Photoshop
Recently I have been doing a Photoshop course where I am learning how to edit photos properly, I have really been enjoying the course and have learnt so much in a short time. It has highlighted to me a couple of things. That I am hungry for more knowledge about photography and what I have learnt so far is only the tip of the iceberg.
I am a perfectionist, I know what I want something to look like but when the finished product doesn’t look like the picture in my head I am annoyed with myself. I am not someone who finds learning easy and technology frustrates me, I have been using Photoshop for about a year and have learnt the basics just by playing around with it but this course has taught me so much about how to do things properly. I always find that it all makes perfect sense when I am at the course and works perfectly and then when I come home and look at my notes nothing works the way it should at all!!
I have been having a bit of a fiddle with some photos, some have turned out more successful than others. Of course I can see all the blemishes and am never totally happy with anything! Today we took our kids to watch Sally Pearson the Womens World Champion 100m hurdler race in her last race in Australia before she heads to London to compete in the Olympics. This was pretty exciting for them! I took some photos of her running and have done a bit of Photoshop experiementing with the photos.
Let me know what you think?
This is before…..
This is after…..
It’s probably not perfect but I just wanted to try out some of the techniques that we have learnt.
© Andrea Kruck 2012
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Can I be a kid again?
It is Saturday morning, I am sitting in front of the tv and something catches my attention. It is a song being song by 5 baby faced looking young men. I sit there mesmerised, I am 12 years old and thus has begun a love affair that lasted through my teenage years. Everyone had a favourite of course, mine was Jordan. My love for him never waivered, some girls were fickle and their favourites changed daily but not me, I was loyal to my favourite. I sat outside their hotel when they played in Auckland hoping to catch a glimpse, I saw Donnie and Danny but never my love, Jordan (*sigh). My Mother took me to their concert, I was only 13, too young to go on my own apparently (how embarrassing!) I felt as if they were there just for me 
Theirs is not a name that I have heard much over the last 20 years, they are not something that I have thought of often and when I have it has been with a giggle. That song (The Right Stuff – how 90′s 
) I have not heard at all but when I heard that they were going to be here in Brisbane at first I dismissed it as a silly notion but the closer it has come the more I have thought, hmmm maybe??
NKOTB or New Kids On The Block as they were known as in the early 1990′s were my saving grace, it was their music and their faces that got me through a lot of difficult times in my teenage years. Their faces plastered the walls of my bedroom and I played their music on my tapedeck! I cannot believe that I am sitting here thinking about NKOTB again after 20 years, I cannot believe that I am 20 years older! Where have those years gone? Should I really go to their concert again after all these years? Well I hit the buy tickets now button on the website, so looks like I am!
So much has happened since we last saw each other, in the year of 1990? Good grief, was I really 13 years old!! I don’t feel that old, but yet when I look in the mirror, there it is as proof. I am 35 years old now, I am married with 4 children, living in the suburbs of Brisbane. A housewife and a mother. Not the rockstar that I dreamed I’d be when we were jumping round the room together back then. Yes, singing into my hairbrush was quite a common pasttime in my younger years! Somewhere hidden in the back of my wardrobe is a collection of tapes, videos, books and posters that I could never bring myself to throw out. Now we are set to sing again, but will I feel like I am 13 again? Before I come home to my husband and tuck my babies to bed, can I be a kid again just for one night? Pleeeeease!!!!
Here they are as we all remember them in 1990. New Kids On The Block!!!
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Weekly Photo Challenge – Summer
Do you remember as a child how summer used to last forever? The summer school holidays would go on and on forever. Days spent running around in the sun with nothing on but a pair of shorts. No sunscreen of course because skin cancer had never been heard of 30 years ago. We used to play under the hose because who had a swimming pool in their yard back then either?
My childhood summer days were spent riding my bike around the neighbourhood visiting neighbours or at the local park pretending to be a bmx bandit. That was back in the days when children were allowed out on the street on their own. We used to leave the house in the morning and only come home when we were hungry. Our parents had a reasonable idea where we were but they never worried because there was no need to. Children never got abducted or murdered in those days. As for TV? Never during the day, it was only ever turned on at 6 o’clock for the evening news. We had a record player and the movie Grease had only just come out. My Mum had the Grease record and I used to turn it on and dance around the lounge room with my hairbrush. The VCR was beta, we never had a computer and a Wii was something we did in the toilet!!
These days things are a bit different. My children aren’t allowed outside during the summer time without hat and sunscreen for fear of skin cancer. They are never allowed out on the street on their own and don’t even know half of the neighbours names, they would be severely scolded if they should venture to the local park on their own for fear of the unknown. I know where my children are every minute of every day. As for TV? They watch it in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. There is more than one in the house, there is practically one in every room. A VCR? Who has one of those anymore?? As for the record player, I doubt that my children have even heard of one of those.
Despite the fact that times have changed, summer time in our family is still a happy time, with days spent together as a family playing at the park, having picnics and camping. With lots of fun and laughter, we look forward to spending summer holidays at the beach playing in the water and loving summer fun in the sunshine.
I chose this photo because it is special to me, this is my children having fun at the beach in the summer
Why not join in this fun challenge? http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/05/18/summer/ check out some of the other great photos and blogs here.
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Weekly Photo Challenge – Reflections
I really wanted to put my entry in for last weeks photo challenge but somehow between children and chores before I knew it the week was over! The photo above is Brisbane City at night, it was the very first time that I had photographed lights at night and I love it. I felt a real sense of achievement the night that I got this shot because it was the first time I’d taken a photo and thought, yeah that’s good!
I read somewhere once that the human mind is attracted to bright and shiny things, not unlike birds that often collect things for their nests. In my case I love bright and shiny things, particularly lights. My photography is dominated by brightness, whether it be the sun or lights. That is particularly why I love photographing at night, I LOVE city lights.
I think that a big part of why I seek out quiet settings for my photography is because my life is NEVER quiet!! I hope that you like these too
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Photographer in the making
I have just realised that it is almost exactly a year since I first picked up a DSLR camera. I did my first beginners workshop on the 9th of May 2011. Now over a year later I still find myself as frustrated by it now as I did then. Yes, occasionally what I get out of the camera is acceptable but I remember thinking at the time that I just wanted to know that when I picked the camera up something good was going to come out of it. I still think that same thing now. I have done many workshops and courses since then but it is still a lottery whether what I get is good or not.
This is my first ever sunset. Taken on the way home from the beginners course!
Only just recently I have come to realise that the way I have learnt about photography is completely wrong. I have learnt bits and pieces here and there from different sources and different people. I know that if I was serious about learning the art then I should have started at the beginning and learnt every aspect about photography from start to finish so that there are no gaps and no guesswork.
I truly don’t know whether there is a future for me in photography, I know that I love it but I also know that I have a long way to go and a lot more to learn if I can ever say that I am a ‘professional photographer’. As for what I want to photograph? That changes regularly. I know that I can photograph people but I am not particularly good at it nor do I particularly like it. Many believe that because you can use a camera that is all you need to know to be a photographer. Portrait, landscape, nature, real estate, architecture, fashion are all just labels or names for the photography subject and not every photographer can photograph anything. Photography is an art, some may argue against this but it is most definitely art. I doubt very much whether a portrait painter would be able to paint a picture of a landscape or vice versa. Although they would probably have more of an idea where to start than most. It is actually the same with photography.
Yes, I ‘can’ take portraits but again I don’t necessarily want to. I am not great with people, I have done portrait photography but find it completely nervewracking. There is so much pressure to get it right. There is a definite ‘art’ to people photography and then there are different sorts of portraiture. From family portraits, newborns, fashion, glamour, wedding, you get my drift. Anyway, put me in a studio with a bunch of fashion models and a whole lot of lighting equipment and I would be like a fish out of water. I have learnt about it but still would not say that I could do it all that effectively. There are so many different aspects and avenues in photography that we cannot all be just thrown in the one bucket and called ‘photographers’.
So I call myself amatuer or a photographer in the making. I am constantly looking for photography ideas or places to go to. Above all I love landscapes, I believe that if there is a future out there for me in photography it will be in landscapes. I doubt whether it will make me rich but maybe, just maybe it might make me happy
Sunrise New Years Day 2012
I love to receive peoples compliments on my photos, it is encouraging. I usually ask my husband what he thinks but his answer is always “I like it”. I told him last night I could take a photo of anything and he’d still say he’d like it. He assures me he wouldn’t I appreciate your comments, please keep them coming!
© Andrea Kruck 2012
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Weekly Photo Challenge – Unfocused
I have decided to join the WordPress weekly photo challenge. At the beginning of the year I started off doing a photo a day challenge. That lasted about a month and then it got too hard and I stopped. Although while I was doing it I really did find it quite rewarding to challenge myself to find something worthy of photographing everyday. I tried to write a story to go along with every picture and I did pretty well at it for awhile Anyway we’ll see how I go with this challenge, I’m not letting anyone down if I can’t do it but I’m always up for a challenge. So here goes….
The theme for this week is unfocussed, for a photographer we don’t usually show our not so good work and believe me there is a lot of it! There are a lot more blurry or over/under exposed photos in my files than there are pictures that are technically great photos. I have chosen to show this photo for a couple of reasons. Firstly because it is blurry which is the theme but also why is it blurry?
For those who have no idea what they are looking at, these are stars in this photo. When we take photos of stars at night this is what they look like. Why? Because they are moving and because we use a long exposure. This photo here is only a very short exposure hence the star trails are only quite small and it is fairly dark. The longer the exposure the brighter the shot and the more star trails you get. That is why these ones only look like small lines.
Anyhow this is not a very good example of a photo of star trails. Whilst I love star trails I have yet to photograph them successfully. Firstly you need it to be a pretty clear night and it needs to be very dark, so no street lights or traffic around. The slightest hint of light will change the whole photo, which sometimes isn’t a bad thing. But as I live in the suburbs of Brisbane with 4 small children, getting out into the middle of nowhere at night is not easy and as I have said previously, it is spooky! My biggest problem comes back to the blurry theme, I am blind as a bat at night and can’t wear glasses to photograph with. One of the biggest problems with night photography is focussing in the dark. Not at all good when you can’t see whether something is in focus or not anyhow! I have been told that finding infinity on your lense and backing off slightly is the best way to focus in the dark. Or use a light to focus with and then turn it off. The lense also has to be turned to manual once you have it focussed to stop the auto focus trying to take over. Infinity is apparently is all the way to the right (I think!).
Anyway my dilemma of not being able to see the stars at all through the lense anyway and not being able to tell whether it is in focus at all usually produces out of focus shots such as this one. With star trails you can often leave the shutter open for an hour or more. As I said, the longer you leave it open the more star trails you get. But the drawback is that obviously if you don’t know whether it is in focus or not you don’t want to be sitting out there for an hour waiting to find out or actually two, because it takes the same amount of time to process the photo as it does to take it. So if you shoot for an hour, process for an hour and you get an out of focus shot, you are going to be mighty annoyed! I am definitely considering getting contact lenses, that might help Anyway that is my entry for unfocussed.
For comparison of what star trails can actually look like I have also added a couple of spectacular ones, not my own obviously but these photos were taken by a local Brisbane photographer, David de Groot. I hope that he doesn’t mind me using them to show what star trails should look like!
I believe that this shot was exposed for roughly 3 hours!
Aswell as star trails I also like light trails. Light trails are taken in the same way, with long exposure but are usually of moving lights such as cars driving along a road. I have added this photo into the unfocussed catagory just because it is cool. I love it and use it as the background on my laptop screen. It is the lights of the Gold Coast taken from Skypoint tower and is what happens with you move the tripod mid shot.
This is what it should look like.
© Andrea Kruck 2012
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Sunsets
I am a dreamer, constantly looking for things to fulfil my dreams. With my photos I am constantly looking for ‘that photo’. I am never happy with anything when I first take it. I can take 500 photos in two days and might get 20 good ones that I am satisfied are good enough for public consumption. There are often pictures that I know are not technically perfect but I like them anyway for one reason or another.
I like sunsets, beaches and water they are my favourite things to photograph. These are the things that I love because they are peaceful and calming and beautiful.
Here are a few sunsets that I have taken in the last year.
Lake Moogerah
Stradbroke Island
My backyard
Auckland, NZ
© Andrea Kruck 2012
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Lake Moogerah
On the weekend my family and I spent two nights at Lake Moogerah which is a beautiful, pristine freshwater lake about an hours drive from Brisbane. It is actually pretty much in the middle of nowhere, when we were driving there we kept driving and driving thinking where was this place? Then we came over a rise to see a big lake and heaps and heaps of tents in the middle of nowhere beside a lake. Who would’ve thought that a lake in the middle of nowhere would be so popular but there it was! It is a particularly beautiful lake though, mainly a lake very popular for waterskiing, jetskis, boats etc.
I really wanted to go here as it is popular with photographers for night photography. This weekend was the weekend of the Supermoon so it was very bright, aswell as having lots of campfires and lights around which added to it. So I went in search of darkness. I did find some but didn’t spend too long out there on my own as it was a bit spooky, not to mention freezing cold! The difficult thing about photography when you have children and bring them with you is that, someone needs to be with them at all times and they are impatient so you don’t get to spend as much time as you want to. I particularly like nighttime photography but I find it difficult because I don’t feel particularly comfortable out at night on my own and my husband isn’t able to come with me because of the children.
Anyway here are some of the shots that I got at Lake Moogerah on the weekend. I hope you like them, let me know what you think.
© Andrea Kruck 2012
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Get a hobby!
A few years ago not long after our youngest child was born I was complaining that I was bored. Four kids and bored, I know! Anyway someone told me that I needed to get a hobby. So this got me thinking……what did I want to do? What sort of hobby? I had always been under the impression that I wasn’t really interested in anything much. But then I discovered that I hadn’t actually spent a lot of time thinking about the things that interested me so how could I know.
I love the movie ‘The Bucket List’ with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, I’d like to think that I would do all the things that I’d ever wanted to do if I was to find I didn’t have long to live. But then I live by the theory that you only have one life so you may aswell live it. Life is an adventure if you want it to be. Anyway, out here in the suburbs with four children doesn’t allow for a lot of adventures but it got me thinking about some things that I might like to have a go at.
I started out with little things like joining a tennis club, I was not so good at tennis when I started and honestly I am probably still not so good at it now but I am better. I took up running, again not so good but now I am better at that too. That is what brings me to todays little adventure, swimming. I took swimming lessons when I was about 7 years old, I even placed second in the 8 year old girls freestyle. But puberty and fat thighs in swimming togs when I became older put paid to the hope of having a swimming career so I haven’t done a lot of swimming in the last 27 years. Until today! I have challenged myself to compete in a triathlon, not a whole one just a mini one. So naturally to do this I am going to have to swim. Easy! Or so I thought 27 years is a long time between swims, and as I found out today too long really. So looks like I am going to have to learn how to swim – again. The big arms and kicking (as my 2 year old would say) is the easy part but I have forgotten how to breathe, so much so that when I got out of the pool everything kind of went a bit wobbly and I forgot how to walk in a straight line. So I have yet another challenge to complete, swimming!
Here are some photos from yet another of my hobby’s – photography. Photography has become more of a passion than a hobby. I orginally took up photography at school when I was 17 but due to the fact that I couldn’t stick at anything for very long back then I gave it up until now. This is another thing that I wasn’t terribly good at when I started but as with anything a bit of practice and I am getting better at it. These photos were taken at Coolum on the Sunshine Coast of Australia. A beautiful part of the world to visit and to photograph.
Some people have asked me am I on Flickr? I am but have only just joined so in time you will be able to view all of my photos on Flickr!
© Andrea Kruck 2012
