After a dry spell, deck orders from my website have started to pick up again. Which is nice! I had started to think that pretty much everyone who wanted one had already ordered it. Luckily, I had already broken even on the wholesale decks before the orders dried up. But still I'm glad to be selling a few again.
In other news, my tripod arrived! I got it from Ebay. I had done a lot of research and had finally managed to find one for less than $100 that professionals spoke well of.
Not that I'm all hung up on having professional accessories. I've found in my product research that professional photographers can be a little, how can I put it, snotty about their equipment. Some of them have an attitude that decent photography is impossible without thousands of dolalrs of equipment. I'm sure professionals do find that expensive equipment makes their job easier. That's true of all professions. But that's not what I need at all. All I want is a decent camera and tripod, and I've got that now, so I can start practicing and learning.
The tripod arrived on Saturday and the first thing I did was take photos of my dogs. The flash scares them so I experimented with not using a flash. With a 1 second exposure I got this decent shot of Lina lying down. Amazing that she managed to hold perfectly still for a full second, even her eyes didn't move. But then again, she's a really lazy dog so I shouldn't be surprised.
By accident I got this silly shot of Lina's head all blurred. Again it was a 1 second exposure, which was just enough time for her to move her head from side to side.
We've got a potted gardenia by the back door, and last night a single blossom opened up. So I decided to try my hand at macro photography (extreme close-ups). Following the advice of the book I've been reading, I took about a hundred shots, each time slightly adjusting the camera and writing down the settings for each. As you might imagine, I ended up with about a hundred really awful photos of that flower. But to my surprise a couple turned out pretty well:
a decent close-up of a gardenia
another okay shot of the gardenia
I meant to take a picture of the tripod but I forgot. It's a Velbon Maxi 343E in case you're interested. I got a pretty good deal on Ebay, but the package didn't include any registration or warranty information. The Ebay page said the warranty was included, so I wrote to them today about it.
Music recommendation for the day: Work 1989-2002 by Orbital. All I can say is, wow.
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