Rhonda Tipton's WebLog

I attended my first photography meet up Thursday night. I have to say, the League City Photography Meet up Group is a very welcoming and mentoring group with a passion for taking photos. I learned a lot and hope to participate in more events in the future with this group.

The Third-Annual Worldwide PhotoWalk took place on July 24th.

World-wide Photo Walk – Main site

World-wide Photo Walk – Kemah site

Below is the photo submitted to the next level from the Kemah PhotoWalk

 Photo by John Bielick

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David Paulissen demonstrated a nice tip on using Powerpoint 2007 to create a PDF slideshow of your photos. This makes for an easy way to email photo galleries to friends and family.

Start Powerpoint and Select Insert > Photo Album > New Photo Album

Find the folder on your hard-drive containing the photos you want to share and click [Create]

Select a color scheme and add any necessary text to the slides

Select Save As > PDF or XPS

Name your PDF and click [Publish]

The end result is a nicely formatted PDF that anyone can open and enjoy your photos.

Great tip David!

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Software Suggestions

DeNoise – by Topaz Labs

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Links recommended by the group

• League City Photography Group Page
• PhotoSig
• Texas Photo Forum
• DP Review
• DTownTV
• Brazos Bend Facebook page
• SmugMug
• David Paulissen’s Site
• Flickr
• PhotoFocus
• White House Custom Color (WHCC)

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Happy shooting!

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I was going through the Photography blogs that I subscribe to and noticed a mention of an iPhone app named Camera+.

I’ve been on a mission lately to learn better composition and use more than just my D90 to shoot photos. That means my Canon Powershot S3IS and my iPhone 3GS. The Camera+ app is the creation of photographer Lisa Bettany. It has tons of features and effects to let you really experiment with the photos you take with your iPhone.

I was playing around with the app this weekend and below is the before and after of one of my photos.

Before                                         After

There are so many features, I have barely scratched the surface.

Additional Information

• Camera+ – Main Site
• Lisa Bettany’s Blog
• Lisa Bettany’s Flicker Photostream
• TapTapTap – iPhone Apps

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Happy shooting!

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In mid-June, we took a quick 2-day trip to Fredericksburg, Texas. It is a nice Texas Hill Country community famous for the beautiful country, awesome shopping and peaches (yum!).

We stayed at a bed and breakfast called Barons Creekside. We loved it and will definitely be staying again in the future. They are pet-friendly too, so we did not have to board our dog Jake.

When we did go into town, our favorite places were the Fredericksburg Brewing Company and Old German Bakery Restaurant. I am sure there are more wonderful places, but those will have to come later.

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Can’t wait to make it back! The one thing that could have been better…the temperature! It was hot, hot, hot.

Fredricksburg Trip 2010 Album on Picasa

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A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Houston Camera Exchange in search of a good case to carry my newly purchased Nikon D90. The guy who helped me really recommended the Lowepro bag line. I picked out the medium size sling bag and it seems to carry my stuff quite well. I am still finding pockets to put stuff in.

I have read that it is good to have a UV filter and a polarizing filter, so I picked up both filters for both lenses. The UV filter stays on all the time to help protect the lens and the polarizing filter is great for cutting down glare for high sunlight situations.

Filters for Digital Cameras – Bob Atkins

How To Use A Polarizing Filter – Great Landscape Photography

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We woke up Saturday morning and decided to take a trip out to Brazos Bend State Park. I love this park because I usually walk away with some good shots.  I use a Nikon D90 with a 18-105mm kit lens.

I have been playing with focus lately, so thought I would continue “focusing” on that aspect…

I was surprised this little guy sat still long enough to work with the focus a little. Just about everything but the rabbit itself is out of focus.

Full Brazos Bend Set on Flickr 

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I spent the past 5 days at Big Bend National Park.  This park is located in extreme SW Texas and offers an abundant amount of hiking trails and breathtaking views. 

You don’t have to hike to get some scenic views, but you definitely get more by doing so. Most of the hikes had to be done early as the temperature in parts of the park rose above 95.  In the desert, there is no shade.

The Chisos Mountain Lodge is the way to go as far as lodging.  It is situated in the Chisos Mountain Basin and is beautiful.  We had a room, but next time, will go with one of their secluded cottages.  There is no air conditioner, but if you go the right time of year, there is no need. 

The restaurant at the Lodge has great food, but is rather expensive to eat three meals a day.  Especially, since it is the only place to sit down and eat within 30-50 miles.  I suggest taking along some sandwich fixings and microwavable food for the times you don’t want to spend the money at the restaurant.  The room we had contained a refrigerator and microwave.  I think next time we are only going to have breakfast in the dining room.  Dessert in the restaurant on the last day is a great parting treat.  We can definitely recommend the apple cobbler and chocolate sundae.

It is better to have breakfast at the restaurant and if you get there early enough, there is no telling what kind of wildlife you will “run into”.  Also, in the late evening, wildlife can be spotted just about anywhere.  We saw skunk and deer off our balcony just about every evening.  Yes, I loved seeing the skunks.  Being from Houston, I rarely see them alive.

After a good breakfast each morning, we were ready to hike.

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Below are some of the trails we hiked.

Basin Loop Trail

Lost Mine Trail

Grapevine Hills Trail

Sam Nail Ranch Trail

Chihuahuan Desert Nature Trail

Boquillas Canyon Trail

Hot Springs Canyon Trail

We were really wanting to hike the Window Trail, but it was closed due to increased bear activity (yikes).

We also visited a couple of interesting sites outside the park.  Study Butte and The Terlingua Ghost Town.

All of the pictures I took can be found in my Big Bend Gallery.

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I have lived in Texas all my life and knew of Big Bend National Park, but had no idea of the beauty contained within.  I highly recommend to anyone looking for a place to vacation.  We are already planning to go back in 2010 as there is still so much more to see.

Today was a beautiful day with a high tempurature in the mid sixties. We decided to have lunch at Ziggy’s Healthy Grill and then off to the Houston Zoo. It was the perfect day for the zoo.

Some of the photos that we took are below.

The entire gallery can be found HERE.

We were on the way to Huffman, TX to see my Dad this morning when we ran across hundreds of migrating geese. I have never seen anything like it. Here are the photos we took as well as some informative links relating to snow geese.

[-Related Links-]
All About Birds – Snow Goose
Chipper Woods Bird Observatory – Migrating Geese

We took a quick trip to Galveston Island and Bolivar Penensula this morning. Below are some of the photos we took. There was a lot of fog around and it made for some cool effects. We were there until after noon and the fog was as thick at noon as it was at 8am.

My Galveston Photo Gallery

I took some pretty good pictures at Bay Area Park (Clear Lake) this morning. The best ones are below.

My Bay Area Park Picture Gallery