X is for X-ray Art

Tulips by Coopr on deviantArt

Ok, so I guess most of us in this challenge are struggling a bit today - without 'cheating' and using Xmas or Xtreme or various other common abbreviations, it's taken me days to come up with this but I hope you'll think it's worth it!

Judy Stalus on Etsy.com

X-rays, in case you didn't know, are just an extreme end of the light spectrum and in its' widest sense, counts as photography. Radiation aside, a huge variety of objects can be photographed this way and then , if you want to, treated or colorised in Photoshop to make a beautiful, intricate and often fascinating piece of art.

Obviously this is a very specialised field and the equipment, training and safety aspects make it beyond most of us normal photographers.


I've found a few of my favorite images to show you though - some are x-ray like rather than actual x-rays but it just shows what a little ingenuity can do and still make beautiful art! There's even calendars available with lots of them in one place. There are only a few practicing xray photographers so it's still a very unusual field.

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S is for Squidoo

Unusual Angles

Now, in case you are wondering what on earth a squidoo is, I shall tell you! Squidoo is a website for anyone who wants to write an article or multiple articles but doesn't necessarily want to start a whole blog. It's a publishing platform with a vibrant community and a great side effect of this is the ability to earn a bit of pocket money too.

The beauty of Squidoo is how simple it is to build a single page, called a lens, to write about almost anything you want to. There are some subjects to avoid such as anything illegal (d'uh!), medical, diet or health products, adult content and copyright fraught areas too but for most ordinary people, these won't be attractive topics anyway!

I've enjoyed making lenses over at Squidoo, mainly for my photography topics (10 Tips for Great Flower Photos or How to Shoot The Moon) that don't really fit here or over on Auction House Addict (my WoW gold making blog) but there are a few 'written to order' lenses too.

Craft or home making lenses do really well over there and if you enjoy browsing Pinterest you may have seen some of the great recipe lenses already. My How to Make an Ice Bowl lens did really well last summer and I'm hoping it will bounce back up the ranks again for this summer!  

Connecting my love of travel with photography and writing has proven to be a successful topic for me too - I have won some on-site awards for a few of my travel lenses, including my favorite Places to Visit in Thailand! I just pulled together some of my Thai holiday photos and threw some words in as it was a weekly topic challenge with a deadline but it turned out so well.

Topiary Elephants in Thailand

Squidoo run a club called Rocket Squids which I highly recommend for beginners. It's designed around a weekly challenge topic for a lens with hints and tips to make the best lenses you can. There's a separate area of the forum with more experienced Squids designated as helpers, to answer any questions you may have.

The site has been through some drastic changes and tough times over the last year or two and with my measly 29 lenses, I have seen a drop in my earnings but I also decided to back off a bit and to let the dust settle. Another great thing about Squidoo is the residual income - now I'm not saying you don't have to work at it, you most definitely do need to work if you want to make cash but the work you do now will probably still be paying you a bit next year.

If you do your maths and work it for a year or two, how much could still be dribbling in to your paypal account in 3 years time? The potential is definitely there for those willing to learn and work it. Personally I've been a bit distracted for the last two years so I haven't made the most of it.

Squidoo also has an agreement with Amazon so if you are one of the unlucky Americans who can't become an Amazon affiliate because of the State you live in, Squidoo might be a partial answer for you. Each lens is allowed up to 20 related Amazon products although that is overkill for most lenses. You sadly don't get the full Amazon commission (Squidoo has to make some profit!) but the more you sell via your lens, the higher ranking you get on the site and therefore the higher payout from the text ads system.

Would I recommend Squidoo solely as a way to make money? Honestly? Not really, it's about so much more than that but if it clicks with you and you enjoy writing  and the community aspect, the potential for extra cash is most definitely there! It's not a get-rich-quick scheme and it will take time and effort but from some of the earnings articles I've seen from other lensmasters, it could have quite a nice effect on your paypal balance!

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K is for Kenya

Kenyan Landscape

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to visit Kenya for a 7 night safari tour. We visited multiple game parks over the 7 days, often travelling across unmade roads and jiggling around in the van like jumping beans on a loudspeaker! It was definitely an experience although perhaps one that isn't for everyone!

For me though, watching the landscape, towns and tiny villages as we passed, gave me a better sense of the people and country than if I had flown from park to park. We had regular rest stops, often at dingy, dirty tourist trap Souvenir Shops but the locals are not silly! The bathroom facilities in these places are sparkling clean and smelled of bleach & pot pourri - all for the rich tourists passing through.

Lion Cub

The downside of these wonderful bathroom facilities was their placement - often at the rear of the souvenir shop and as a salesperson greeted you the moment you stepped inside, I always felt like I had to buy something.

The hardest part was haggling over price when all you really want to do is get to the bathroom! I hate haggling at the best of times so by about the 3rd day, we'd devised a cunning plan - one of us would keep them talking whilst the other would dash to the bathroom then we'd swap!

I'm one of those people who likes to talk to anyone though - I had no idea of the palpitations I was causing our driver as I stood, chatting to maybe 4 or 5 sales guys - all of them over 6 foot tall usually.

A family friend summed it up later when we told the story - 'She's not happy for the day until she's spoken to a stranger!' When I think about that, I realise that yes, I do stop & chat with almost anyone I come into contact with! I guess I'm one of those annoying people at the grocery store checkout who always has a few words to say to the cashier, slowing her down and driving you crazy in the line behind me!

Old Bull Elephant

Anyway, back to my Kenya safari - the best bit was the animals of course! As much as I love people, animals are also very high up in my list of loves and having just bought a new super duper camera especially for the trip, I went to town on taking photos at every opportunity. I filled all my memory cards and had to buy extras while I was there - that was an expensive lesson to learn! Always buy them at home where the prices are reasonable & take way more than you expect to use!

I came home with over 2000 photos but as many were taken whilst moving, that included many useless shots. I did end up with over 1500 decent pictures though, some of which I submitted to my microstock portfolios and a few in my Zazzle shop. The lion cub above is probably my favorite of the whole bunch though - he was only about 15 feet away from us and with a zoom lens, I managed to get this portrait of him.

If you'd like to read more or see more of my Kenyan images, I wrote an article over at Squidoo about my wonderful Kenyan Safari. I've also written a few other articles over there if you're curious!

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G is for Greek Islands

Yacht at dusk, Keri Beach, Zante

I've been lucky enough over the years to travel a fair bit around Europe and so far have visited 3 of the Greek Islands, Kos, Rhodes and Zante. Sadly I was ill for much of the Rhodes holiday and it was so long ago, I don't have any digital photos.

Kos was a wonderful trip and although it was pre-digital camera, I do have a few images from that trip but they are faded and tatty now. I had a leak in the attic where all my old photos were stored so I lost many memories that day, especially as I didn't know about the leak straight away.

Zante however, is a different story! I was fully into my photography by then and have splashed out on a full digital SLR set-up. My images from Zante are some of my best sellers on various sites and this one in particular always gets the same comment!

Can you guess what almost every person says when seeing this picture for the first time?

'ooh, that looks like it's floating!'

I always laugh and say it is a boat after all but then they flounder & fluff, trying to explain what they mean. It makes me smile every single time.

That water was crystal clear and this is only one of many great shots I took that day. I even went for a paddle later in the afternoon but I soon regretted it - it was icy cold to the point of my toes being numb within just a few minutes! Considering the air temperature was almost 80F (27C), I never expected it to be quite so cold!

You can see lots more of my Zante images over at my Squidoo page where I wrote an article about Places to Visit on Zante which is just one of my travel related photography articles. I also write other articles there when the urge strikes me - it doesn't earn me a lot these days but I did quite well there to start with.

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F is for Food

If you follow me on Twitter (@NevAHAddict), you'll know that I post a fair few pictures of food - usually quite bad ones taken on my phone or iPad but one of the areas of photography that I'm really interested in is food and food styling. I've done a few images over the years for my stock portfolio and some even sell quite well but one of my goals for this year is to get my photography blog going again.

With my limited space to set up a studio area for larger projects, food and flower photos an ideal subjects but with very different skills required. I've done a lot of flower photography in the past - I love the variety of shapes and textures they bring as well as colours of course. Unfortunately, flower photos are over-represented in the microstock world as they are often the first subject new photographers try their skill with. Flowers don't move or run away when you try to photograph them (unless you're outside and it's windy of course!) so they make perfect subjects.

I actually taught myself about shutter speeds, apertures and depth of field with just a single flower. I spent an afternoon shooting the same flower from hundreds of different angles with varying settings. As it was my first digital camera with adjustable settings, I could take 50 shots then load them onto the computer and examine them on a large screen. Each digital file also saves the camera settings in the EXIF data so I could see what the changes in settings were doing to the final image.

Food on the other hand is much harder to get right. If it's cooked food, you have to know how to cook it just right and you have to shoot it before it cools too much. Lukewarm food rarely looks attractive even to the naked eye but to a camera in close up, it looks even worse!

One of the people I met over on the istock forums many years ago is now a successful food photographer and also an author. When I stumbled over her Food Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots book, I recognised the name and went to Amazon to have a peek at it. Needless to say, I ended up buying it and when it arrived a few days later, I devoured it in a few hours.

I haven't had a chance to really test out her suggestions and tips yet - I have a lot of boxes to clear out & move before I get my table top studio set up and until now, I haven't been well enough to tackle them. I'm getting there though so I have high hopes to start producing some new images very soon.

I can already tell that I'll be replacing my boxes of stuff from my old life with boxes of props and backgrounds though - so that's another reason to de-clutter before I get started! I know the contents of this photo are in a box here somewhere - just a collection of bits I bought on one trip to a boot sale on a Sunday morning!

With the warmer weather coming, I'll be scouting secondhand shops, charity shops and boot sales on a regular basis but I need to have some ideas for settings before I just buy random stuff otherwise I'll be overflowing with props before I know it! I also need to learn to cook some more unusual recipes - most of my current cooking is very much stews, casseroles and stir fries - none of which are very photogenic!

I also have to stop myself buying cookbooks just to drool over the pictures! My Mum is already saving magazine pages for me for ideas and I have a nice collection of bookmarks on my PC. Am I prepping too much and not actually getting it done? Yeah maybe but that's an F word for a different post - focus is not my strongest attribute but I'm working on that too!

PS All images in this post are mine - Arty Allsorts was the name I used on my Etsy shop and for Flickr :)

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IntPiPoMo - Preliminary Wafflings!

Orange Rose © Helen Shorey (me!)

Ok so it's 16 days into November & I promised myself I'd spend most of this weekend catching up & prepping some posts including the IntPiPoMo that Jojo at Admiring Azeroth is organising. That means I need to post about 3.5 screenshots a day until the end of November to hit the target of 50 - that didn't sound too bad, did it? Well it didn't, until I realised that 50 shots of the Auction House, Mailbox & Bank in Ironforge wasn't going to make for very interesting viewing! Oh for the exciting life of an Auction House Addict!

So what shall I do? I'm still hoping to get my Alt Weeks finished so I've started a new baby Shaman & am going to spend a little time leveling her a bit this weekend - that should give me some screenshots to post. Then I should go & say hello to my abandoned Warlock - she's still sitting in Ironforge too so she won't be much help towards the screenshots total unless I take her out & about. At level 50 something though, she'll be questing in a totally different area to the baby Shaman. Then there's my level 90 Warrior sitting in Pandaria somewhere - she'll be easy to take out & about & Pandaria is so photogenic, it shouldn't take too much to get some really beautiful images.

Now I'm going to cheat a little bit too - it's actually International PICTURE Posting Month and as I'm a keen photographer as well as a blogger & WoW player, I thought maybe I could post some of my photos instead of screenshots. I sell my photographs as Microstock images & have a small Zazzle shop too.

I have just bought a new Photography book from Amazon which arrived this morning! Food Photography - From Snapshots to Great Shots is written by an online acquaintance of mine from a few years ago. Nicole & I started selling our images as Microstock around the same time but I never took the chance to make a career of it. Nicole has been doing really well so when I saw her name on this book, I had to have a look. All I can say is - the pictures in the book look edible on the page! I hope I can learn & improve my own images across many genres with the help of the techniques & tips in this book!

So! Enough faffing here - I have a baby Shaman to level a bit & some screenies to take to show you all :)

have a great Saturday

Nev

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