I am hooked. Big time.
And once you are hooked, it becomes an obsession. Everything you once looked at as, "Oh look, I made Pork Fried Rice for dinner", then becomes "OH LOOK! I MADE PORK FRIED RICE FOR DINNER!" And then you photograph it.
I know. Weird.
EVERYTHING is a photo opportunity. And I mean everything.
I bought a fairly nice camera (Nikon D60) in January and have enjoyed learning my way around the camera and more advanced photography. Frankly, I still don't know everything about the camera which is frustrating in and of itself. The flash on this thing has become my enemy and it refuses to turn off on all settings EXCEPT the no flash setting. Grrrr... And finding Nikon users on a blog is next to impossible. As in, none.
I shoulda bought the Canon. ::sigh::
I was also using a free online editing software called Picasa. I have grown to love Picasa and can do pretty cool things from a free, basic software. But Monk, being that amazing guy that he is, told me to go ahead and buy Photoshop Elements (the most basic of the Photoshop software) and learn my way around Photoshop.
I was gonna be FAN-CEE!
Well I did so and OH, WAS I EXCITED to get going on this stuff! I've SEEN what Photoshop can do, my friends and oh, was I stoked about the possibilites. I was excited about layering and opacity and lassoing eyes....you know, Photshop talk.
And then I opened it up. I tried, really I did. I opened this tab and I opened that tab and really tried to do all of the things that I KNOW Photoshop can do. I looked at online tutorials and I googled "lassoing eyes in Photoshop" and guess what I learned to do?
Nothing.
Because apparently I am a Photoshop boob. A complete and total Photoshop nincompoop. And now when I look at other people's Photoshopped pictures I don't get warm and fuzzy all over. I just get mad.
Mad because I have this picture taking addiction and I am a Photshop moron .
But a moron who photographs her Pork Fried Rice well.
10 comments:
you, me, community college, photography classes, this fall
Hang in there! The first time I opened up Photoshop I wanted to run away screaming. It was so darn difficult and it took me ages to do the most simple of tasks. That was a year ago. Now Photoshop is my best friend. :) Take it one step at a time and don't forget about YouTube - there are tons of great tutorials to walk you through things step by step.
And don't diss that Nikon of yours! I'm a Canon girl, but I hear awesome things about Nikon, too. And if your Nikon was like my Canon, the flash pops up when you have it in any of the automatic settings as the camera sees fit. Once you move into manual territory, you'll have full control!
Thanks for stopping by my blog!
That is suuuum bea yoo ti ful pork fried rice! Hope it tasted as good as you made it look!
Oh I so know how you feel!! I have been reading your blog for quite a while but never commented, this post lured me out of my lurkerdom.
I am a photographer and I felt the same way about photoshop when I started but you can do it! Check out www.thepioneerwoman.com. She has some amazing photoshop tutorials as well as tutorials to help you understand your camera better.
Hope that helps! I will email you my email address, if I can help with anything specific let me know! :)
You are a hoot! My hubby thinks I am odd for photographing nearly everything. You do take lovely pictures. I am sure that you will have fandangled photoshop figured out soon! You definitely learned how to take amazing pictures, super fast!
When I first got Photoshop, I would just open it and stare dumbly, and then I'd close it and walk away for another week.
I just got CS4 so the learning is starting all over again, but I sure do love it. It just takes time. :-)
Well, you inspired me to play around with some of my pictures in Picasa:)
PW has a Nikon ;)
And, like someone else said, she has TONS of tutorials! You can do it, girl. It just takes time.
I agree with your first commenter... if you can eek the time out you should definitely take a class. You will be amazed at how helpful it can be!
-Andrea
I'm soooo with you! My husband recently bought me a Nikon and I signed up for a free trial of photoshop and I can't do ANYTHING. Someone recommended lightroom instead, and I find it a little more user friendly, but a lot more expensive. I'm going to check out the tutorials that others have linked to and in the meantime I wanted to give you the link to an online course on how to use a digital SLR. This was sooooooo helpful for me! It's only $15 (which is nothing compared to what these cameras cost!) and the great thing is that you can email the instructor and he'll get back with you (he really will - I've emailed him twice now!) :) The link is: http://www.digital-slr-guide.com/digital-slr-camera-technique.html
I don't know what to say about your flash problem, we don't have the D60 so I'm not sure what's going on with that. But if you do decide to sign up for the course, I'm sure it's something he could help you with!
I've been playing around on Lightroom all day today and wanted to ask you... have you tried clicking on the "Help" tab on your browser? I couldn't figure out how to do much beyond the basics with Lightroom but today I found that little "help" tab and they offer video tutorials that are wonderful! If you want to see what I was able to do (as a beginner), you can check out my post on it here: http://intostillwaters.com/2009/03/03/what-lightroom-can-do-for-you/
Hope this helps!
Rina
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