Back to School Book Week + Friday Photo Love

Since today’s theme for Back to School Book Week is an “anything goes” kind of theme, and since the book I chose to talk about is photography-related, I thought it would be handy to just combine the two related topics into one post.

So here are my favorite flickr photos for the week:

You can click on the photo for full credits.

See that pink flower with the black frame which is in column 5, row 2?  That style of photography really grabs me.  For those who don’t know, it’s called Through The Viewfinder, or TTV for short, and it’s achieved by taking a picture with one camera through the viewfinder of another camera.  Often the second camera is a Duaflex. I bought one on eBay last year and still haven’t tried the technique.  Don’t know what I’m waiting for!

So on to my own favorite photo for the week?

Apparently I hardly took any pictures this week at all.  The only things in my flickr account since last week are Project 365 photos, and I actually forgot to take one of those on Thursday (oops).  So, the pickins are really slim.  It’s ok – I really love this image.  I was breakfasting outside, set my coffee mug on the patio fence, backed up, and zoomed in on the mug.  That’s one way of getting a nice blurry background.

I also tweaked it a bit in Paint Shop Pro.  If you hover your cursor over the photo, you can see what the original looked like before I played with it.  I straightened the image, gave it a little warmth, adjusted the contrast, and then played with the curves to further lighten and give it a vintagey yellow look.

I’m really starting to get a feel for this post-processing thing.  I’ve even created a nice little library of scripts for things I find myself doing often.  Fun!

The book I want to share is:

Camera Creative by Chris Gatcum.  The cover is less than enticing, but the contents are pretty neat.

The author gives you some old-fashioned tips and tricks (i.e. did you know that you can put a pair of stockings over your lens in order to get a soft-focus look?) as well as some ideas for newfangled fun.  There’s a section on TTV photography like I mentioned above, including instructions on how to build the doohicky you need to connect the two cameras (doohickey = technical term).

I was very inspired by the section on High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, and I played a little with the concept.  I have yet to achieve spectacular results outdoors, but like I mentioned two weeks ago, it’s really helped me make the most of the (little bit of) light I have indoors. (And I know I promised to expand a little on that concept and tell you how I do it, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.  Hopefully next week!)

There is a lot in this book that I haven’t taken advantage of yet.  Which is cool.  It should keep me busy for a while.  At least until the new Shutter Sisters photography book hits the shelves in a week!  I am so drawn in by their aesthetic.

By the way, if you’ve found any of my book recommendations appealing this week, you might enjoy my Amazon A-store.  I keep it very up to date with my current reads, and anything that I am bowled-over by gets a spot in the category-specific sections.

Thanks, Eren for initiating a fun week of book talk!

Happy Photo Love Friday!