My 53rd Entry -- Inspired by AHA! moments

I *hate* the way my brain learns. I don't remember it having such mental blocks against new subjects in the past. Perhaps that is just a feature of getting older. I can read and reread, try again and again, be told over and over... and just not remember it. Then one day, said item suddenly makes sense and I'll have it for life. I wish that would go a little faster, heh.

This time it was metering, exposure, and the buttons on the camera that affect those things. I've been limping along using the +/- Exposure Compensation button as needed, but had really been doing myself of disservice by not understanding the basic functionality of the meter and histogram. No more!

I was having a lot of trouble with noise in my pictures. They'd look fine until viewing them full size, then the images were flat, fuzzy, and had terrible pixelated noise in the shadows and darker areas. After hours of googling, book reading, and trial and error I think I finally have my camera set in a way to help with that. Last night's short photo crawl resulted in a few photos that I uploaded and I didn't edit them in any way. No contrast.. no sharpness.. no noise reduction.. no cropping. I didn't even find dust specs to correct. I did convert one to B&W, but that is a feature not a fix I've been known to convert to B&W as a "fix" when the color just isn't right >.>

Taking pictures is the only outlet I have right now. I had a bit of a breakdown yesterday in the wee hours of the morning where I was ready to take a baseball bat to my counter and the people I work with. I think I've grown tired of taking care of everyone else but myself. Everyone else gets to pay their bills because of the work that I do, except for me. How messed up is that when I'm the business owner? I'm so tired of everyone thinking "oh, you own a business? you must be made of $$" I'm really, Really, tired of having nothing to show for my years of hard work except for added weight. (I've shed 22lbs of that though, yay!)

I don't spend much time with my daughter, working nights. I stayed up a little later the day before and took her to the butterfly house. I had learned the new exposure skills and wanted to exercise them. I really hated my photos. So many were almost awesome, but not quite right. I may still delete the ones I posted anyway. Between my daughter crying she missed her cat and my camera not behaving as I wanted it to, it was not any kind of nice break. If I couldn't even enjoy those things, I had nothing positive to hold onto. Not a good time for me. Luckily, between good friends and some family support, along with about 12 hours (maybe more?) of sleep I am better today. I still have no desire whatsoever to go to work, but I guess that just gives me something in common with at least 1/2 of country's population.

With my camera settings fixed (I now realize why the leaves in all my photos looked great whereas the butterflies themselves did not) I am aching to make the 30mi commute back to the Butterfly House and see if I can get more awesome captures. Maybe Tuesday.

Tonight I'm supposed to go to a play my friend Dan directed. I've been too embarassed to admit that I don't remember the story details to "The King and I". Perhaps that will not be the case afterwards. I get to have Reno's pizza too.. Yum......

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Joining groups and clubs now: