April was a great month. Spring made itself felt. It was a nice change after the misery that was March. I found myself outside, riding my bike, enjoying the nice weather, looking at flowers, and creating lots of stuff.

This squirrel above had raided our bird feeder but I didn’t care because it gave me the perfect photo op.

Nature photos- wildlife & plants

Also along the wildlife line of things, I found this butterfly outside one day. It was vibrating it’s wings and it was basically impossible to get a really sharp shot- plus the sun was setting so there wasn’t much light.

Still, the butterfly was cool and it was good practice learning to take pictures in difficult conditions. I’m slowly figuring out all the settings on my camera.

A bird couple moved into the birdhouse I made last fall and it makes me so happy to see them and think of them all nice and snuggly in there. I put it up right outside my bedroom window, so I get lots of opportunities to see them come and go.

Our flowers are starting to bloom and I learned something new. I always thought tulips looked like this:

I had no idea that they open up when it’s sunny.

Speaking of tulips, one day S came in and said our flower fell over. I went outside to see and sure enough it was lying on the ground. This seemed very strange since I had seen it a few hours before and it had been fine.

A while later S came and asked me if I’d taken the flower. I said I hadn’t, that I was going to so I could take some pictures of it, but hadn’t had the chance yet. He said it was gone.

Did the mailman steal it when he dropped of a package? Did the lady who delivers us eggs steal it? We started coming up with theories.

Then we looked closer, and not only was the flower gone, the whole plant was gone. And there was a hole. A tunnel hole.

Apparently a gopher stole our tulip plant. I like to think that he brought the flower to his gopher wife.

It turns out that S was quite protective of our flowers and I don’t like to think at all about what happened to the gopher and his wife next.

Creative projects

I learned how to use the laser cutter at Quelab and started experimenting with it a bit.

My first real project was making little garden stakes to label my plants. I’m proud of these because they are the first thing I made that I really designed from start to finish for the laser cutter.

The first thing B did was come along to pull out my stakes.

I also made a cool step-stool that also converts into a desk for B. (You can read all about the process and see a zillion pictures of it here.) I am so proud of it. The above picture was part way through the process.

Bikes!

It’s my personal opinion that what’s in somebody’s car says a lot more about them than the type of car.

Toddler B

I save the most important for last.

Easter was exciting for me because it was his first year actually being able to participate. Once he discovered there was candy in the eggs, he just sat down in the dirt with his basket and went for it.

I just let him eat his jelly beans off the ground, but when he tried to eat chocolates with the wrapper still on, I had to intervene.

B loves his new stool. He watches everything I do. Here he is helping me run the salad spinner.

B is dressing his train cars with doll clothes. Isn’t that just the cutest?

Do you have a favorite picture out of the bunch? Let me know in the comments.

The post Favorite Photos – April 2019 appeared first on Live Hoppy.

But I’ve been enjoying these monthly photo posts I’ve started just because they give such a good wrap up for the month.

March was overall not the best month. It was snowy. It was cold. And I was sick of snowy and cold after the winter. Plus, we were all sick. Basically, I’m glad it’s over. But there were a few good things I want to remember.

I went to a painting class and came home with this painting. It was so much fun, and I love the bunny. Plus, they made it ridiculously easy.

Also along the creative lines, I was happy to make my first photo from the pinhole camera I made. I didn’t care at all about quality, I was just psyched to have a real image.

I stopped by the Little Free Library at the park before taking B to play. He was way more interested in reading the books than he was in playing. A little man after my own heart.

I’m not even sure what to make of this next one. It was a random park in Albuquerque that B and I stopped by. It also had a needle disposal box for drug addicts. Um, yeah, so I’d rather not find needles lying around at the park, but the fact that a needle disposal box is needed is kind of scary/sad.

We won’t be coming back after dark. Actually, we probably won’t be coming back at all.

That’s a wrap for March.

P.S. I now have an Instagram account @kylabendt if you want to keep up with my photos.

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This is gong to be a beginner level overview of the process to give you an idea of how it works. If it’s something you’re looking to learn, it will be enough to give you some direction to start with. Or if you’re just curious how pictures like the one of this ride-on giraffe are taken, it will provide an overview of how the process works.

What is product photography and what else are these techniques good for?

The class I took focused on taking pictures of things to list for sale online. Some of the same techniques would be good for other things like documenting work on a project or taking artistic photos.

The basic goal here is to have the picture be just of the object, not of the weird miscellaneous stuff you may have in the background of your house. It is also to really give people a good idea of what the thing looks like.

And to make it look good so they’ll want to buy it!

Have you ever wondered how people get those pictures of things that just appear to be floating on white?

I have. And this class answered my questions about it. Most of the tricks are in the setup.

Setting up the studio

The setup for this does not have to be too complicated, but a few key items are necessary to create the wanted results. One could spend a small fortune on a setup, but it’s not necessary.

All that’s really needed is a good back drop and a few lights.

The backdrop

The first trick is a good backdrop. After taking the class, this was the one thing I felt like I couldn’t live without. They make all different types, but the one my class used was a roll of paper specially designed for photography.

It features low reflectivity and a very unnoticeable texture. I ordered a roll of Savage Seamless Background Paper to start playing around with.

One thing I’ve learned in life is to try to practice any new skills I learn as soon as possible if I hope to retain the information. I took the class on a Saturday and ordered my background paper the next day.

The nice thing about a paper background is that it comes on a long roll. If the part you use is still clean when you’re done, you just roll it back up. If you scoff it up or somehow mess it up, you just tear off the bad part.

The key with setting up the paper is to have it start higher than the object and then to make sure that there is a gentle curve between where the paper is vertical and where it’s horizontal. This makes the background totally continuous without any sudden changes in lighting or shadows.

Lights! Camera! Action!

Actually, this part is just about lights.

The class talked about a few different options including using real flashes that are meant for photography. Maybe I’ll get there some day, but I’m not looking to purchase a ton of gear at the moment.

I focused on the cheap and easy option of using a couple of lamps.

The tips I took away about lighting were to:

• Use at least two lamps
• Use the brightest bulbs possible
• Use the same bulbs in all lamps for consistent light color
• Make a shade for the lamps using wax paper to diffuse the light

For my current setup, I’m just using a couple of cheap lamps I already had around. I haven’t tried out the wax paper yet. It’s supposed to help diffuse the light to prevent hard shadows.

Camera setup

The biggest idea I learned as far as camera settings was to manually set the white-balance before starting.

I had seen the white-balance setting before, but I never really learned what it did until now. And it’s so cool!

This process tells the camera that the white background is supposed to look white. Then if the lights have a yellow tint (or blue or red or whatever color), the camera will adjust everything to compensate for it.

The exact way to access the white-balance on each camera is different, but once you find the setting all you do is point the camera at the white background and have it measure off of that.

You can see that the backgrounds for the photos on this post are clean grey tones and don’t have a colored tint to them.

Now you’re ready for the Action! step. Oh. Wait. These are still photos, not video…

Editing

Once you have your photos, the last step is a little editing.

This could be done in Photoshop, Lightroom or another program. I won’t get into steps for how to do it on any specific program here, but you can always search online for how to edit the things mentioned here using your software of choice.

The four things we talked about editing were:

• White balance
• Contrast/tone
• Sharpness
• Cropping/straighten/rotate

The hope with the white balance is that setting the custom white balance on the camera does most of the work. Doing it with editing software is just to get any final tweaks.

My camera did a good enough job that I didn’t actually edit the white balance or sharpness of the photos here.

The tip I took about straightening/rotating is to aim to make the vertical lines of the subject vertical. Especially if one is looking at an object from a corner rather than straight on, the horizontal lines of the object may not appear horizontal in the photo and that’s ok.

Enjoy! Or get out there and sell!… Or whatever you want to do with your photos.

Yep, that’s it.

The photos on this post are the first ones I took using this setup. I just used a few items that were close to hand.

The whole thing went super quickly and I’m quite pleased with the results.

My photos do sort of have a double shadow thing going on which would probably be reduced if I used real flashes, was a bit more skilled with my editing or maybe if I’d rigged up some sort of wax paper shades over my lights.

But if I wanted to sell something on eBay, I feel like they would be more than good enough to show an accurate representation of a product and make it look good.

I’m happy with my photos for a first time with this sort of photography and a setup that cost less than $50.

Questions? Thoughts? Tips? Leave a comment!

Thanks to Ethan from cameradactyl.com and Quelab for the great class.

The post A beginner’s guide to good photos for selling products online or documenting projects appeared first on Live Hoppy.

Like pictures I have of just after I moved into my first apartment or of my sister’s kids when they were little. I look back at those pictures and see things I used to own and get nostalgic.

Back to the present- February here was snowy and we all had colds for the entire month so at the moment, I don’t feel particularly nostalgic looking back on it. The only silver-lining of being sick is that B gets snuggly when he doesn’t feel well. The rest of the time he just wants to go, go, go. The most positive thing from February was completing my second Whole30.

Anyway, my favorite pictures of the month…

Wildlife photography is a fun challenge. Animals can just move so fast and they tend to be flighty if you get too close. For me, it’s more about the challenge of getting a good picture than it is about the actual picture.

In February, I started a 4 week photography class at Quelab. Like old-school photography in the dark room. These are some of the very first pictures I took. It was a very fun class and I’m psyched to do more with what I’ve learned.

And now for the pictures of B…

When it comes to parenting, I try hard to keep perspective about the things that are really important. I might be lazy when it comes to dressing B. I’m not against putting his sneakers and a pair of pants on over his PJs and taking him outside. But if he wants to stomp around in a mud puddle for 10 minutes when we’re out on a walk, I find the patience to wait until he’s done and I deal with his wet shoes later.

B gets so interested in things. Once in a while I have no idea what he’s even looking at. I just love seeing his excitement for discovering all these new things in the world.

The post Favorite Photos- February 2019 appeared first on Live Hoppy.

So when making pinhole cameras was mentioned at the recent photography class I took at Quelab, oatmeal came to mind. As it turned out, the cameras we made were a tad bit more elaborate (and also much, much cooler).

I got a kit made by Ethan of Cameradactyl (who also happens to be a Quelab member and was one of the teachers for the class). The kit included wood pieces cut on the laser cutter and a few 3-D printed plastic pieces.

This is not the first camera Ethan has designed and the attention to detail was clear. All of the pieces fit together perfectly. The first step was using wood glue to stick all of the wood pieces together.

We went in the darkroom to slurp up more knowledge from Ethan on making prints while the glue dried. Then we returned to our projects to spray paint the inside black. The black cuts down on the light that reflects around inside the camera and also serves to seal off the joints where the wood pieces meet so no extra light seeps in.

Then I sanded it all down. The final step was adding a plastic knob to advance the film, a viewfinder, the shutter and what else but the pinhole itself!

Ethan showed me how to load the film and I snapped a picture so I wouldn’t forget. For real use, a second film canister goes in the other side and the film is started in it. Then when the film is advanced, it goes from one canister to the next.

The entire design is super slick while also being elegant and simple. It was so much fun to put together and I love the way the end result looks. I can’t wait to try it out.

The post Making my own pinhole camera appeared first on Live Hoppy.

Today, I got it back and it seems to be like new! Actually, I swear it’s better than it was when it was new. It used to be slow to respond when I hit the power button to turn it on or off and now it’s quicker to turn off and on which is nice. I’m so excited to have it back and really want to keep learning more about how to use it.

Despite the camera issues and not taking pictures every day, I was more mindful about taking pictures because of my goal. I know the every day stuff now will one day be the basis of my fond memories. It’s just easy to take it for granted now.

So, here are some of my favorites from this month.

B and I went to the zoo to do a bit of walking around one day. I’ve learned the hard way that zoo pictures normally don’t turn out that well. That cool animal just looks like a sad zoo animal in a cage in the pictures. But these rhinos about cracked me up. I think they’re both totally asleep and I love how the one is face-planted on a big tree stump for a pillow.

I made it out snowboarding for a day. After not going for a few years, it was totally exhausting. I snapped this picture while taking a bit of a rest.

Who doesn’t love a good cat picture?

January has been pretty snowy here. The roads are plowed eventually and the snow melts on them a bit anyway. Our driveway is another story. So far this winter, I’ve gotten my car stuck once, S’s car stuck once and once I drove S’s car into the snowbank. It’s a tricky balance between going fast enough not to get stuck and slow enough not to go sliding and I don’t seem to have mastered it yet.

The snow and the cold and the dark of winter have had me feeling a bit down lately. Especially since I know the people in Albuquerque only 20 minutes away have barely had any snow, it’s normally 10 degrees warmer there and more likely to be sunny. The whole comparison thing always gets me. But then I remember that it’s totally gorgeous here and come spring and summer and fall, we’ll have amazing weather… and those people in Albuquerque will still be 10 degrees warmer and sweltering.

We got a bird book for Christmas. I think S said these are Siskins.

And… now for pictures of B!

My mom brought me a big tub of my old stuffed animals and after I snatched out Simba, B had a blast playing with them.

B has been into climbing into and on things this month. It totally freaks me out. Sometimes he gets stuck and sometimes he falls off of things like the coffee table. But also, I want him to learn how to climb and do stuff.

The workbench was one of the places he got stuck.

B got a camel for Christmas, so we built him a house.

B is also obsessed with stealing paper towels and shredding them into itty-bitty pieces and leaving them all over the house.

And camel went on a ride around the living room.

And look! He’s doing a kid thing instead of a baby thing! He’s really drawing!

Oh, wait… no, back to just sticking everything in his mouth.

All in all, January was a pretty good month. Except for the week we all got stomach flu, but I didn’t take any pictures of that.

The post Favorite January photos appeared first on Live Hoppy.

I do take a lot of pictures of B, but some days slip by and he changes so fast. I also want to challenge myself to find other things to take pictures of and to develop my skills as a photographer.

Ironically, I have been unable to get my new camera to work recently, but I’m hoping that it is just having trouble charging the battery and that an external battery charger will solve the problem. In the mean time, I’ll just use my phone.

I’m sure I won’t post my pictures from every day, but I’d like to share some of them. I’ll start by sharing the ones from the last two days.

We have had so much snow in the last week. Yesterday I dug out a path to the compost bin and then since it was the only clear path, it was the obvious place to take B. So here are S and B posing in the snow by the compost bin. This must seem like a lot of snow to B.

Here’s another canvas print that I made a frame for. This picture is from the trails a few miles from our house.

Today I paid somebody to plow our driveway since it’s really long and there was no way I was going to be able to get my car out otherwise. The plow got down to the ground in some places. B was unimpressed when I took him out into the snow today, but was quite happy when I plopped him down in the clear area.

I am sitting in the cold, pokey, slightly wet gravel and holding my hand out so that he can pile cold, pokey, slightly wet gravel in it. I am not sure why, but it was terribly important to him to do that which meant it was terribly important to me to be obliging. Part of my parenting philosophy is that things like this are very, very important.

This is the same path that leads to the compost bin. It snowed another inch or so after I shoveled the path and this morning there were lots of bird prints on the path. I was very amused that the birds had chosen to travel on my path.

The post 2019 – Picture a day challenge appeared first on Live Hoppy.

I didn’t really think over much about the process, but it definitely went in the this is something that I have to pay somebody else to do because I am completely clueless category.

Today, I made my own canvas print all by myself.

It turns out that the word print in canvas print sort of says it all about how the photo gets on the canvas. A roll of canvas is loaded in a big printer and it prints on it pretty much just as if it was paper.

I sort of stumbled upon this discovery. I’m a member of Quelab- a hacker/maker space in Albuquerque and they have a large printer and vinyl cutter. Somebody else had sent an email asking to be trained on them so I asked to join in. I didn’t know what I needed the printer or vinyl cutter for, but figured that if I knew how to use them, I would find something.

At the training, the guy mentioned that they had rolls of canvas to print on. So a few days later, I went in to print out a few experiments.

A quick search online lead to some videos on how to frame a canvas. I had to get S’s help building my first frame, but the second one I put together all on my own. S has this cool thing that I think is called a pocket jig that drills these cool angled holes that worked really well for how I wanted to build my frame.

Attaching the canvas to the frame basically involves a staple gun and a lot of staples. One does have to make sure it’s stretched tight and the corners are a bit of a trick. (Thank you YouTube.)

The first canvas I framed turned out to be a total disappointment. It was a gorgeous picture, I was so proud of my frame… and I screwed up my math by a half inch so the frame was just a little too large and the white edge of the canvas was just barely visible on the edges. It was almost perfect, but not something I could ever hang up in my house. It would drive me nuts to look at it.

I did learn something from mistake. I adjusted my math for my second frame and added in just a little extra leeway.

Today making a canvas print goes in the I will probably never pay somebody to do this for me again category.

I love the fine control I get with doing it myself. I can make my canvases whatever size I want. If the brightness of the print is off, I can adjust it on the spot. I can make overly sturdy wood frames.

I love the feeling of accomplishment and pride in making a thing with care and attention to detail. I love the process of creation. I love having things I’ve made around the house.

(This picture I used for this came from the Pecos Wilderness on a trip you can read about here.)

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My 13 year-old nephew J really wanted to go see Ozzy Osbourne.  He likes to listen to the rock station on the radio and has been talking about the Ozzy concert for months.  I felt like it would be a great experience for him to go, so I bought S, J and I tickets. 

I’m not into big crowds, but a couple times a year I see a band is coming town that I just have to see.  Big concerts are so different from my normal routine that they always just make me feel like I have a new perspective on life afterward.  Mostly, I love my normal routine.  I also think it’s important to shake it up once in a while. 

There is nothing like a good concert just to make one feel alive.  It’s exciting.  Live music just comes with an energy that is like nothing else out there.  

To be honest, Ozzy wasn’t a performer I would have chosen to go see on my own, but after having been, I would put him on my ‘would go see again list’.  I could not have named any of his songs, but of course, when I heard them, I knew almost all of them.  War Pigs I know by heart since it’s on Guitar Hero II, but I always connected it with Black Sabbath, not Ozzy.   I did not even know that Ozzy was the singer for Black Sabbath. 

It amazes me how many people have their cell phones out to record videos and take pictures at concerts.  It seems like they pay more attention to their phones than to the actual concert.  Plus, while cell phone cameras have come a long way, they don’t have zoom lenses and it’s impossible to get good-quality pictures of something like a concert from too far away.  The people with the good tickets might have a chance, but the people back on the lawn with the cheap tickets like me might as well just put their cameras away. 

I watched the girl in front of me taking a cell phone video while dancing with her boyfriend.  I am sure it is the crappiest, blurriest, most unsteady video ever.   Seriously, just YouTube Ozzy later if you want to see what it was like.  There must be 5,000 videos of that concert all taken from slightly different vantage points. 

That said, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures.  I was really more interested in testing out my new camera than anything else.  I was so impressed with how it did.  (My camera is a Sony DSC-RX100M6.)  The zoom lens did an amazing job. 

One thing to note is that this is a 20 megapixel camera.  The above image is resized to go on my blog, but it still looks crisp and clear at a much, much larger size.  Here is the same picture cropped a bit before being resized.

The guitarist did a long solo out in the audience.  It was impossible to see what was going on from where we were standing.  I was pleased to discover that some of my pictures of it were super clear. 

Here’s a couple more Ozzy pics:

All in all, I am just ridiculously happy with my camera.  On the small camera screen, it is basically impossible to tell how good of a shot I’ve gotten.  Every time I load the pictures onto my computer and look at them on my big monitor, I am just so impressed. 

Some day, I may have to post a comprehensive review of it, but I am still learning what it does and testing it out.  I still have a long way to go understanding all of the settings, but I am making good progress.  I am so glad that I made the leap and bought a real camera instead of just relying on my phone.  These concert pics would not have been possible with my phone.  Although I do now wish that I’d taken a few pictures with my phone for comparison. 

So a few thoughts to close with.  First, if you have a bit of an interest in photography, consider making the leap and getting a real camera.  Digital cameras these days are amazing.   Second, make time for the occasional cool experience.  Whatever your favorite bands are, go see them when they come to town.  Third, take the time to think about the experiences that you are creating for others.  I had a great time seeing Ozzy and I’m glad I went, but I am even more glad that I was able to take my nephew.  I am sure he will remember it for a very long time. 

The post Ozzy Osbourne – concert pics and thoughts on the new camera appeared first on Live Hoppy.

Today, I had plans to go out hiking with baby B this afternoon.  But it felt hot and sunny when we walked up the street to the mailbox, so I didn’t feel like hiking.  OK, it was probably only 80 degrees out and I probably should have just gone.  Since I didn’t go this afternoon, after B was in bed, I headed out for a quick hike before the sun set.  By then, it was actually very pleasant out.

Of course, I had to bring the new camera along.

I have been focusing on trying to learn about the aperture settings.  For my simple purposes, this controls how much of the image is in focus.  For example, a large aperture is used in my portraits of baby B where he is razor sharp, but the background is blurred out.  A smaller aperture is often used in landscape photography when one basically wants the whole image to be in focus.

Just getting this basic principle down has opened up a whole world of options for me.

Here’s a picture of the trail I was on with the mountains in the background.  Have I mentioned recently how crazy fortunate I feel to live 5 minutes away from this trail system?

It was so gorgeous out and I easily could have stayed out for another couple of hours if it wasn’t rapidly getting dark.  (I was very impressed with how my camera did with the low light levels after the sun sunk below the horizon.)

A larger aperture also lets more light into the camera which makes it easier to get sharper images.  The picture of the tree above was taken at f/2.8.

I love the effect of a subject that is in super sharp focus with a blurred background.  While aperture has a lot to do with this, I’m finding it to be related to zoom level as well.  For reasons I don’t yet really understand, standing further back and zooming in makes the contrast between the sharp focus of the subject and the blurred background much more pronounced.

I’m sure any experienced photographer knows all about the explanation and some day I will too.  For now, I am just having so much fun experimenting and learning about all of this.

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