Moving Around

By KristaCraft | Published April 4, 2012

It’s been awhile since I’ve given my blog (or the rest of my site, for that matter) any attention. My husband and I were busy packing up and moving from Denver to the Los Angeles area. That was a big ordeal, made even bigger by the fact that neither of us had ever made a big move to another state. We had lots of help though, which made things better. So now almost all of the boxes are unpacked and I am once again connected to the outside world now that we have an internet connection in our home. I know I say it a lot, but I really will try to update more frequently. If there is even anyone reading this. Hmm.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Changing Directions

By KristaCraft | Published January 25, 2012

So I’ve decided to re-work this site. Again. I am starting to lose count of how many changes it has gone through since I bought the domain. But I just roll with it. While my posts will still include my photography, since I’m passionate about so many other things I thought they should be included too. So I will be blogging about a mix of stuff, and hopefully that will inspire me to post more. The funny thing is that my first post of my re-worked site is about…Photography! Ha.

I work in a building that used to do a lot of photo processing, up until about two years ago. We’re getting ready to move to a different location soon, and my boss decided to sell as much unused stuff as we could. So that meant almost all of the old darkroom equipment. After a lot of research and conversations with my equally photography-loving (and handsome) husband, we decided to buy whatever we could from the place, because as my father-in-law pointed out, opportunities like this do not come along often. So as of a few hours ago, we are now owners of the following:

An Omega Super Chromega D Dichroic II enlarger
Three lenses ranging from 50mm to 150mm
Negative carriers for 35mm and 4×5 film
Two easels
A grain magnifier
A safelight

Not to mention the badass 4×5 view camera that I found too.

We just have to hand my boss a (smaller than expected) wad of cash and it’s ours to keep! We also got a sweet coffee table out of the deal, but that’s besides the point.

While I love my DSLR and the things that are possible with digital photography, there is a certain magic about darkrooms that I have always loved, and was saddened by how quickly it is disappearing. I hope that it makes a comeback (the guy at Denver Pro Photo told me their film sales have been increasing, so maybe there’s hope).

Anyways, hopefully we’ll get it all set up soon and I can have a bit of that darkroom magic all to myself.

Posted in Photography | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Grass in the Sunset

By KristaCraft | Published October 4, 2011

Living in Colorado, I see some beautiful sunsets, and I try to photograph most of them, because each one is different, with different colors and clouds. I’ve been experimenting with silhouettes recently, and I really like the effect.

f/5.6, 1/50 sec, 124 focal length

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Something Different

By KristaCraft | Published September 30, 2011

Just to mix things up today, I thought I would post a photo that I took two years ago while on a trip to Long Beach, New York. I used a 35mm Minolta Maxxum 50 camera with Kodak T-Max 400 ISO film. Unfotunately, I don’t know my exact camera settings, so next time I’ll write down exactly what settings I use.

Unlike the rest of my film, I didn’t develop this roll myself, and I believe that the place that developed it didn’t do it right, and my negatives came back with very low contrast. I learned my lesson, and the next time I use my Minolta, I will develop my film myself. But thanks to Photoshop, I was able to up the contrast and make the photo look a bit more balanced.

I enjoyed looking through all of my old negatives, which I now have on disc. I learned a lot when I was in a film photography class, and I miss being in a darkroom regularly. Someday soon I will try to get out and take more photos on film and see what happens. I had the opportunity to use a darkroom a few months ago and I had a lot of fun, so I definitely want to do it again soon!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Hummingbird

By KristaCraft | Published September 21, 2011

Sorry for the monthlong absence, I was off getting married and enjoying my honeymoon, then after getting back to reality, I was getting settled in my new home. So now that things are settling down a bit, I should be able to start posting a little more regularly now.

A few days ago I went across the street to get a photo of some beautiful purple flowers set against golden-yellow grass, and I got a pleasant surprise…

f/5.6, 1/400 sec, 300mm focal length

I took about twenty photos of the hummingbird, but I only ended up with two that were actually in focus. Those little birds move so fast! I got some good practice with using my manual focus, though, which I’m trying to do more of and relying less on autofocus. So I learned more about how I handle my camera, and got a pretty nice photo out of it, too.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Butterflies

By KristaCraft | Published August 19, 2011

Last weekend I took a trip to the Butterfly Pavilion, which I hadn’t been to in over ten years. It was smaller than I remembered, but I had a lot of fun. I took my camera with my 70-300mm lens, which was a great, great help in taking photos of the gorgeous butterflies that were flying around. I got a lot of comments on my lens, mostly from people who were trying to take pictures with their cell phones. As usual, I took many photos but picked one of my favorites for this post.

f/5.6, 1/20 sec, 252mm focal length

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Feeling Colorful

By KristaCraft | Published August 9, 2011

I was wandering the streets of downtown Denver last week (the same day I took the picture in the previous post), and I had a lot of fun. It was nice just wandering around with no real goal, and just photographing whatever I felt needed to be photographed. I walked by a lot of street vendors, and this display of sunglasses really caught my eye. It’s simple, but I like it, and that’s one of my goals when I’m out shooting.

f/5.6, 1/50 sec, 221mm focal length

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Urban

By KristaCraft | Published August 2, 2011

I’m entering another photo for Photojojo‘s Twitter challenge. Today’s theme is “Urban.” I happenend to be wandering around downtown Denver today, so I took the chance to come up with an urban sort of photo. I ended up taking this photo as my significant other and I were running for the train. If I had more time, I would have experimented more, but I actually very much like the outcome.

f/5, 1/160sec, 80mm focal length

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Lens Test Drive

By KristaCraft | Published July 28, 2011

Tonight I had the opportunity to borrow a lens that I’ve been thinking about over the past few weeks. It’s the Tamron 10-24mm f/4.5 wide angle for Canon, and I love it, even after only taking about ten photos so far. While driving tonight, I stopped at a fountain on the corner of a church lawn that I’ve been wanting to photograph, and tried it out. I took some photos first with my 70-300mm Canon L-series lens, but one of my favorites came from the Tamron.

f/5.6, 20sec, 24mm focal length

I have to give the lens back tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll try to get some good use out of it before then. But I’m going to save up a few more paychecks and buy this lens for myself.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Flash!

By KristaCraft | Published July 24, 2011

I went over to the Borders store near my work last night. While I am unhappy to see the fall of another bookstore, I had to check out any discounts. I don’t make a lot of money at my job, so I wanted to take the chance to look for a bargain. I ended up getting three books and two magazines for $40. One of the books I got was Fundamentals of Photography by Tom Ang. I haven’t had a chance yet to really get into it, but I think it’s going to be a really helpful book to me, especially since I want to learn as much as I can about photography.

On to my photo of the day…

For awhile, I had been trying to capture a good photograph of lighting. First I didn’t have the right equipment, then when I finally did, it was raining overhead and I couldn’t find anyone to volunteer to hold an umbrella over me. My house sits right on top of a hill, so I have a very good view of the northern horizon, and a lot of storms roll through during the summer, and I can see a lot of lightning from the edge of a storm that’s actually miles away from me.

I took this photograph about a week ago, when it was clear overhead in my location, but the people north of me were getting blasted by what looked like a pretty big storm. There was some amazing lightning on the horizon, and while I got a lot of good shots, this was was definitely my favorite.

f/5.6, 8sec, 182mm focal length

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment