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Newer, Better, Stronger, More Mature

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Newer, Better, Stronger, More Mature

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Introducing the New & Improved Soapboxville

July 13, 2015 by carol anne Leave a Comment

Welcome to the new and improved and newly updated Soapboxville.

 

Thanks to a lot of help from the hubs, a month off of Facebook, and all that I learned during the WordPress.com Blogging 101 course I’ve changed the look of and streamlined Soapboxville with the intention of better showing off my photos.

 

Don’t worry, I still intend to write, and to opine, and to ramble, and to rant; this update just allows me to share larger photos while continuing to write, ramble, and opine.

 

To celebrate the completion of renovations I’m sharing some of my photos from a walk I took on May 22nd while I was in Philly to shoot the Swann Memorial and Love Park fountains.

 

 

Love Park Fountain

Love Park Fountain

 

 

 

Swann Memorial Fountain Snippet in Black & White

Swann Memorial Fountain Snippet in Black & White

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: Photos Tagged: fountains, Love Park, philadelphia, Philly, Photography, Photos

Stepping Out of my Photographic Comfort Zone

June 17, 2015 by carol anne Leave a Comment

Okay class, today we’re going to play show and tell. Since starting this Blogging 101 exercise I’ve told you I love taking photos, hell it’s even in my About Soapboxville page, but I haven’t shown you any of my photos.

Make no mistake about it; these are not, by any means, the best of my bunch. Practice makes perfect and I almost never get to take portrait photos, my normal photographic focus is landscapes, and oceans, and the occasional city skyline when I get the chance.

The following photos represent me being brave and stepping out of my comfort zone, they represent what is now becoming a passion. Shooting portraits is hard; people expect things of you, landscapes do not. People expect things like well-composed, bright, and clear photos they can use for things like engagement announcements, their yearly photos with the Easter Bunny, and beautiful photos of their beautiful newborn baby girl. You don’t have to worry about disappointing oceans, there is nothing I’d rather not do than disappoint anyone.

Foot

This first photo is from my very first portrait shoot, which was an assignment for the digital photography 101 class I was taking two years ago. One of our last assignments was to shoot portrait photos, so using Annie Leibovitz’s Disney Dream portraits as my inspiration I enlisted my best friend, headed out to a local park and spend a wonderful afternoon shooting photos of my beautiful best friend in a beautiful gown.

Engaged Love Hands

This second photo is from an engagement photo shoot I did for my then soon-to-be sister-in-law and brother-in-law at Love Park in Philadelphia. Not wanting to disappoint them with mediocre photos I bought a new camera and learned to do spot color in Gimp to add color back in to this photo.

Lunch with the Easter Bunny

This next photo (above) is probably one of my most proudest achievements. With two weeks to go I was asked to be the photographer at a fundraiser Lunch with the Easter Bunny benefit for a local girl suffering from Leukemia. The professional photographer wasn’t available to shoot the photos so I was asked to pitch in and take the photos. People were paying for these photos, this was a first for me so I freaked out, bought my first speedlight, and read, read, read, and read some more, then practiced, practiced, and practiced some more. I was so worried about disappointing the families paying to have their children’s picture taken with the Easter Bunny or hurting the fundraising effort by providing substandard photos. As it turns out, buying that speedlight was a great idea because as it turned out the photos with the Easter Bunny station was set up way in the back corner of the room with no lights at all.

Love Makes a Family

And this last photo is of my very beautiful newborn baby cousin’s feet being cradled in her mommy’s and daddy’s hands. I could have done a better job with this one; I accidentally cut off some of her daddy’s hands.

So, there you have it class, my new but not often indulged passion, portrait photography.

Posted in: Photos Tagged: #Blogging 101, Photography, Photos, portait photos, portraiture

Philadelphia Skyline & Blurred Traffic (working on long exposures)

December 26, 2014 by carol anne Leave a Comment

"Philadelphia Skyline"

Heavily edited version of photo below (click to make me bigger)

"Philadelphia Skyline"

Completely unedited photo, 30-second exposure (click to make me bigger)

"Blurred Traffic"

Heavily cropped, 60-second exposure (click to make me bigger)

Posted in: Photos Tagged: long exposures, Photography, Photos, skylines, skyscrapers

NaBloPoMo 2014: Tales from the Embarrassing Side (Birding Ain’t Easy)

November 25, 2014 by carol anne Leave a Comment

"Blue Jay in New Jersey Backyard"


Okay, so here’s where I do some sharing. I’m pretty shameless and self-deprecating so I find this more hilarious and less embarrassing. Just like when I wrote daily about my journey through cancer treatments I write to share, comfort, and inform. The unknown is scary and it’s rather humbling to have to ask for help. Knowledge and wisdom are gifts, sometimes hard-fought-for gifts, but gifts nonetheless.


I hate not knowing something and I hate having to ask for help even more. I’m neither brilliant nor particularly skilled at any one thing but if I know something or I can make your way easier I make sure to do just that. Like I said, I’m not particularly brilliant or skilled, so I write what I know and understand. If by honestly telling my truths I can help someone along that way that’s a complete bonus.


So now then, on to today’s story…


As I told you earlier this month, I’m a novice birder. And as I showed you yesterday I randomly found two pretty good photos of a Red-bellied Woodpecker that I took years before I even knew it was a Red-bellied Woodpecker. So I spent some time this morning looking through more old photos to figure out if I have any more photos of beautiful birds that I didn’t know the names of at the time. As it turns out I do. I’ll share the American Goldfinch and whatever other photos I come across during my search later this week.


Today’s photo of what I now know is a Blue Jay was taken on January 5, 2010. It is probably one of the first, if not the actual first photo I’ve ever taken of a Blue Jay, or for that matter, any bird. It’s not particularly good because it has its back to me. I took this shot for that exact reason so I could get a good look at its details.


I’m a city girl, born and raised in South Philly, where there aren’t too many birds other than pigeons and an assortment of sparrows. So when I saw my first Blue Jay visit our backyard birdfeeder I was very excited and very alarmed. I was sure it was someone’s pet that got loose from its cage. It just had to be, right? There are no blue birds in New Jersey, right? Certainly nothing this bright and spectacular lives outside of the rainforest or the Amazon, right? This is someone’s exotic bird, right? I called the hubs at work and told him there was an escaped exotic bird eating at our backyard feeder. *laughs* I wanted to show him the pretty escaped bird, but as it turns out the pretty blue bird was both wily and elusive so it took some time and some doing to get good photos of the fugitive bird.


I thought once I got a few good shots I would post them on our township’s Facebook page in the hopes that the owner of the exotic, and likely freezing to death, bird would come rescue it before January’s cold killed it. *laughs* I’m a little dippy, but I love animals. Thank God I Googled New Jersey blue birds before actually posting a lost bird post. *shakes head*


But now, thinking back, I know now this is where my true love of birding began. Sure I happily fed the backyard birds and took pictures of the pretty red and yellow birds, but it didn’t go any deeper than that. Tracking, and photographing, and researching the elusive and exotic blue bird excited and captivated me, it gave me purpose; learning that Big Blue was in fact not lost or exotic but instead a Jersey resident made me want to identify more.

Posted in: Photos Tagged: birders, birding, birds, learning as I go, Photography, Photos

NaBloPoMo 2014: Fallen Leaves on Jenn’s Trail

November 16, 2014 by carol anne 2 Comments

We spent Friday at “the brig”. It was a bright, crisp, and beautiful day. My foot is finally on the mend so we were able to explore a little bit more on foot. We went there hoping to meet our goal of spotting a Bald Eagle and maybe finally catching a glimpse of the the turkey that has been seen along Jenn’s Trail. Unfortunately neither goal was met on Friday, but Jenn’s Trail was gorgeous enough to make up for not spotting a turkey or an an eagle and I still have faith that we’ll get to see both before the end of 2014.


I’ll be back tomorrow with more photos, including a shot or two of the dragonfly and praying mantis we spotted.




"Fallen Leaves on Jenn's Trail at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge





See more unedited photos at Straight-Out-of-the-Camera Sunday



Posted in: Photos Tagged: "fall foliage", Autumn, Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, fall, fallen leaves, Jenn's Trail, Leaves, My Sunday Photo, Photography, Photos
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