask for my permission to use it, but actually pay me money for doing so. Needless to say, I did not know how to go about making that transaction at all or what should I ask for the image the interested party wanted to buy from me. I did not want to be scammed either, so I as a bit afraid to pursue the whole thing too. You hear about those things happening on the web all the time…. You never know who is approaching you to buy/use your image and for what purpose, so it pays off to be extra cautious. In the end, my initial suspicions turned out to be false, and I have sold my first picture off of Flickr. The buyer and I agreed on the price and we have drafted a formal contract which was signed by both of us outlining the terms of purchase and use of the image. I have also created a Paypal account, as there was no way I was going to give them my bank account number or accept a check. Paypal worked out great for me for this specific purpose. I sent the prospective buyer an invoice outlining the picture specifications and the price which I have created right on the Paypal site. Upon receiving the payment from the buyer in my Paypal account, I have emailed the buyer a copy of the image and in the format they have requested. The whole experience has been a good one, alas a bit stressful.
One of my friends at the time was a bit critical of me that I have accepted a payment for may image. She said - Why would you want to do that? You are not a professional photographer and you are not taking and posting the pictures for the pure reason to make a few bucks". Yes, that was and still is true. My pictures are all taken because I enjoy doing them. However, at the same time, I figured if the company or an individual is going to use my pictures for making profit, I did not see the reason why I should not get a credit and compensation for my work. After all, all the equipment I use, and plan to acquire in the future, does cost significant amount of money to produce in the first place.
So recently, when I saw the DPS blog article on What to do when you are asked to sell a picture on Flickr I was glad that my opinion and ultimately, the decision to sell my picture rather than give it away was such as it was. I wished too I had an access to this information before I have sold my first image on Flickr. It might have saved me some of the anxiety I've experienced during this selling process and answered some of the most general questions I had about the process.
If you are reading this and you are a Flickr user, you should read the article (full link is provided below). You never know, when you will be approached to sell your first picture on Flickr and if you are, how are you going to approach it?
Here's the full link to this interesting post on DPS site: http://digital-photography-school.com/what-to-do-when-asked-to-sell-a-picture-on-flickr
One of my friends at the time was a bit critical of me that I have accepted a payment for may image. She said - Why would you want to do that? You are not a professional photographer and you are not taking and posting the pictures for the pure reason to make a few bucks". Yes, that was and still is true. My pictures are all taken because I enjoy doing them. However, at the same time, I figured if the company or an individual is going to use my pictures for making profit, I did not see the reason why I should not get a credit and compensation for my work. After all, all the equipment I use, and plan to acquire in the future, does cost significant amount of money to produce in the first place.
So recently, when I saw the DPS blog article on What to do when you are asked to sell a picture on Flickr I was glad that my opinion and ultimately, the decision to sell my picture rather than give it away was such as it was. I wished too I had an access to this information before I have sold my first image on Flickr. It might have saved me some of the anxiety I've experienced during this selling process and answered some of the most general questions I had about the process.
If you are reading this and you are a Flickr user, you should read the article (full link is provided below). You never know, when you will be approached to sell your first picture on Flickr and if you are, how are you going to approach it?
Here's the full link to this interesting post on DPS site: http://digital-photography-school.com/what-to-do-when-asked-to-sell-a-picture-on-flickr
Overexposed effect
DSC_2584-edited-3
Originally uploaded by [Anna.W]
I have been experimenting with the technique of overexposing my images to achieve this milky, washed out effect with soft focus and a foggy feel to it. In this image (original was properly exposed and taken in the RAW format) I have tweaked the exposure slider in the Camera Raw app by moving it way over to the right and then adjusted the Temperature and the Tint sliders to get the colors I wanted.
For the original shot I have used the following settings:
I used Nikkor 1.4D 50mm lens for the entire series which you can see on my flickr site
Exposure: 1/100
Aperture: f/4.5
Exposure: +3.15
ISO: 100
Exposure program: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Adobe Updater Crashes on Mac OS X
Today I finally came across the fix on a Aric's Tech Blog. Turns out, this is a permission issue with Adobe Updater not able to modify files it does not have enough access too.
To resolve, open Terminal application (under Applications>Utilities>Terminal) and issue the following command:
sudo /Applications/Utilities/Adobe\ Utilities.localized/Adobe\ Updater5/Adobe\ Updater.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe \Updater
After issuing the command aboce, I was asked for admin password before the command could execute.
Adobe Updater works like a charm now.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Paris, Musee du Louvre
I'm still in the process of going through all of my pictures from the recent vacation trip to Paris, France and Gdansk, Poland (the latter being my hometown). I had only one lens with me thought the trip, Nikkor 16-85mm. My uncle and I were taking photos of this beautifully lit Louvre way past midnight. Most of my night shots unfortunately are still not very good but I do enjoy taking them enormously. I think I am slowly getting better at taking them, or at least I think I am improving. Shooting at night forces me to think about all the settings and often it is a hit or miss effort that takes a lot more time to achieve satisfactory exposure. It's a lot of fun but requires a good sturdy tripod and remote shutter release.
For this long exposure shot, I used my uncle's tripod.
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure: 15 sec
Exposure Program: Manual
Aperture: f/16.0
Focal Length: 16 mm
Adding pages to your blogger site
As I am trying to develop my blog on blogger.com, I wanted to add additional static pages such as About and Contact Me which could be accessed from the top navigation bar. Although blogger.com does not provide an option for adding any static pages , I have found this nifty post from a fellow blogger Nischal Shetty on how to accomplish this using a simple yet effective 'will do' workaround.
Here are the steps to accomplish this task as provided by Nischal Shetty (his original post can be found here):
Note: Backup your template before making any changes
2. Write whatever you want your static page to display in this new post.
3. In the page where you write your new post, you will see a link ‘Post Options‘. Click on it.
4. Click on ‘Don’t Allow‘ . Do this only if you do not want comments on the static page.
5. You will also see that you can change the post date and time. Now this is really important. If you are going to have a static page in Blogger.com then you should see to it that it doesn’t end up in your subscribers feed readers. So, the best thing to do is to go to your very first post and see the date (by the way do you remember the day when you wrote your very first post?). Change the date of this new post to something before the date of your first post.
6. When you’re all done click the ‘Publish Post‘ button.
The steps below will guide you on how to prevent the post date from appearing in the post that you just published. (Do this only if you feel that a page shouldn’t have a post date)
1. In your blogger blog, click the Layout tab.
2. Click the Edit HTML link.
3. Click on the Expand Widget Templates checkbox.
4. Search for data:post.dateHeader
5. Before the above code, add the following : b:if cond=’data:post.allowComments
6. After data:post.dateHeader include the following: b:if
The above steps tell Blogger not to display the date for posts that have comments disabled. Since we have disabled the comments for our static page, the page won’t display the post date as well.
Once you have created a post in the above mentioned way, you can start placing links to the static page from anywhere you feel appropriate in your blog.
Here are the steps to accomplish this task as provided by Nischal Shetty (his original post can be found here):
Note: Backup your template before making any changes
1. Click on “New Post” on Blogger.com
2. Write whatever you want your static page to display in this new post.
3. In the page where you write your new post, you will see a link ‘Post Options‘. Click on it.
4. Click on ‘Don’t Allow‘ . Do this only if you do not want comments on the static page.
5. You will also see that you can change the post date and time. Now this is really important. If you are going to have a static page in Blogger.com then you should see to it that it doesn’t end up in your subscribers feed readers. So, the best thing to do is to go to your very first post and see the date (by the way do you remember the day when you wrote your very first post?). Change the date of this new post to something before the date of your first post.
6. When you’re all done click the ‘Publish Post‘ button.
The steps below will guide you on how to prevent the post date from appearing in the post that you just published. (Do this only if you feel that a page shouldn’t have a post date)
1. In your blogger blog, click the Layout tab.
2. Click the Edit HTML link.
3. Click on the Expand Widget Templates checkbox.
4. Search for data:post.dateHeader
5. Before the above code, add the following : b:if cond=’data:post.allowComments
6. After data:post.dateHeader include the following: b:if
The above steps tell Blogger not to display the date for posts that have comments disabled. Since we have disabled the comments for our static page, the page won’t display the post date as well.
Once you have created a post in the above mentioned way, you can start placing links to the static page from anywhere you feel appropriate in your blog.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Frosty first day of spring
I took this pic on an early morning walk with Simon around my neighborhood. It was still quite cold with temperature around 27 deg F. And yes, it was a fist day of spring.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Friday, December 12, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
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Tuesday, July 22, 2008
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Friday, July 4, 2008
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butterfly #1
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Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640),
Aperture: f/5.6, Focal Length: 135 mm ISO, Speed: 500
Taken in Manassas National Battlefield Park, VA.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008
About Me
Hi,
My name is Anna Wrobel and I currently live in Washington DC area. I work in the field of Information Technology as a Microsoft Systems Engineer. My passion however is photography.
My adventure with photography started when I bought my first DSLR, a Nikon D80 which I still use. I have a lot to learn about photography, about photo technique and digital photo processing. It's consuming most of my free time and I absolutely love it.
In addition to the Nikon D80 camera, I also use following lenses: Nikkor 50mm, Nikkor 16-85mm, and Nikkor 70-300mm. My favorite of them all is the fixed length, Nikkor 50mm lens. It's incredibly sharp and produces great bokeh. Most of the time you will find on my camera, the more versitile in terms of range, the Nikkor VR 16-85mm. It's also a very good lens and it gives me more range. I use it mostly as a walk around lens and its really great for city and landscape shots. I'm thinking about replacing it possibly with Nikkor 18-200mm VR. Still very unsure about that however. I'm also considering adding a wide angle 10-20mm and a macro lens to my arsenal at some point in the future.
My photo editing software of choice is Photoshop Elements.
You can view more of my photos on flickr at www.flicrk.com/apw707
All photos are Copyright Protected. Please do not use them without my consent.
Thanks for visiting my blog!
Anna
Click Contact Me link if you'd like to reach me.
My name is Anna Wrobel and I currently live in Washington DC area. I work in the field of Information Technology as a Microsoft Systems Engineer. My passion however is photography.
My adventure with photography started when I bought my first DSLR, a Nikon D80 which I still use. I have a lot to learn about photography, about photo technique and digital photo processing. It's consuming most of my free time and I absolutely love it.
In addition to the Nikon D80 camera, I also use following lenses: Nikkor 50mm, Nikkor 16-85mm, and Nikkor 70-300mm. My favorite of them all is the fixed length, Nikkor 50mm lens. It's incredibly sharp and produces great bokeh. Most of the time you will find on my camera, the more versitile in terms of range, the Nikkor VR 16-85mm. It's also a very good lens and it gives me more range. I use it mostly as a walk around lens and its really great for city and landscape shots. I'm thinking about replacing it possibly with Nikkor 18-200mm VR. Still very unsure about that however. I'm also considering adding a wide angle 10-20mm and a macro lens to my arsenal at some point in the future.
My photo editing software of choice is Photoshop Elements.
You can view more of my photos on flickr at www.flicrk.com/apw707
All photos are Copyright Protected. Please do not use them without my consent.
Thanks for visiting my blog!
Anna
Click Contact Me link if you'd like to reach me.
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