A photo from the first wedding I shot

As you all know, I was a second shooter in my first wedding back in March. For those of you that don’t remember the background, I was asked to help out a friend. I was incredibly nervous about it, as I think anyone should be the first time they shoot a wedding – it’s a big deal! You only get one shot!

I’ve already written about what I was doing to prepare for the shoot, but of course on the day of the wedding, I learned a few more Dos and Don’ts, so if you’re wondering how it all went, please, read on!

My Dos and Don’ts

Ask the bride/groom what they want I realize this is kind of a “duh” statement here, but we didn’t have a chance to actually do that, but it would have been helpful. I went into the event hoping to get certain shots that I realized she was interested in, and then I also worried I wasn’t getting shots that she dreamed of. We did get a chance to ask for specific photos she wanted (the one you see below is a request of hers), but I think if we had time to actually sit down and talk with her before-hand, we would have been even more prepared. Once again, I know this sounds obvious, and I knew going into the day that we were going in a bit blind, but I didn’t really realize how uncomfortable this was going to be until the actual day of the ceremony.

The bride specifically requested this photo

It’s not enough just to bring the extra battery and memory card with you. You have to actually have them on you. This is such a classic rookie mistake that I just don’t even want to admit it happened to me! But, the truth is, moments before the first kiss, I looked down to see how many photos I had left on my memory card, and there were only 2. My backup memory card? It was in my bag, which was all the way on the other side of the church. MOMENT OF PANIC. I managed to get 3 shots of the first kiss (hooray for my camera mis-estimating), then literally RAN (in the church!) to my bag, threw the old memory card on the ground and fished out the new memory card, and put it in the camera while RUNNING back. I missed the bride and groom walking back down the aisle.

Luckily, I still managed to get a shot of the first kiss

The solution? First of all, I meant to switch out for the new memory card before the ceremony even started, but I forgot. My first suggestion is to NOT FORGET THINGS. Also, I didn’t wear pants with pockets, where I could have stored a back-up battery and memory card. My fellow photographer had a little fanny-pack type back that she could throw in stuff like her lens cap, and extra cards and batteries. Fantastic idea, so that’s probably the route I’ll go with next time.

Slideshows are a crowd-pleaser. After the short, dry reception, the couple had an after-party at a local bar. There were a few hours to kill between the two, so the other photographer came over to my house where we went through the photos we had so far and whipped up a slideshow, then I brought my laptop to the bar and put it on a table to run through the slideshows. Everyone really seemed to enjoy it (and I put the laptop away before too many beverages were consumed… just in case!).

A natural, candid moment.

Never put your camera down I didn’t take my camera out of my hands the entire day! I was so afraid I’d miss a sweet, candid moment. That photo above? Was just one of those moments. She didn’t know I was taking that photo, and it’s one of my favorite from the day.

Capture the Details. Anyone who knows me and my photographic style knows that I didn’t need any reminder to capture to the details. It’s what I do, it’s what I love to do. I think my favorite part of the day was when we took the rings and took a number of different photos with them (including the one you see below), but I also enjoyed the early part of the day when I walked around the church and reception location (they were in the same building), getting detail photos. I’m glad we had the time to do that before jumping into the actually wedding. It was like a nice little warm-up!

The rings and some rocks!

Would I do it again?

This is probably the question I’ve been asked most since the big day, and honestly? I can’t decide. The day of, I was really loving it. Despite the stress, it was also really exciting, and I loved just being there and doing what I do, and really felt that, even with the memory card fiasco, I was doing a pretty good job! Sure, I’d do it again! Then, the day after when I first started looking through my photos, I thought I was a complete failure and there was no way I’d ever do it again! (I think following jasmine star is a big mistake – I’ll never be as good as her!). Nope, never doing this again! Then, as I got into a groove with editing, I thought, ok, these aren’t too bad… So, I settled on a “maybe”. I still don’t think this is anything I’d ever seek out to do, but I don’t think I’d ever turn down a request to be a second shooter, either.

For a first wedding, I'm saying I did not too bad.

Also, don’t forget! I’m picking photos from the iffles.com Monthly Themes group on flickr to post on Wordless Wednesday. July’s theme is Statues/Parks!

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A photo from my first "professional" photo shoot.

On Saturday, I will shoot my first wedding. Well, to clarify, I will be a Second Shooter on a wedding. Those of you that have been following me for a while may be aware that I have pretty much vowed to never become a wedding photographer, but a friend of mine has booked this wedding and asked for my help. I like the idea of helping out a friend, and any experience I gain can’t be too bad, right?

So, what am I doing to prepare for this event? And what am I hoping to get out of it? Well, read on for the answers to those questions!

What I Did – And Did Not – Buy

The first thing I thought of when it came to shooting an all-day event (we plan on shooting everything from the bride getting ready to the after-party at a local bar) was batteries and memory cards.

I already have two batteries, which I felt was probably enough (and I didn’t feel like buying another one when there’s a good chance I’ll be upgrading my camera within the year anyway). However, I only had two memory cards – an 8GB and 2GB. Since I shoot in RAW, that 2GB wasn’t going to provide enough extra memory for me, so I bought a second 8GB card.

Now, I just mentioned I’m seriously considering upgrading my camera body at some point this year, so you might be wondering why I didn’t take that opportunity to do that now, before the big event. Besides the fact that I like to think long and hard about big purchases like that, the main reason I’m uncomfortable with doing that is that I wouldn’t have had enough time between getting the camera and the day of the wedding to get comfortable using the camera. My current camera is far from top-of-the-line, but I know it like the back of my hand. I’d hate to miss out on a great photo because I couldn’t figure out how to change a setting quickly enough.

Packing My Bag

First I had to make the decision of which bag to pack. I was deciding between my Lowepro SlingShot 200 or my Tamrac Camera/Laptop bag. They actually hold about the same amount of photo gear, but the SlingShot is easier get things in and out of when walking around, because you don’t have to take it off your back. Ultimately, I decided on the Tamrac because I think carrying around my laptop might prove useful. This way, I can set it up somewhere and start backing up the photos on the memory cards midway through the day. Or, if 16GB turns out not to be enough, if I have to, I can always move all the photos from one card onto the computer and format that card. This makes me really nervous, but that’s better than telling the couple that I couldn’t shoot their exit from the reception because I ran out of space on my memory cards.

Another bonus to the laptop bag is that there’s an additional compartment for, well, stuff. It can easily hold my cell phone (which will be on silent, of course, but the GPS might come in handy getting from each location to the next), wallet, a flashlight, a notebook, pen and my lens cleaning supplies.

As for the camera gear itself, as a second shooter, I think it’s even more important for me to bring a variety of lenses, so I’m going to try and stuff in everything I’ve got. In addition, I’ll pack those two memory cards and batteries – throwing in some spare batteries for my flash, too, of course.

Reading over this, I’m sure you’re thinking I’m bringing too much. I’m worried about it myself. But for my first time, I’d rather over-prepare than under-prepare. If I don’t use my wide angle lens, so be it. But I’d hate to get there and find myself positioned up in the balcony of the church and just wishing I could get the entire view in one shot.

The Night Before

I have a checklist of things to do Friday night:

• Charge both batteries
• Pack my bag
• Clean my lenses
• Put my camera into my “default settings”

It’s pretty obvious why I want to do all these things the night before, though you might wonder what I mean by “default settings” on my camera. Have you ever taken a bunch of photos outside all day only to realize you’ve been at ISO 1600 the whole time? I have. It’s frustrating. I don’t notice it because there’s nothing I can see wrong about the photos, and I usually only mess with my ISO when I have to. So, I’m going to verify I’m not on ISO 1600, make sure I’m in Av Mode, and even though I always have this setting turned off, I’ll still double-check that I have the “beep when focused” turned off. No one wants to hear the photographer’s camera beep while the couple is exchanging their vows.

What I’m Going to Wear

Believe it or not, this might be the thing I put the most amount of thought into! I want to make sure I look nice enough for a wedding, but not stand out. I also want to be comfortable, as might have to get down low or climb on top of things to get a good shot.

My first decision was that I had to wear a black shirt. The honest truth is that I tend to sweat when I’m nervous or stressed. I think that will pretty much sum up the day, and since I’ll have to be lifting my arms up all the time to take a shot, I probably want to hide that as best as possible.

While, in general, I am more comfortable in a skirt than pants, I’ll be sure to wear pants the day of the wedding so I don’t have to worry about crouching down, etc.

Finally – the shoes. A decision I have not yet made, actually. I might have to make a trip to target to find some appropriate slip-on shoes that are comfortable. I am much more “geek” than “girl”, so I don’t have a wide variety of shoes at home to choose from!

Capturing a Moment

My Expectations

I certainly don’t expect to be the next Jasmine Star. I’m trying to set my expectations reasonably, but at the same time, I want to put my best foot forward. I want my friend to think she made a good decision asking me to help her (and I’d like to be asked to help again). I want the couple to have beautiful photos of their wedding day.

I think that’s the toughest hurdle for jumping into wedding photography. At some point, you have to do your first wedding. Chances are pretty high, that wedding won’t be your best one. And hopefully this bride only has one wedding, and I hate the idea of giving a bride photos that aren’t the most beautiful thing in the world for her One Special Day.

And so I have to remind myself how much my friends have appreciated my photos I take at their events. I want to capture the Big Picture of the day – something the bride can look at and remember the day fondly. And, most important, I want to capture the moments – when the bride and groom don’t know the camera is pointed at them – like the photo above taken at the after party of a wedding between the bride and her new husband.

Any Advice?

So. Those of you that have done this before. Any last-minute advice?

Related posts:

1. A Wedding Recap As you all know, I was a second shooter in...

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Conference room at my real job

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since an article appeared at here on iffles.com For those of you that are still checking the site or following the rss feed (or a fan on facebook!), I thank you for not completely giving up hope.

Unfortunately, my real job has gotten extremely crazy and busy in the past month or so, and I’ve had to work some very long hours (up to 15 hours a day), and all weekend long, too. I obviously haven’t had time to write here, but I haven’t even had time to take more than a handful of pictures all month, and that’s just crazy, so this work stuff better start wrapping up soon so I can get back into what I really love!

I promise I’ll be back with more Gimp tips & tricks, as well as what I’ve been reading on the internet, and, of course, posting photos from the iffles.com monthly themes group on flickr! August is almost up, so you only have a few more days to take a photo of reflections. I look forward to looking through them all, you guys are always so inspiring!

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One Year Celebration!

Today, June 18, 2010 marks the one year anniversary of iffles.com!

It’s been quite a year of ups and downs – articles that came out just how I wanted them to, and articles that really flopped. Days I was proud of all that I’ve accomplished, and days I struggled with what I would write next. I launched when I had the website “good enough for launching” but still had a To Do list with bunches of items on it left to clean things up. Wouldn’t you know it, there’s still bunches of items on that list.

I’ve learned so much about photography from running this site, forcing myself to learn new and different things so that I have something to write about, which was something I was hoping would happen… and it did!

I was also, however, incredibly shocked with how much time running this site has taken up, which is why I can’t write all that often, which means I’ll never be one of the Big Dogs when it comes to photography sites. And you know what? I’m totally ok with that. One of the main reasons I decided I never wanted to try to make money off of photography was because I didn’t want it to turn into a job, an obligation and/or a stress in my life. So if I get a couple of comments on a blog that posts once a week or so, I’m ok with that.

Speaking of comments – I want to thank all of you that have stuck around, offering encouragement and advice. I feel like I’ve gotten to know a number of you through your comments (and your blogs and flickr streams!).

Top Ten Posts

Ok, enough mushy stuff. Let’s do the typical “one year anniversary of a blog” thing and show you the top ten posts of the past year (for the record, I did this by pageviews. It’s debatable what the best method for this type of thing is, but, well, that’s the one I chose):

1. Gimp Script Showcase: National Geographic
2. What I Learned from the Death of my Computer
3. Why I Think You Should Go On the Third Annual Worldwide Photo Walk
4. Some New Features in UFRaw
5. Making Eyes Pop Using Gimp
6. Introduction to Using UFRaw to Edit RAW Files
7. Faking HDR in Gimp (I cringe putting this one on the list. This is my least favorite post I’ve written for various reasons)
8. Gimp Script Showcase: Warming and Cooling Filter
9. Adding a Vignette (or Blurry Dark Edges) to a Photo in Gimp
10. Gimp Script Showcase: Vintage Photos

What You’ve Missed

A few of my favorite posts didn’t make the Top Ten, and I figure it’s probably because some of you weren’t reading a year ago. I wanted to point out some of my favorite posts that you might have missed:

• Gimp 101: Levels. I think this is such a basic starting point for photo editing.
• Gimp 101: Curves – part one and two. Ok, so I needed two parts because I didn’t do a good enough job explaining the first time, so maybe I shouldn’t include these as a favorite, but I still think it’s good information that can dramatically impact a photo. (btw, there’s a part three to this series still brewing)
• 5 Things to do When You’re in a Photo Rut. Hey, we’ve all been there.
• Layer Blending Modes in Gimp. Ok, so, my hover-over-the-image thing takes way too long to load. And I apologize for that. But if you have a bit of patience, I think you’ll find this entry pretty helpful if you use Gimp.
• How I Did It: The Boots Photo. One of my favorite self portraits I’ve ever taken, explained step-by-step from set-up to final product.

A Final Thank You

I know I mentioned it above, but I do really appreciate the comments I get (even the negative ones – because those are the ones I learn from!), and so I’d like thank you by giving you one more chance to leave a comment. I’ll pick one comment at random from this post to get one year of Flickr Pro. I’m sure you all realize by now that I have one of these things, and while the unlimited uploads and storage, as well as the ability to archive high-resolution photos is nice, I have to admit my favorite perk of a pro account are the stats! Anyway, this is a gift from me to a random noter and is not sponsered by flickr in any way, I just happen to like the site a lot. All you have to do to enter is leave a note before midnight on Tuesday night (I’m in the Eastern time zone, but to be honest, I’m pretty flexible on this timing, but that’s the earliest I’ll choose a winner). One comment per person, please!

I’ll announce the winner on the blog and use the email address from your comment to email the pro code to the winner – flickr upgrade codes are not associated with the email account at all, so you can use any (working) email address in your comment and you’ll be able to use the code even if that’s not the same email address associated with my flickr account. This also means you can pass it on to a friend or family member that you think will really appreciate it.

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New Laptop - some old messy desk.

Before I get started, I just have to say that this is my 100th post on iffles.com! And we’re one month away from iffles.com’s first birthday. I’m a bit bummed that my 100th post doesn’t happen to be much about photography at all, but it is about something that, as digital photographers, we all should be mindful of – the possibility of a suddenly-dead computer and things you can do to help lessen the effect.

I’ve always considered myself to be pretty tech-savvy (I am a computer programmer by day, after all), but I also knew there was always more I could be doing in order to prepare myself for the inevitable Data Loss situation, which is exactly what happened to me when my laptop up and died earlier this week.

As far as computer disasters go, it wasn’t too horrible – I had enough money to get a new laptop right away, I had all my RAW files and full-sized edits on my drobo (I’ll get to that in a sec for those you that don’t know what it is, but for now just think of it as an external hard drive), I have a phone with internet access so I could manage to still keep in touch online, and almost all of the software I use on my computer (which, other than a browser, is pretty much all photo editing or music-listening stuff) is free.

All that being said, none of us are perfect, and I still learned a bit for next time, so I’m sharing it with you – though I hope you never have to actually use any of this advice because hopefully, the next time you buy a computer, your old one will still be running and you can happily transfer all your data over at your own leisure!

You probably want to be backing up more than you are

And I don’t just mean more often, I mean what you’re backing up. I mentioned that I have all my photos on my drobo – it’s a device that can hold up to 4 hard drives in it and automatically mirrors the data for you across the hard drives so that if any one of them should fail, all your data is still safe. Technically, this isn’t backing up, and I’ve been talking about setting up an online backup service for about a year now, and maybe this will finally be the kick in the butt to do it.

Currently on my drobo I house three things: all my photos, all my music, and a backup of iffles.com. I figured that was all I really needed, and couldn’t really think of anything that I actually stored on my computer itself other than the resized versions of all my photos that I post online. Let me tell you something: as soon as you lose all your data, you realize exactly what you don’t have. For instance, I write all my entries for iffles.com in notepad. I have my reasons – they may not be the best reasons, but they’re my reasons none-the-less. I save them all to my desktop until they’re posted. Well, sitting my Dead Laptop’s desktop is the entry of all my favorite People photos from the iffles.com Monthly Theme Group.

We still haven’t figured out of the hard drive on the old laptop is recoverable. We’re doing our due diligence, but since we have to go out of town for a funeral this week, it might be a while to find out. So, the April photos might end up being posted at the same time as the May ones… sorry about that!

Oh, another thing I should have backed up? My scripts folder for Gimp. Luckily, I’ve already posted about most of the scripts I use often, so it will be easy for me to find and download them all again… but if I had been backing it up on the drobo, it would have been a quick copy/paste

Keep Computer Shopping

If you’re anything like me, then before you make a major purchase, you like to have spent a good amount of time researching what’s out there and what a good price is. I consider a laptop purchase to be a major one, so when I had to buy one right away, I was a bit bummed that I hadn’t done any research on it at all since I bought my previous laptop 3 years ago.

I’m lucky in that I know a thing or two about computers, so I could quickly come up with a priority list and shop around online (although, I ended up actually finding the best price at Best Buy, so I was able to have it in my hands the same day, which was nice). The thing is, there’s still that little part of me that is questioning and wondering if I really got the right computer. I love my new laptop so far and have no complaints – I really was able to get everything I wanted for only a tiny bit more than what I wanted to spend, so I can’t complain (yet, at least!), but I’ve also used it for less than a week, so who knows how I’ll feel in a month or two down the road.

Use this Opportunity

I will say one good thing about the death of a computer: it really forces you to clean up your computer act. Not only do I have a fresh and clean hard drive, but I don’t have all sorts of other crap I don’t need on my computer like apps I downloaded to test out and just never uninstalled.

It’s also given me an opportunity to try things that I’ve been meaning to try and had always been too lazy or stuck in my ways. For instance, I’m using Chrome now instead of Firefox – when Chrome first came out, the inability to use Greasemonkey meant I didn’t even give it a chance. Since they added Greasemonkey support I just became too set in my ways to change because I was so used to Firefox. But since I had to start over anyway, I went for Chrome (and so far am happy, though there are one or two things I have to get used to).

It also means I’m getting the latest versions of all the software that I never bothered updating, and oh-my-goodness – I’m kicking myself for never upgrading my UFRaw before. If you don’t have the Lens Correction tab in your version of UFRaw, please update it now. This tab uses your EXIF data to figure out what camera and lens you used to take the photo, which in and of itself isn’t all that impressive, but then it uses that data to – if you want – automatically correct for lens distortion! I’ll have to write an entry about this nifty feature later, but I loved it so much, I felt it was worth discussing here.

Finally, I definitely learned from this scare and am going to get my butt in gear and start doing some online backups of my data, as well as periodic backups of things other than photos and music.

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I’m writing this from my phone just to let you all know that until the current laptop is fixed or a new one is purchased, I’m afraid there might not be any entries over here.

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f/22; 1/15sec; 105mm; ISO 400

I did not intend to go without a post here for so long, I apologize!

I’m currently on vacation in DC (and surrounding areas), but what really threw everything off is that a few days before I left, I was attempting to write an entry or two to automatically post while I was gone, but I managed to spill an entire glass of water on my laptop! The good news is, the laptop appears to be fine now, but the bad news is, that in order to play it safe, I had the laptop sitting in a box of rice attempting to dry it all out before I left, and I didn’t take it out until we left, which meant no entries to write and post for those few days, let alone line any up to post while I was gone.

And so, since our days are pretty well packed until we get home Monday evening, there might be an even longer delay in entries.

Thanks for understanding, and I hope you all have a great weekend!

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The first was a request for an iffles.com icon to put in the sidebar of a blog to show support for this website. I’m pretty blown away that anyone would actually want to do this, but I surely do appreciate the thought. So of course I put my incredibly awesome graphic skills to work (that’s sarcasm – give me a photo, I can edit it, tell me to make a graphic and I flounder) and came up with this:

Which you can add to your page with this code:

<a href="http://iffles.com"><img src="http://iffles.com/images/bloglink.png" alt="iffles.com - phototalk for the rest of us" title="iffles.com - phototalk for the rest of us"></a>

I’m going to create a “resources” page here on iffles.com that I’ll eventually put that code over there so you can find it again easily if you need it.

The second thing I’ve done is create a fan page on facebook for iffles.com. You can find it here (or by clicking on the facebook icon in the “follow iffles” section of the sidebar. I’m going to try really hard to remember to update the fan page whenever I post something new here so that you can be notified via facebook when there’s something new over here.

The thing is, though, I’m not on facebook very often, so I’m not going to promise that every link gets up there right away, so I might forget. But I will promise that every entry will be linked up there eventually.

If you have any other suggestions for iffles.com, or things that you’d like to see, please let me know in the comments, I’m always open to ideas for improvement!

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f/3.5, 1/125 sec, 10mm, ISO 200

You guys are all aware that I’m attempting three photography-related projects this year. Well, less than two full months into the project, I’m already cheating on one of them (my 52 photowalks). I started to feel guilty about this for about 2 second before I fully rationalized my decisions and decided, ya know what? It’s ok to cheat on our photography projects sometimes. I know the arbitrary rules of “a photo a day” or “a photowalk a week” are reasons why some people don’t do these projects at all (and if you’re dedicated and motivated enough to go out and use your camera creatively without a project – I salute you… I’m not one of those self-motivated people), but for those of you that are doing a project like mine, and have perhaps missed a 365 photo, or couldn’t make it on one of your 52 photowalks, I present you with my reason as to why it’s ok to cheat on your personal photography projects.

Meeting the Goals of Your Projects

When I did my 366 project (it was a leap year), I used to jump out of bed at 11:45 PM (scaring John who was sleeping next to me, of course), and start muttering something about not taking a photo, and end up with a lousy camera-on-auto, badly-lit, arms-length self portrait. Yes, I met the goal of taking my photo during that 24 hour period – but was that really the goal of my project? I started that project for three reasons:

• To document a year of my life
• To learn how to use my camera
• To take more creative photos

One day during my 366 project, I realized I hadn't taken a photo of myself that day, but was relieved to find this photo of John's and my feet on my memory card for that day. Very out of focus, but it still counted!

The same thing applies for whatever rule you broke, of course. Perhaps you’re doing a self-portrait 365 and forgot to take a photo of yourself on some day, but did take a really great photo without you in it. So? If your goals were similar to the ones I listed above, doesn’t that fantastic photo still apply?

Avoiding Risk to Yourself or Your Camera

This is a big one for me during this time of year when it’s snowing a lot. I’m actually terrified of snow when it comes to my camera. I’ve read all the articles online about how to protect your camera and lenses, but I still think the best way to protect your camera from snow is to not go outside when it’s snowing. Since I have to go outside for my photowalks, and I work during most of the daylight hours of the week, that really narrows down the amount of time I can find outside when it’s not snowing. I’d rather skip a week in my photowalk project than damage my camera or lens.

I’m also not going to risk my own health (do you like how I wrote about the dangers of risking my camera before risking myself? Does that say something about me?). I’ve been fortunate enough that this has never really been an issue for me, but there was one year (before I got into photography) that I was hospitalized for almost a week, and then essentially bed-ridden for the following week. I wouldn’t have had many options then if I were in the middle of some projects. I don’t think anyone would look down on me for putting my camera down for a week or two then.

Related, of course, is the health of your family. Once again, I think this is an obvious one, but if you have a loved one that is suffering, I’m not sure it’s really appropriate to say “hold on, honey, I see you’re in pain and all, but I really gotta go take some photos – be back in an hour or two!”

Level of Cheating

This is something that’s a personal choice for you, and is all going to depend on what the project means to you. For instance, last year was my first year doing 52 photowalks, and I would have been pretty devastated if I had missed a week completely (and I never did, actually). But as the only rules I ever gave myself were “leave the house once a week and take photos”, I suppose I was a bit flexible in my definition of a photowalk on some weeks. For instance:

• The photo at the top of this entry? That was on one of my “photowalks” that was actually a bike ride I went on and stopped to take some photos at one point. This was probably the least “cheatingish” thing I did, but I still felt a little bit of guilt about it.
• I spent Easter at my sister’s house, and took a lot of photos around her house (and of her kids). It was not a walk at all, and something I would have done project or not, but… I did leave my house, so I figured it counted.

Does an Easter Egg Hunt count as a photowalk? It's up to you!

Another example – When I did my 366 self-portrait project, I insisted that I actually take every photo with my finger hitting the button, whereas I know other people are perfectly ok with allowing someone else to take the photo, as long as they themselves set up the entire shot. Like I said, it’s a matter of personal preference.

You have to draw the line somewhere, of course

Just because I’m justifying doing some cheating here and there on your project, don’t let it become a habit! If I had cheated on my 366 project and took 7 photos every Saturday instead of one every day, that’s no longer really documenting my daily life, is it? And I’m sure they wouldn’t be as creative, because I’d be rushing to get each of the 7 photos done in a day.

Besides, another main reason I do these projects is to be able to look back and think “look what I did, I really accomplished something”. If you cheat too much, you’ll lose that sense of pride.

Why I Cheated

In case you’re curious, since I mentioned above that I already cheated in my 52 photowalks, I thought I’d tell you what I’ve done. I consider my “weeks” to be Thursday-Wednesday. Today is Wednesday, and for various reasons (mostly travel and snow-related) I haven’t had a chance to go out and do a photowalk. Why am I not sweating it?

• My goal was to continue to enjoy my photowalks that I had already been going on, learn more about my camera, and take less nature (and more urban) photos. If I go on two walks this upcoming week, is that hurting any of my goals? No.
• The main reason I wasn’t able to go out this week is because I wasn’t home often when there was light out AND no snow. I don’t like taking my camera out when it’s snowing, and I’m not going to risk that just to get a photo before the end of the week
• As far as my level of cheating? Last year, I’m not sure I would have let this slide. But because I’ve already finished one year of 52 photowalks, I’m a bit more relaxed about my “rules” this year. I’ll make up somehow, and if I don’t? Meh. then I’ll have done 51 photowalks in a year, and that ain’t bad, either.

So, if you’ve cheated on any of your projects and still kept going, I give you a pat on the back. Virtually, at least.

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This photo doesn't have much to do with this article, but I edited it while writing, so I thought I'd include it

I know I owe you guys another gimp editing tutorial – and I’m in the middle of working on one that was specifically asked for – but when I was working on it last week, Gimp crashed on me (for only the second time ever), which annoyed me enough to stop working on it that night. And then I got sick over the weekend and didn’t do much of anything.

Since I’m still feeling a bit under the weather, I’m going to write something that’s a bit easier than the Gimp tutorial so I can go back to making sure the sofa stays put.

As you know, I use only free software to edit all my photos, and one step in my workflow is Picasa. I’ve touched on this before – though that was more of a complete start-to-finish of my photo storing and organizing process. Today I’m going to talk specifically about the features I use in Picasa – some of which are new since that article anyway.

Importing and viewing RAW files

Note: this section applies even if you shoot in jpg.

I have my computer all set up so that when I plug in my card reader that it automatically starts importing my photos into Picasa. The import screen looks something like this:

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Let me point out some of my favorite features:

• Photos organized by time – On the left hand side, you’ll see all the photos that are on my card – the first group (of my lazy cats) all of little red Xs on them because they’ve already been imported into Picasa before – so basically it’s saying that it already has that photo, so if I click “Import All”, it’s not going to import those. The rest of the photos are grouped into sections all based upon the time they were taken. So the pictures of me with two of my cookbooks were taken at a different time than the section of me experimenting with my brand new remote. The thing I love about this grouping of photos is that – if you wanted to – you could easily import into separate folders for each date that you took photos on. I don’t bother doing that, but it’s nice to know that Picasa makes it easy for me if I want to!
• Preview – Even before importing the photos onto my computer, I can preview any of the images on the right hand side of the import screen. As you can see in the screen capture, I have selected a photo of me using my remote for one of the first times. Don’t I look wonderful?
• Importing into my own folder structure – See at the bottom there’s three dropdowns? The first one is “Import to:”. Picasa is going to put all my photos into a folder, and the Import to: dropdown is asking me what folder I want the newly created folder to go into. It defaults to “My Pictures” on windows computers, but you can change this default folder under Tools –> Options on the General tab (see screenshot below). I want all my photos to go onto my Drobo, so I have mine set to a folder on there. Anyway. The next dropdown allows you to type in the name of the folder you want these photos to go in. I use a naming convention of [Today's Date] – [short description]. So this particular batch says “2010_02_02 – by window, downtown photowalk” (I use that format for the date so that when sorting all my folders by name, they’re still in chronological order). The final dropdown determines what Picasa should do with all the photos on the card after importing (as in, delete them or not). I always leave this set to “Leave card alone” because I’d rather reformat the card later on my camera than just delete them in Picasa.

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After I hit the “Import All” button I’m brought into the Library:

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I’m going to take this time to point out that you’re looking at RAW files. Picasa does have the ability to read RAW files (see their list of supported RAW formats here) – but it’s important to note that I don’t consider it a RAW editor. Remember back when I discussed raw vs. jpg, I mentioned that RAW files weren’t actually images, but that they were just RAW data, and that jpgs are your camera’s interpretation (and compression) of what it thinks that image should look like? Well, Picasa is basically just doing the same thing that you camera does. It’s showing you it’s interpretation of what that RAW file should actually look like. If you it, great! But you’re missing a lot of the power of a real RAW editor if you only use Picasa to edit your photos (and, I might add, if you’re only using Picasa to edit your jpg photos, you’re missing out on the power of software like Gimp – but sometimes you get a great shot Straight Out of Camera, and so you don’t need to edit, of course).

Anyway… where was I? Oh yes, the library. It works like you’d expect it to work, you can see all your folders there on the left, and all the images there on the right. Nothing fancy in here. The cool stuff happens when you double click on a photo to open it up:

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My favorite part is a new feature. Check it out – you can see your histogram and some important EXIF data on the left! By the way, if you want to see all your EXIF data, you can go to Picture –> Properties. If you wanted to edit your photos in Picasa, this is where you’d do it – you can see three tabs on the left (Basic Fixes, Tuning, Effects) that allow for some editing. I very rarely edit in Picasa, but it’s nice to know those features are there. The only reason I even open things up in Picasa is because I take a lot of photos, but I don’t edit them all (I’d guess I edit about 1 in 10 of my photos – I keep meaning to look up that statistic for sure), and by opening up the photos here, I can then use the arrow keys to move through them all and decide which ones I want to edit. When I come to one (like this photo of some shrubbery), I can look at that blue bar on the bottom and it tells me the name of the photo (in this case: IMG_7304.CR2), so then I can find that image on my computer, open it in UFRaw/The Gimp and edit it.

After I’ve edited my photo and save the new image into the same folder, Picasa automatically recognizes that there’s a new file in that folder and adds it into the Library at the end of that folder (personally, I like that it sorts it so all the new files are at the end, it makes selecting my files for uploading easier – I just grab all the ones at the end!)

Exporting/Resizing my photos

Once I’ve edited all the photos I’m going to edit, I select all of them (in this case, there’s only one, but usually there’s more) and hit the little star button:

Adding a star

Now, this is obviously just a personal preference for me and not required. This star doesn’t mean anything outside of Picasa, but it’s an easy way for me to mark which photos are keepers in each folder. I never delete any of my photos, so if I only want to look at the photos I’ve actually marked as keepers, I can set a filter (at the top of the library screen) in Picasa to only show me photos that I’ve starred!

Next, I tag all my photos. Tagging has been upgraded in this latest release of Picasa so now you can store tags that you use often so you don’t have to type them in every time. Here’s the new tagging screen:

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The Quick Tags at the bottom allow you to easily add tags to your photos that you use often. The first two spots, by default, show the last two tags that you used, the rest of the slots you can configure to be whatever you want. Since I do a lot of self portraits and photowalks in Akron, Ohio, you can see why I picked some of the tags I did. The reason why I tag photos in Picasa is because I can easily select a bunch of photos and tag them all at once, and the tags are saved with the image itself, so when I export them and upload them to flickr, it will include the same tags there.

Another improvement with the tagging in this new release is that you can put special characters (like hyphens and ampersands) in your tags, which you didn’t used to be able to do! Exciting!

Note: I check out the new Places thing in Picasa, too, where I can add all my photos to a map. It’s pretty cool, but this information is NOT uploaded to flickr

So, at this point, I want to export my photos. I do this for a two reasons:

• To resize a bunch of photos at once, it’s easiest to do this from the Export menu. I don’t like to upload my full size photos to flickr – it takes a lot longer to upload, and it gives other people access to my full-size images, which I don’t like.
• Remember I imported all my photos onto my drobo (which is a fancy external harddrive) – this means when I’m on vacation and just have my laptop, I don’t have any of my photos. I like to export all the resized images to my laptop so that I can at least have those with me.

Here’s the export screen:

The export screen

You’ll notice that you have the option to add a watermark, but it’s just text and not very pretty (in my opinion), but if you’re ever looking for a quick and easy way to add a simple watermark, this is a great option.

Picasa will export all my photos (regardless if they were RAW or jpg when they entered Picasa) to jpgs. I’m perfectly fine with that – in case you missed it, here’s a great article on DPS about file formats.

Other things I do in Picasa

The things I mentioned above are my “everyday” Picasa actions, but there are a few more things I’d like to mention:

Creating Collages:

If you want to create a quick-and-easy collage, you can select a bunch of photos and hit the “Collage” button:

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That will take you to another screen where you have some options for the type of collage (default is Mosaic, but you can also do stuff like a pile of polaroids), spacing between the photos, background color, etc.:

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The most annoying part is that you don’t have control over which photos go where, the only thing you can really do is keep hitting the “Shuffle Pictures” button at the bottom to move stuff around.

Set as Desktop Background:

I know you can easily do this in Windows, too, but when I’m already in Picasa, and I’m already looking at my photos, it’s really easy to do here, too. Just go to Create –> Set As Desktop

Adding Text to photos:

When I’m sharing photos on here, I often want to add text to them. Once again, I realize this is easy to do in Gimp, but I actually find myself adding text most often to collages that I’ve made (where I’m showing a before and after, for example, and want to mark one as before, and one as after). Adding text is really simple – remember when I talked about having the image open in Picasa and there’s the three tabs for simple editing? One of the options on the Basic Fixes tab is Text. Just select that, click on your photo, and start typing – you can select the font, color, and size – and even if you want it to be slightly transparent!

Quick Edits:

Remember how I said sometimes photos look pretty good SOOC (Straight Out of Camera), and they only need just a bit of tweaking? One of my favorite tweaks in Picasa is on the Tuning tab. Just click the One Click Fix for lighting and it will adjust the fill light, highlights and shadows for you – I find that 99% of the time it really does make the photo look tons better:

One click fix!

Well. I think that just about covers it. Do you do something in Picasa that I’m missing out on? Let me know!

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