PhotoAbuse – The Blog

As the 4th of July rapidly approaches I start thinking about how I’m going to top last years pictures. I start sniffing around the interwebs looking for new ideas. Here are a few articles that may or may not interest you:

Unique Fireworks photos using Lensblur
Photographing Fireworks in your backyard
How to photograph Fireworks displays

This isn’t even close to being all there is out there but it’s a start! Have fun this weekend and be careful. If you think good photography is tough, it’s even tougher with one eye.

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What a fun weekend!

It sure was hot and humid but fun nonetheless! Some good baseball on Saturday, the annual Memorial Day picnic at Uncle Jacks on Sunday, and a Memorial Day event at City Hall on Monday.

Uncle Jacks party is always fun. Good weather for a picnic. Everyone seemed to have a great time. I do think I ate my weight in snacks though!

A storm rolled through around midnight Sunday and the light show woke me up but the lightning was mostly cloud to cloud so I didn’t break out the camera. But the rain! It really came down bigtime.

I woke up early on Monday and had my coffee out on the balcony. The skies had cleared a little and it was a very pleasant morning. I took a quick walk over to the park district to check out the retention pond before I went to the Memorial Day event over at the Tinley Park village hall. This retention pond is one big pond. We go sledding there in the winter and just as I thought, it was filling up. Made a few pictures and headed over to Tinley. Read the rest of this entry »

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Whoa! This has been a quick year. Seems like St. Patricks Day 2009 was just last week and here it is again!

It seems that no one celebrates on the actual day any more though for some reason. On Saturday I went to 2 parades. One in Oak Forest, and the other in the Brookside Glen subdivision in Tinley Park. It was raining for both of them. But on the upside, my camera still seems to work and my bags will eventually dry out.

The parade in Oak Forest was a total surprise. I have lived in and around there for most of my life and cannot remember them having a parade on Cicero Avenue since I was a little kid.  This year, they closed Cicero and put on a great parade!  Even in the drizzling rain a boatload of people showed up. I thought that was very cool.

The parade itself was impressive. 90+ floats and lasted over an hour. It had everything you could ask for….Irish dancers, local businesses of all kinds, some good looking floats, politicians, and sheep. There were all kinds of things going on after the parade at the local pubs and restaurants too. Pretty cool if you ask me. Everyone seemed to be having a great time. I really hope that they keep doing this. It was the best thing Oak Forest has done in years. A tip of the hat to them! Read the rest of this entry »

Geez. The last month really flew by! Seems like Thanksgiving was just last week and now Christmas is in the rearview mirror.

The Blackhawks continue winning. The Bulls…well…they show up. And the Bears. I haven’t even watched an entire game since week 4. Too hard to watch. The Cubs have a new owner and finally got rid of Milton Bradley. The White Sox haven’t done all that much yet. Thank God for the Hawks. This could have been a really long winter with no sports!

I haven’t been making that many pictures lately. Now that my sister is into photography, she takes all the family stuff. She does a much better job at it too! I have shot some high school basketball and got a chance to go to the United Center to photograph a pretty good high school game there. That is a great place to shoot. Talk about good lighting! Sure does make going back to shoot in the gyms around here a little tough. Other than that, not a whole lot of pictures for some reason. It’s getting a little boring going out by myself shooting lately. Must be the weather.

I have however, been spending way too much a lot of time on the ole ‘puter. I have been a subscriber to Kelby Online Training for awhile and have been catching up on a lot of video classes there. Check it out if you have time. Good stuff. Better for you than Farmville I’m thinking. I have also been getting used to the new beta version of Adobe Lightroom. I use Lightroom to upload and organize my pictures. I also do most of my basic editing there. I have learned a lot this year about editing in Lightroom and most of the time now, that’s all I need to do to photos. I have plugins that allow me to post to facebook and Flickr with the click of a button. How can it get easier than that? It looks like LR3 will make things even easier.

If you don’t use Lightroom but would like to check it out, you can download the beta version for free here. You can use it free until April 30, 2010. Definitely worth a try.

Well, that’s it for now. Time to be lazy and surf the interwebs for awhile…….

Go Hawks!

More pictures here!

I hope everyone has a great Halloween! Be careful out there and watch out for all the little gremlins running around!

It’s that time of year again! Halloween is less than a week away and everyone is going to be taking pictures of the little ones as they head out looking for treats. And don’t forget about the official portrait of those  pumpkins you carved! Do you want your pictures to look a little better than the rest of the crowd? Darren Rowse at the Digital Photography School has some great tips on how to make your Halloween photos better. Worth a look!

Darren Rowse is a good writer and shares some great photography tips every week. I have subscribed to his feed and it’s nice to read. I always find something helpful. My problem is remembering them all!  Probably a good idea to subscribe while you are there.

On Halloween night I usually go out and shoot like crazy with no real plan. This year I’m going to follow a plan of sorts and with the help of Darren’s tips, it won’t look like I went out and shot like crazy! Hopefully I will make some good pictures this year. I for one, can’t wait. This is one of my favorite holidays!