Meri's Play Place

There's a meme for photo buffs who are willing to share info on how they captured their favorites. It's not well known, so I thought maybe I'd put some info here and you can try it yourself. It's called FAVORITE PHOTO FRIDAY and here are the rules: 1. Tell what kind of camera you used. 2. If it's an SLR/DSLR, what lens did you shoot with? 3.  Settings (ISO, shutter speed, aperture, lens length, etc) 4. Did you use any special lighting or techniques? 5. Is the shot straight out of the camera or edited?     If edited, please share the original shot and tell    what you did to it and what program you used. 6. Tell why the shot is a favorite. Then go to Favorite Photo Friday and link your post. I've played a few times, but the more people share, the better.

Every once in a while, I get lucky with my camera. This little girl was the epitome of joy. Image details Nikon D5000 camera, with an 18 -200 mm lens 200 ISO Aperture f6.3 Shutter Speed 1/100 lens length 130 mm shot in RAW. Post processing: put in a little fill light because it was a tiny bit underexposed. In Photoshop, used a watercolor filter, then lightened it a bit using the Exposure sliders on the Image menu. Open it in Camera Bag and used the Colorcross option to make the colors a bit more old-fashioned and soft. Then gave it a bit more "glow" by opening it in Picasa. choosing the EFFECTS option, then the Tint menu and colorizing it with a hint of very pale gold. Please play along by finding a favorite photo in your collection, checking the photo specs to find out your settings and tell what you might have done in post-processing. This meme is about learning and it would be even better if more people got on the bandwagon. Click HERE to parti...

I thought that I'd show you the process behind my mandala "photos." First, you start with a regular shot. This one happens to be a close-up of one tiny piece of a very large installation of glass by artist Dale Chihuly. Here are the details on this shot: I used my Nikon D200 with the 18 - 200 mm lens. ISO set at 400.    f/stop was 6.3    Shutter speed  1/160 second Focal length was 170 mm 255 mm if compared to 35 mm I used the center weighted average  metering mode (in camera) The flash was disabled. I didn't alter the shot in Photoshop. The image above is right out of the camera. BUT THEN I couldn't help myself. I just had to play. 1. first I opened the original photo   in Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 (haven't upgraded to the new version). 2. Using one of the drop-down menus, I created a kaleidoscope effect. There are all sorts of creative choices in this menu and I manipulate them while seeing the effect on scre...

For my favorite shot for this week's Favorite Friday, I'm choosing this one. I took it about a month ago, but it brings back SO many memories of Venice, a place I went back to in June after having experienced it first many years ago with the love of my life. There's a story here, one that has nothing to do with my current single-ness. It does relate, however, to my current affair with my Nikon.  I'm not the world's biggest fan of getting up before sunrise. When the light began to seep in around the edges of the shutters at my windows in a faint blue-gray, I thought I could cheat and snap a few shots leaning  out my 4th story window so I could stay in my nightie  and wake up only a little,  just enough to point and shoot a couple of times and then go back to bed and sleep til 9 or so. Spirit had other ideas. When I saw the light, the stillness of the water, the cloud formations,  the mere handful of people moving along the canals.  a totally unpeopled...

Looking through my stash of photos, I found this one "Stones at Carrowmore" © 2007 Meri Arnett-Kremian a favorite because it shows the stone circle at Carrowmore, a sacred place in the landscape of Ireland, a place where the veil is thin and Spirit is palpably ever-present. Taken with a Nikon D200 f/8 shutter speed 1/250th of a second ISO 100 - no flash max aperture 4.8 focal length 90 mm For more FAVORITE FRIDAY PHOTOS, click on the link on my sidebar. ENJOY!

My favorite photo  taken this week is this portrait  of a young man  who'll be a freshman in high school this fall. He's at that age when sometimes he's an angel and sometimes, well. . . . In other words, your typical teen. This was taken with a Nikon D5000, ambient light in a dim parking garage on auto ISO (1600)  70 mm focal length aperture at f/11 exposure time 1/50th of a second white balance set for shade. If I were doing it again, I'd set the ISO at 200 and then alter my settings and shoot at about 1/20th of a second in ambient light so the photos weren't so grainy, but I actually had forgotten that I had set the camera on auto ISO. I'll have a chance to reshoot on Monday when I take portraits of his older brother. I just hope that graffiti artists don't paint over this great background by then. To see other Favorite Friday Photos, click on the button at the right. Or maybe, just maybe, you'd like to play along. ...