A few weeks ago, when my family was driving somewhere together, I spotted this tree and fell in love! I'm very fond of dogwoods, and especially pink and white dogwoods! I've been scouting around for a suitable tree that I could photograph for a local Arbor Day Photo Contest, and I knew I had found the perfect candidate (doubly suitable because the dogwood is our state tree!). On our way home, my family was kind enough to stop in a crossover and let me run back along the median strip until I found a good vantage point to take my picture (thankfully I had my camera with me!).
I downloaded a free trial of Lightroom 4 and set about to edit the picture. It has been a very humbling experience. My eye didn't catch some major color issues (like the overall tint of the picture) until I accidentally fixed them by playing around with the adjustment sliders.
Original Photograph:
Edited Version:
The contest closes at 4:30 tomorrow, so I think I'm done editing and tweaking. I have so many projects in my queue that I'd best move on at this point. I have pictures of cute babies to edit from the Walk for Life yesterday (and hundreds of pictures from the grand opening of a local branch of the Museum of the Confederacy from a few weeks ago...and hundreds of pictures from my pastor's birthday part from a few weeks before that...).
Oh, and I've started a second part-time job working at a church-based day care center. I worked there three half-days last week, and have no idea if or when they might call me this week. Add to that several hemming and altering jobs I just acquired from the president of a local college and his wife, and I have a pretty busy week ahead of me!
Here it is!!! Our very first short film. We shot it on my brother's Canon PowerShot IS something-or-other because I had just gotten my 60D and wasn't willing to take it out in the canoe. Haha! Anyway, about halfway through the week, we decided that it would be fun to make a little movie, so we sketched out an idea, grabbed the camera, and got to work.
Knowing the importance of planning, I had tried to engage my brothers in some pre-production, but Stephen was too impatient and wanted to get on with the actual filming. Since his participation was crucial and I couldn't afford to lose him, I cut the planning phase as short as possible. Daniel and I watched through the trailer template on iMovie that had inspired us in the first place, got an idea of what kind of shots we needed, then joined Stephen outside and got started.
I don't think it took us more than two afternoons. Even so, I got a good workout from rowing the canoe around so much! First, to transport ourselves up the lake for the "island" scenes, and then for our actual rowing scenes (which we filmed several times - back and forth, back and forth - until Daniel was satisfied with what he got on the camera).
I've learned SO MUCH since we filmed this last September, and there are things I wish I could go back and change (more variety in the camera angles when we're filming Daniel sitting on the ground, for one thing!), but that is all part of the process of becoming better at your craft. The more you learn, the more you're going to cringe when you see your past work (at least for most normal people). It's just kind of embarrassing for me to post this NOW, after I've learned more, because I don't want my filmmaking friends to think I don't know any better. I didn't know better seven months ago, but I do now. :-) And there are still SO MANY things I have yet to learn!
I would have posted this last year but I went to Purcellville to work on The Screenwriters about a week after I got home from vacation, and life has been pretty busy ever since. It wasn't until last week that I finally got around to finishing the editing. I used iMovie (since that's all we have), and I would say the biggest challenge was trying to score the film using the music available through iMovie. All the dramatic pieces weren't more than 10 seconds long. Yeah, you can see my dilemma. Definitely don't want to go through that again.
But enough talking! Kick your feet up, lean back, and watch the film! It's only a few minutes long. I hope you enjoy it! Words of encouragement and suggestions for improvement are both welcome! :-)
Last September, my brothers and I made a short film while on vacation at the lake. Halfway through the week, we got inspired, semi-planned the film, ran outside, and shot it in about two afternoons. Here's the trailer! (I can't take credit for the editing because I used an iMovie template.)
STAY TUNED! I have finally put some time into editing the film itself, and it should be published soon!
As most of my readers will remember, I did the wardrobe for a feature film last October called "Writers' Block." Well, some exciting new changes have happened in the past few months! "Writers' Block" is NOW called "The Screenwriters," and we have a gorgeous poster (designed by Mike Hodder) and a teaser trailer!
