Tag: kitsnaps

Kitsnaps: Oxford Botanic Gardens

Kitsnaps

I’d brought my Big Camera (the DSLR) to Oxford because we’d been told 10 days for recovery for my dad’s brain surgery (he’s doing well, he goes back next week to get the power turned on), and I knew Oxford was beautiful and I wanted to spend a few mornings and afternoons taking pictures.

Then Dad did so brilliantly they were threatening to send him home after 3 days (!), so I got up Very Early and went out with my camera, because damned if I was gonna have lugged the camera and an extra lens all the way to Oxford and not use it!

And I do mean Very Early, because I wanted the sunrise light, so I was out on the streets before 6am. And then the light had changed by 7:15 or so and because EUROPE there weren’t any damn cafes or anything at all open yet and the Botanic Gardens, which I wanted to go to, didn’t open until 9, so I spent a great deal of time wandering around in an exhausted haze.

Eventually the gardens opened, and to my offense I had to pay a fiver to get in (Dublin’s are free, and better), but I got some pictures I loved, so it was all good. :)

This is the most Stock Photography photograph I’ve ever taken. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s so Stock Photography that I find it ridiculous. :) It needs a little bit of fill light on the foreground to really make it pop, and while it’s probably possible to do that with Photoshop, I didn’t know how any more than I had a fill flash with me, so it’s not quite as Perfectly Stock as it could be, but it’s Pretty Stock. :)
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I should probably not love the intense saturation of colors as much as I do, but, well, I do, and so that’s my photography aesthetic. And to be fair, these tulips in the morning sunshine really were very strongly colored!
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These tulips are METAL, folks. Look at those ragged edges!
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I am deeply, deeply in love with this photo. My goal was a crisp close-up with the petals rising toward the lens in sharper (but inevitably blurred because focal point) focus, but lacking three hands, I couldn’t hold the camera properly and hold the flower *still* in the mild wind, so there was an even softer focus than I’d intended and I just love it.
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Kitsnaps: Rimfrost

Kitsnaps

More from the photo archives; a glorious winter day in 2003, where I lay in the snow and took pictures of rimfrosted trees, and of my puppy snoofling me. <3 rimfrost

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Kitsnaps: Eklutna Lake

Kitsnaps

Sadly, no, I have not been home lately to take these pictures; they’re from 2003, when several of us went out kayaking on Eklutna Lake, outside of Anchorage, on a ridiculously glorious day.

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I’m going through my digital photo archives, trying to clean them up and get rid of all the terrible pictures, which is something I’ve been meaning to do for, uh, ever. Mostly it’s not very hard, but these Alaska photos do make me homesick.

Kitsnaps: Two-Toed Sloth

Kitsnaps

I actually brought my camera out to the zoo the other day. It’d been almost a year since I’d used it. *wince* Anyway, among other things, I kind of randomly decided to set it to RAW format, because, well, because.

I will never go back to shooting just JPG, OMG.

I mean, I knew RAW was supposed to be swell, but I did kind of assume it would be difficult to learn to manipulate the format. It’s not; there’s a Photoshop thing that opens up to deal with it automatically, and there’s almost certainly more that I can do if I put some effort into learning. But OMG, the differences in the SHADOWS, the depths of black! Those alone are worth it! So exciting!

Anyway, on top of that, the sloths were out eating corn and I got the best picture of one I’ve ever gotten. :)

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I need to get my eyes checked, though. Or get different contacts, because I was not having an easy time focusing the big lens, which is the one lens I have that isn’t autofocus and which I have a hard time with anyway because it’s just a little too heavy for me to manage well and at least half my pictures with it are out of focus. But this was worse than usual, and anything in focus was more luck and the assumption that it really had to be in focus rather than my ability to see that it was.

But at least the sloth turned out. :)

Kitsnaps: Oxford

Kitsnaps / Photography / Snapshots

I had a brief visit to Oxford last month and although I didn’t have a decent camera with me, got a handful of pictures that I was very happy with, with my phone. I haven’t “matted” them, but I’ve concluded if I wait to do that I’ll never post another Photo Friday again, because I’ve just got too many other things going on right now. (I need a Beautiful Assistant to do that kind of work for me. Plus a lot of other stuff. If only I was rich. :))

The University Church (apparently properly called St Mary’s, I am belatedly informed by a local), taken from the top of a bus. I love riding in the front upper seats of buses. :)
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I believe this is the Tom Tower, as a friend of mine who knows the town identified it as something Tom-ish when I posted it on Twitter, and Google tells me that’s probably what it is. I am *exceedingly* pleased with this picture, which I feel has Artistic Merit despite being a crappy phone photo. :) (ETA: It’s just “Tom Tower,” I’m told; it’s the bell tower at the main entrance to Christ Church, on St Aldate’s. It is, to quote the above-mentioned local, Very Important and was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. :))
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Just a random attractive street scene. Oxford is really extremely pretty. As it should be, since it’s had a thousand years to practice!
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Another pretty street shot.
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Radcliffe Square, Oxford. Again, REALLY happy with this phone panorama shot. Someday I’d love to go back to Oxford with a real camera!
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