Ziraffe

Last week, my favorite YouTube artist, Mary Doodles, was asking for art ideas on Twitter.

I replied, not expecting it to get noticed.

She noticed!

May 30th

On May 30th I turned 26. A quarter century is in the rear-view, and half a century is just ahead... I'd better start my hunching exercises so I can hold on to my walker properly.

Anyway, enough of the pity party. The week of my birthday some extended family members from Illinois were visiting and we had a barbeque. It wasn't for my birthday, but somewhere in the middle it became one for a few minutes when Sarah produced a cheesecake she had made for me, and Shaina and Joel each gave me a present.

Shaina's present was wrapped by Sasha, who had given me a gift a few days before, but I didn't even think to photograph it. Sasha's wrapping jobs are a works of art in themselves. You hate to rip the paper off them.

But in the end, that's the only way to get to the contents, so the ripping has to happen.

Shaina's gift to me was a notebook with a cool zebra print on it. The pages are blank with no lines. It's really nice.

Sasha's gift had been a DVD of the movie Candleshoe.

We have been in a classic Disney mood recently and watching a lot of 50's, 60's, and 70's era live action Disney films and this one of our favorites.

Joel's gift was not quite as expertly wrapped. But at least it was funny. :p

The inside was much better than the outside.

As you know, I can't wait for this movie! :D I decided to NOT look at this book until after I've seen the movie, as it is quite likely that I will spoil a lot of the plot for myself if I do. So until the 23rd. The book will sit untouched, where I won't see it and have it tempting me to look at it. :)

I wish I'd taken a few more pictures that day, but I didn't, so this one will have to do. :)

Why I Don’t Share EVERY Photo

Yesterday on my photo blog I posted some pictures that I found kind of odd. Just a random assortment of pictures that normally I would not choose to feature. That’s not to say they were bad, they just weren’t what I’d call my best ones. I just felt like trying something a little different for a change. If you didn’t get a chance to see it you can find that post by clicking HERE.

I always share my posts to facebook, since most people don’t have blogger accounts, and don’t want to open one just to follow one blog, so I use facebook to notify people when I post, and this lets people comment, since you need to have a blogger account in order to comment. In the post I asked for feedback as to if I should do more posts like that one and I got this reply on facebook.

While I understand that some might think that seeing every single picture a photographer takes would be cool, I think you ought to know, it really isn’t. Every photographer, even the best of the best (Which I am not) shoots hundreds of thousands of pictures that will never see the light of day. And with good reason. They just aren’t worth looking at. A good photographer knows that in order to get one good shot, you’re going to have to take many, many, many bad ones. People have many misconceptions about professional photographers. They just assume that they can take one shot and Bam! Magazine-Worthy Gold! If only this were true! Photography is all about trying different things, seeing what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes, especially in the case of shooting animals, it also involves just taking as many pictures as you think necessary to get just one that you can pick out as the best. Which is what I do. I just shoot a whole bunch of pictures in a row and when I get home I go through them and pick out the best ones to use for my blogs.

Today I thought I’d show you just why I don’t publish EVERY photo I take. You’d be bored out of your mind by the time you were done looking at them.

In order to save upload time (For me) and download time (For you) I’m just going to upload really small versions. Some of them I will deem good enough for my Photo blog so you will get a chance to see larger versions of a few of these later on. For now, here are the unedited versions, before I’ve gone through picked out the good ones, prettied them up, and weeded out the redundant and just plain bad ones.

This is (One of?) the zebras. This is the first time I have seen any of the zebras in years. I am pretty sure they have more, but this was the only one out there this month. They spend a lot of time out of sight where it’s shady and cool. So far I’ve always been disappointed when I go to see them, so I was happy to see at least one this time. I’ll check back next month and maybe the rest will be there.

Okay, here is why you don’t want me to share every single picture I take. And please excuse the quality, like I said these are unedited and the lighting was HARSH that day. It was so hot. You can probably tell this zebra was pretty miserable.

So there you have it. And this is just an example from ONE animal. Think of how many different types of animals I take pictures of. Think about how many different flowers I take pictures of. Think about everything I share on here. Do you really want all my blog posts to look like this one? :p I didn’t think so. :)