Recent Musical Discoveries

Lights.

Canadian singer, also known as Valerie Poxleitner. Her music is so sweet, and really hard not to like. To put it simply, she is an exceptional musician, with a unique sound.







The non-acoustic version of "Saviour" is also excellent!


Fireflight.


Christian rock band with a female lead singer. I discovered Fireflight on Pandora one day, and definitely put a "thumbs up" on their songs. Their music is awesome.

Boredom = Business Card

I know what you're thinking --- "you don't have a business!" But that doesn't mean I can't make myself a business card for fun. :)


Front Side:

Back Side:

Who knows; maybe this little card will actually start a business for me.

When in doubt, be crafty.

Over News Years Eve, I went up to Utah to visit family, and also to visit my friend Hailey. We wanted to take pictures while I was there, but it was way too cold outside to even consider standing outside for a long period of time. Hailey and I decided that pictures inside would be the most bearable, but once the window light was gone I knew that resorting to the unfavorable built-in camera flash was the only option for non-blurry pictures.

Built-in flashes have the infamous power of making everyone look bad in a picture. They reveal every blemish on a person's skin. They reflect on glasses, eyes, etc. The list can go on and on. In my situation, I was inside, at nighttime, with not very much indoor lighting. A photographer's nightmare! This is when my inner craftiness had to come into existence. First, I needed some sort of light diffuser, to lessen the strength of the flash. Household items that are translucent: paper bags, paper towels, toilet paper, most other paper products. First, I made a cone out of a paper towel and placed it over the flash. The result was decent, but not quite what I wanted.

Here is my attempt to recreate the paper towel cone:

Yay! Diffusion!

The paper towel cone wasn't enough, so I had to get even more crafty. I knew that if I reflected light in a different direction, the picture wouldn't look so washed out. Reflective household items: compact mirrors, foil, ...shiny stuff. I couldn't find a compact mirror, and even if I did, taping a mirror to the camera was a little overkill. So on to the next option, foil. What I made is too hard to describe, so here is another attempt at a re-creation:

(I am aware of the fact that it looks completely ridiculous)

Comparison

Without flash:

With flash:

With paper towel cone diffuser:

With foil awesomeness:

The MacGyver within me succeeded in getting me out of my lighting predicament. The foil worked surprisingly well, and Hailey and I were able to successfully take nice pictures INSIDE AT NIGHT! Here are a few of the best ones taken with the foil flash (with little to no editing!). All of them are taken inside of Hailey's room, with her door as a background.

Moral of the story: you don't have to spend a bunch of money to get nice indoor lighting for pictures!