I will take time here again to link to the national's web page, but since it generates random images and notes, there's no guarantee it will tell you and show you what it does me.
a few things I've learned today:
from kristin, on me crying last night over being a lousy photographer all of a sudden: don't forget it's not a judgment on your personality, intelligence or talent, it's a learned skill. fuck, I needed that this morning. I transfered all 788 - no, that is not a typo - all seven hundred and eighty eight photos from both okkervil river shows, and my settings were wrong. off. terrible. and between that, and missing my parents, and forgetting to wash my sheets - well, I was just done for. all of a sudden, I was an awful person, with no skills or talents, and that kristin and everyone at the station and everyone I know is only nice to me and compliments me because they're being polite. and my pictures suck. and I suck. and I'm a charity case, and I'm going to die (eventually), old and alone, surrounded by my forty four cats.
I have to take a moment here to re-state how much I love the decemberists, and how annoyed I am at how freaking expensive the tickets are. grrr. I can hear colin meloy all singing out the side of his mouth on the radio right now, and I lament. greatly.
then I learned that I'm having PMS. I had it right before I got here, so I know every month around the anniversary of my arrival, well, it's also an anniversary of other proportions. so I got to lean on that, which made everything, while still real, less exaggerated.
then I went online and learned a low-light shooting formula from this guy, on his blog. bizarre, the amount of random information that comes up when you search for some technical information and then you throw in "gig" or "music" to the mix. so, what he said was to go aperture priority, push it as low as you can, stay wide angle on your shots, since you're close enough most times if that's the kind of shit you're shooting, and then you can stay on a lower film speed. light adjustment, if necessary, can be addresses from holding down your Av button and shifting from -2 to 2 on that little ruler scale.
now, I may not know exactly what all of that means, but I get it enough, and made it work enough taking pictures of my boot moving under my desk in the dark to know that I have a starting formula, at the very least. and between that, and reminding myself to register for the UW all day sunday canon class for $82.00, I think I've got a start well back on the road to being Good Enough. better than that, actually. I will be Awesome. like kristin when she's stumped on something really hard, and she's trained herself to get excited from how good it's going to be when she figures it out - I am so excited. I am so awesome. I am really, really excited and awesome.
the new math is, in fact, treason.
other things I learned today:
* that airborne does seem to be having some helpful effects at staving (sp?) off my pending sickness.
* that another way to describe your lactose intolerance is to refer to yourself as a "lactard", or, in our case, a "lactzker" I suppose, although it doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
*that my boots look a lot better / shinier / brighter after applying some saddle soap to them (hey, it's only been a few years, and how was I supposed to know???)
and to wrap on the photo stuff:
*when all else fails, make sure you use your flash on a few shots and then you can always deliver some satisfactory black-and-whites. just in case.
it's noon already. shit. I need more coffee.
xx
vvb
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