03 07 2010

This is such a great sign of spring to come. This little bird was sitting on a fence at Cooters Pond. He was modeling and acting like he wanted his picture taken. What a little ham!

03 06 2010 - A Barn

Headed to Santuck (the best flea market around) we were stuck in traffic. I asked my Mom to crawl into the back of her Explorer to grab my camera because I loved this barn, especially the star. She did as I asked and I rolled down the window and starting snapping. Thank goodness for traffic!

03 05 2010 Sida...again

Okay, we have a year. Sida is my most common subject. I have to take her picture all the time because she is always with me.

03 04 2010 - Playing with light

This photo was taken in my bed room. I put my SB600 flash on the ground pointing up at the vase to give it a kick of light and to emphasize the bottom side of the flowers. The vase is sitting on a stool with a plain wall behind it.

03 03 2010 - Callie

Big yawn from Callie at my house. I had a reflector on the white side and I bounced a flash off it into her mouth.

03 02 2010 - Sida again

So when I am at a loss of what to shoot or just laying around, my pets are always around and they end up being my subjects. Here is SidaLeigh again, wrapped up in my snuggie!

03 01 2010 - The Cross

This cross hangs on my cross wall in my home office. I have a collection of ornate crosses that are all grouped together and my collection started with this one. This was the first one that I got from my Grandma in Mississippi. I love it.

The picture was just a quick snap. I think I had the on camera flash on, but I jazzed it up with Elements to make it look at little different.

02 28 2010 - Baby Joseph

Meet my nephew Joseph! He was born in November and all ready he has taken the camera. This picture was taken while be was being help in his Granddad's arms. I cropped it up and played with it to make it look a little more like a portrait. The colored version may be cuter, but I like to play with black and whites.

02 27 2010 - Making Potatoes

I decided to take a picture while I was trying my hand at cooking. I am not a cook and to be honest, this was probably my first try at cooking potatoes. It went pretty well, but I am not sure if they make a good picture!

02 26 2010 - A Perfect Day

This was the perfect sunrise this morning. The sun was coming up and it was so pretty reflecting light. I was shooting in fairly low light, but it was perfect to focus on the light that was coming up and reflecting off the clouds.

02 25 2010 - Seymore and slow shutter

This is Seymore, my model cat. I took this photo while resting my camera on the coffee table in my living room so I could drag my shutter speed. I took this at f5.6 and 1.00 second for the shutter which is longer than I could ever hold still. This could have been a sharper image if I had set up on a tripod and used a remote. Even the press of a shutter can give a little blur to the image when you go slower than .60 seconds. The cute light flare is another Elements trick.

2/24/2010 - My sidekick

This is my baby, SidaLeigh, and she is my constant companion - she is my sidekick. I took this photo early in the morning while she was sitting with me on the couch in my house. I gave the background a grain treatment with Elements and I softened her fur my lowering the sharpness.

02/23/2010 My last year in my twenties - A photo 365

Well, I have finally reached the last year of my 20's. I am officially 29 years old, and I am oddly excited about it. For some reason I am looking forward to my 30's. I think it must be because I have seen so much changed and happen in the last 10 years that I am excited to see what 30 will bring. I do however want to remember and cherish this last year though so I am going to try to do a Photo 365 Blog. I have tried this once before and I failed misserably, but maybe this one will be better and I will make it more than a month!

So here is photo number 1 - it was my birthday cake at my party thrown by my parents. It was yummy, and the busyness of it made it kind of crazy cool looking. I shot it with my SB600 flash at f/3.8, 1/100 of a second, at ISO 200. 

2010 Snow Storm in Alabama

Today we got a rare treat in Alabama, we got SNOW!  If we get snow it  is usually just a dusting that does not stick, but this winter storm did good and it impressed.  Snow Storm of 2010!

By Amanda Griffin Smith

Cool Cat Callie

Are you my friend?

The End of the Day

A lazy photo drive

Working on my DAM Problem

Okay, I think I have 2/3rds of my DAM problem worked out. To bring you up to speed, the goal is to have 3 copies of any pictures I have so if something bad happens, I have them backed up. I shoot too much to store everything on my computer, so that is not an option. Right now I have all my pictures backed up on 2 external hard drives. 1 is in my possession and 1 is in my parents. But what is the 3rd solution? I keep thinking about cloud storage, but the cost seems a bit much to me. It would cost me over $40 a month to store so much data in a smug mug vault. I have however found the Google accounts and the option to purchase 400 GB of storage for $100 a year, which does not sound bad.
Maybe I have a plan. I am going to keep 1 external drive at my home, another 1 at my parents home (who I visit once a week, so could update it every week – or monthly if that works better) and then cloud storage through Google for my third level. I already use Picasa for my file management, so when I add a new file I just need to pull it up to the cloud.
I guess I will give it a go and we will see if this solution works - got to love that DAM.

God Bless,
Amanda

High Stress Over DAM

Ok, I am having DAM stress!

That's right, I said it.
DAM stands for Data Archival Management. I am not sure who coined that term, but I am experiencing stress from it. I believe I blogged early this year that I had over 20k pictures. That number is now got to be over 30k and I have added video to the mix so the Gigabytes of storage just keep growing and growing and my anxiety of storage and backups is growing just as quick. I believe it is Alex Lindsey who always says you should have 3 copies of anything for it to be properly backed up and that those 3 copies can not be in the same place. After having my house broken into a couple of months ago, you would have thought I would have learned...but no, I am still milling about debating about my strategy and what to do.
The highest point of stress for me right now is that I essentially have 1 copy on 1 external hard drive of a TON of my work. So if that drive goes bad, or burns, or whatever else, I am in deep molasses. Now that I am getting ready to go on a trip, I want to clean my SD cards, so can reuse them (oh yeah, I forgot that part, I have been buying SD cards like they are film or something, crazy I know). But I have to get my data backed up (in 3 places!).
Ok, I have to go rack my brain on this.
More to come....
God bless!

Amanda Griffin Smith