'Eyes Right'

This young Hispanic girl carries an umbrella from a family 'yard

sale' in front of her home in rural Monterey County, California near

Salinas -- other merchandise on the ground to her right. Your

ratings and critiques are invited and most welcome. If you rate

harshly or very critically, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment; please share your superior photographic knowledge to help

improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

She is so adorable with her little star and then flower pin. Even the little earrings are perfect. She is ready to go with all her jewels on. She is a cute girl and a flirt too.

 

I''m sure she was a cute one all asking you questions!

 

I love that she is holding an umbrella when it looks sunny outside. I am sure it is to keep the sun out of her eyes and off her face.

 

The is a great character shot and like it tremendously!

 

OH ~ and a great bit of news. I JUST got a new camera. MY FIRST DSLR.

 

A NIKON D40X :) YEAH! (whew) Now to learn how to use it.

Actually, I saw this girl's momma holding the umbrella as I drove by, turned around and stopped, and momma refused to be in a photo, but daughter was game (she understood what I was doing, but momma was skeptical and shy - maybe thinking I was 'La Migra'. No such worries for daughter -- probably a citizen).

 

In any case, I was drawn by the yard sale and how carefully everything was spaced -- remote controls, voltage converters, and all sorts of 'junk' only a person who actually needed one of those things really would want to buy. Perhaps it's a 'permanent' yard sale, but who knows. They denied it, but maybe they thought I was from county 'planning' and 'ordinance control' and said it was 'one day only' -- it didn't look like it.

 

But she is certainly cute, and her orbs were big as globes, so when she looked to one side, I got my shot, and a couple of more. Color was equally as good or better (I had difficulty deciding which to post, but this has more artistic integrity.

 

Hispanics in LA often carry umbrellas for the sun; it's less common in Northern/Central Coast California where fog comes often; just not in August-September the warmest months of the year (hottest temperature ever recorded occurred after Columbus Day in October . . . . when there's an 'offshore flow' of central California air. (I'm briefly -- very briefly -- in California).

 

I'm so glad you like this.

 

Now, about the camera; learn how to use 'Nikon Matrix Metering'-- the standard, but also learn how to use 'Easy Exposure Adjustment' often called 'Exposure Adjustment' which lightens or darkens each frame off a central 'neutral point of 18% gray' and takes into account situations like this photo, which wanted to expose largely for the background and which I overrode with Easy Exposure Adjustment, so it exposed her face properly.

 

Glad you're in the big time now (was it a 10 megapixel model? Doesn't necessarily matter much unless you're doing pro work).

 

John (Crosley)

hello John.

this is very good picture and even without the story it looks amazing.

I doo like her eyes and you ve done a great job capturing em, is that whide engle lens ?

I do like the story as well, it made melought a bit.

Best regards.

Pash

California is less than 40% Caucasian and more than 50% are immigrants, if I am to read news reports.

 

Those include Russian and Ukrainians, currently living for the most part in the Sacramento area, but also the state is loaded with Mexicans and those from farther south in Central America, as well as very highly-motivated Chinese and others from the Orient.

 

The homogeneity that once was the state's is no more; some lament it; others revel in its diversity -- the new (literally) melting pot, though the immigrants stay with their own culture for the first generation -- then, of course, they branch out as the children assimilate into the culture.

 

This young girl may have a future boyfriend of any race or ethnicity, possibly against mom's consent, but nevertheless, when she becomes more adult with her own mind, it'll be her school friends (boys probably) who attract her attention, and they needn't necessarily be Hispanic.

 

The great shocker to one who hasn't been there for a while, would be a trip to Los Angeles proper, especially downtown/center and South Central -- as well as East L.A. -- and with new immigrants and not much money, also comes crime.

 

Time may take care of that; we'll see. It did with the Vietnamese assimilation into California culture -- the Vietnamese youths were associated with gangs, murders, robberies, etc., but now the Vietnamese have become highly respected members of the culture.

 

It seems to be something about America, but also may say something about the quality of person who will make the long trek to a foreign land to 'seek their fortune' or simply stability and peace if they've been a refugee.

 

Your nice comment sparked this, Pash; you are always welcome here.

 

John (Crosley)

YEAH! Wouldn't dream of getting anything less.

 

That was all I was looking for was something larger than eight.

 

The farther away you get from a microwave, say in feet, meters, etc., the amount of stray microwave radiation you might be exposed to from a faulty microwave oven is reduced by 1/x times x or x squared, where x is the distance from the surface in feet, meters, etc. (doesn't matter which).

 

It's as though the risk of exposure varies as though there were a giant balloon of risk around the machine. The farther one gets away, the risk diminishes quickly. It's a law of mathematics and it applies to all nuclear radiation, as well as light, etc. (not taking into account reflections).

 

Just moving a little ways away can make a great difference.

 

That does not apply in digital camera megapixel counts.

 

To double the data from a six megapixel camera does not just involve doubling the megapixels, though it would seem so -- one looks to the area of the vertical pixels times the horizontal pixels for total 'area' of the photo.

 

The number of pixels from a 12 megapixel camera, to my recollection, does not double the amount of covered area (length times width in megapixels) from a six megapixel model, and only marginally increases it, though it is significant for some applications.

 

We've seen Canon produce a 16+ megapixel model, but Nikon topped out with its D2X(s) model(s) at 12.4 megapixels. They could go larger, but there's little sense in doing so. Between 12.4 and 16+ megapixels there's little difference.

 

And between 6 or 8 megapixels and 10, there's not much difference for practical purposes -- and between 8 and 10 megapixels it's pretty much a tossup depending as much on software for interpreting thise pixels and suppressing their 'noise' etc. as anything, which can be much more important. The additional area is of little importance except for extreme enlargements or extreme cropping quality.

 

Canon has introduced its newest, a camera with between 8 and 9 megapixels -- a pro camera, but with the ability to lay down beaucoup successive frames fast. No one is hollering about 'low' megapixel count.

 

In fact, even digicams can have 10 megapixels, these days.

 

And it seems for the present, everybody is satisified with maximum of 10 megapixels (Nikon D200, a top-rated camera, has 10.2 megapixels.)

 

But you don't want a camera that's instantly obsolete, so you get the higher megapixels -- just don't be fooled. A good photographer with a six megapixel camera can easily outshoot and outproduce a mediocre one with a 12 megapixel one.

 

;-))

 

In other words, like many parts of life, it's who you are, not what equipment you carry, after you meet minimum thresholds.

 

Enjoy shooting, Micki!

 

It'll open up whole new worlds.

 

John (Crosley)

I have just played with the wonderful world of RAW. WOW! Oh mine is a 10mg mx (in case you didn't catch that D40x (the x was up to 10 yeah)

I am so confused. Ok, not really. BUT, I did realize it takes longer to look over all the pictures and get them ready to really prepare them. BUT, that is ok.

I found a GEM in some of them. A picture of my SON and our Dog. I have worked with the low light and tried the settings and how to use the camera properly (got a picture inside a bar pretty good). Working on getting pictures in the house now without the blurring.

BOY this is hard without a FLASH. I sure hate flashes!!

So I am NOW ISO queen (ok NOT yet) and trying to learn how to adjust adjust adjust so ANY suggest you have on anything I do PLEASE feel free to let me know. E-mail me or anything. No harm will come your way from me ;) ~ you know I need all the help I can get in working with this low light (inside) and outside shade stuff AND which lens I need to eventually invest in.

I admire your stuff greatly and am working on my style (which I think is starting to surface as I have progressed).

I have two sides to me, the ARTIST and the photographer. Oh wait, they are one. BUT, I have plans (and they are already in the works) to start my business fairly fast. I have already got people interested in me doing their portraits and doing them into art. They also want me doing "Lifestyle Photo's" of their family not unlike the picture of my son or the picture of this girl here. Pictures that are REAL. Not snapshots but real pictures of their kids that are being real. I will turn some into PAINTED and some not so I am working fast on my skills.

SO, I ask for your help. Sincerely ~ by E-mail or a comment would be appreciated. The last two pictures I did which I worked on ISO were Best Friends and Anticipation . Thank you! ~ micki

The first thing is to hunt down in menus 'exposure adjustment' which really is 'easy exposure adjustment, and by that you can vary the exposure so that the WHOLE SCENE doesn't meter out to 18% grayscale -- this scene was dominated by backlight so I had to turn the 'Easy Exposure Adjustment' dial way up to get her skin tones to photograph correctly and not be shrouded in darkness because the meter is fooled by strong backlighting. This is a classic situation for using 'exposure adjustment' (look it up in the book that came with your D40x, and it won't be the same display -- regrettably that came with my D2Xs and D200s, because they have a readout on the top display that shows exactly how much over or under-exposure one has dialed in. Yours may have it in the viewfinder.

 

Learn that, and aside from Nikon Matrix Metering, you will pretty much have exposures down, especially if you take a test shot or two.

 

Also, remember with ISOs the higher the number the lower the quality of color and 'noise' -- I set my cameras at 400 and 320 normally for 'street' shooting in daylight so I can 'stop down' my aperature a little for depth of field, but if I want to 'isolate' my subject, I open up the aperture (and the shutter speed decreases proportionately -- one setting per f stop, as they are roughly equal -- f stops versus shutter speed differentials)

 

One goes up and the other goes down - automatically if you're in program mode.

 

Set your camera (I prefer to do this) in Aperture Preferred mode, instead of program mode -- you'll ruin more shots, but learn control.

 

Let me know your progress on these basic points and I can give you many more pointers on technical use of your camera. Oh, and the exposure points (there are three I recall) -- you focus using an 'active' focus point -- selected by moving the multi-purpose button on the back, and then (if you are taking one frame only), move your camera for the best composition while keeping the auto focus on that point by depressing the shutter speed one-half (it freezes auto focus -- and metering too, if set that way -- there are variations in the menus.)

 

Work on those, take lots and lots of photos and if this is unclear, I'll be happy to explain more to you.

 

© 2007 John S. Crosley, all rights reserved (in case I ever write that book, I might want to quote).

 

John (Crosley)