Thinking of My Happy Place

Elle July 30, 2014

I've been distracted lately. I also have a newfound respect for people with chronic pain, yet still manage to get by with a smile in their face and a skip in their step. I've spent the last month or so in varying states of pain and soreness which have migrated all over my back, neck, and shoulder. Yesterday, I had an intense headache isolated to the left side of my head, which my DPT attributed to tight muscles and a tough massage from our last appointment. Today, my neck muscles are so tight, they're pulling on my left rotator cuff muscle and it's been hurting... even with my physical therapy appointment today. I'm currently parked under a heating pad and attempting to loosen this before I try to go to bed.

Given my packed schedule and general malaise, I haven't really had much opportunity to go out and shoot much, but I did find a treasure while cleaning through my pictures - an unposted series of pictures from Disneyland! So I'm going to revel in these pictures and hope for a less pain-ridden weekend.

All in all, I just want the pain to go away before my Last Hurrah trip to Hawaii and before I start school in the fall!!

More Happiness

Active Shooting Hours: 3 Review Hours: 1 Hours To Date: 170

More Water & Wide Angles

Elle July 9, 2014

I'm frustrated that I'm encumbered by my back/shoulder/neck pain - I really want to go on another hike in search of altitude to experiment with my new wide angle lens, but I get too sore after just a few hours of plain vanilla walking. Fortunately, I have a physical therapy appointment scheduled and I don't even care what kind of sadistic stretches or exercise they may impose, I just want to go back to normal.

In any case, we went to breakfast on the beach and then walked along the tide pools before it got too hot - basically the same easy excursion as this one a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, our efforts at timing to arrive with low tide were foiled by some kind of storm surge that sent waves crashing up to what is normally the high tide line. My boyfriend had a waterproof point & shoot on hand, but I wasn't willing to risk my DSLR to get much closer to the water than I did. I am excited that he's totally gotten sucked into my photography hobby and basically going to take my D3100 body off my hands so I can upgrade to a D3300 without feeling too guilty over a purchase I don't need, but would love, given the 5 FPS (frames per second) multi-shot capability (vs. 3 FPS on the D3100) and the panorama mode.

In any case, the shots I took didn't really made me feel like I used the wide angle well - part of that is due to the fact that I shot in kind of bright mid-morning light and corrected in post by tweaking the lighting & saturation, but more experimentation and practice is clearly needed.

The waves from the surge were huge & the low tide only intensified the effect

Crash

Crash II

More Waves

Active Shooting Hours: 1.5 hours

Review Hours: 2 hours

Hours to Date: 165 hours

Wide Angle Lens Play

Elle June 30, 2014

Where does the time go? It's amazing how when life gets a little hectic, time just slips by. I got rear-ended a couple of weeks ago and while mostly okay, have been nursing pain in my back, neck, and shoulder, which put a damper on photographic adventures and birthday plans. Still, I've managed to keep my head up, largely because of taking on the 100 Happy Days Challenge, which is all about finding small happy things every day.

Anyway, I got a wide angle lens for my birthday, which apparently is one of the most difficult lenses to use well. After the first foray with it, I can see why - it's really hard to get close enough to let it work its magic and make powerful images that pull the viewer straight into the scene. I definitely need to practice more and in general, get out during optimal lighting times.

I'm still behind in posting (muscle relaxants really knock you out) - more pics from birthday adventures to come.