Do You Have the Time to Be Happy?

Lately on Twitter I've been seeing people posting pictures with the hashtag 100happydays. At first seeing all these pictures on my Timeline meant nothing to me but slowly and surely it peeked my interest. Soon I found myself searching the hashtag on twitter and coming across the official 100 happy days page that had a link to their website. Once I reached the website I finally really understood what was taking over my feed. This was literally a challenge to post pictures of things that made you happy throughout a day, big or small. Once you are on the website and you decide that you want to participate in the challenge you fill out a a participation sign up sheet that asks you what platform (facebook, twitter, instagram) you plan to be using, also the day you plan to start the challenge and it takes your username from the platform that you choose to use. On the website you can also choose how public you want your photos to be, if you don't care who sees them you can use the public #100happydays however if you don't want just anyone to be able to search that and see your pictures you can make up your own hashtag and give it to the website so only people you know and tell would be able to see it along with the creators. And if you absolutely don't want anyone to see your pictures you can choose to just email the creators your pictures. Also apparently at the end of the challenge they will send you a little 100 page book of all of your pictures? Not quite clear on that yet though.

On the website they tell you that 71% of people who started the challenge didn't finish it because they said they didn't have the time. At first I wondered how that was even possible snapping a picture doesn't take a lot of time but often I forget about the challenge or can't think of anything in my day that has made me happy enough to want to commemorate it. Although these are just amateur shots taken with my phone and nothing fancy I do enjoy this challenge because it helps me appreciate the little things in my life that make me happy like finding the time to read, or beating my best playing Mario. If your actually taking the time to read this and you think this is something thats worth a shot you can sign up here and see if you have the time to be happy. :) Also I'll make a page on this blog and post the pictures I've been taking!

Getting Up Close With Macro Photography

Macro Photography is essentially taking extremely close up pictures of smaller subjects so that the size of the subject in the photograph is far larger than its actual life size. This is by far one of my favourite types of photography because it lets you get up close with the subject and brings out a lot of different details that could other wise be missed. A good portion of macro photography pictures are related to nature in some way although it doesn't have to be limited to that alone. I particularly like taking pictures of things nature related, but however due to the fact that there is still snow on the ground and its been rather chilly, I haven't had much opportunity to go out and take pictures. I've taken a few shots but i'm thinking that I will revisit this type of photography when the weather gets better!

Okay so these are the shots that I did take and they taught me a lot about how macro photography works. 

1) Using a smaller aperture ( the space through which the light has to travel) can help you bring out more detail and help you make the most out of your depth of field. 

2)The appropriate lighting is super important, because you have to get so close to your subject you don't want to be in lighting that will cause you to cast a shadow across your pictures.

Often times whenever I actually see a photo shoot I partially wonder why photographers take so many pictures of the same thing. However whiles taking these pictures I found myself taking multiple shots of the same thing, trying different angles, apertures, and camera lighting. I've realized that unknowingly when you see something that you want to photograph you already begin to know exactly what you want to see in the picture and when you do see it you will know but that only can come with the patience of being able to take time to try different things with your subject, meaning taking more than one picture!

Sometimes however whiles your messing around with different ways to take a picture you end up with something you totally didn't plan but still find that you like.

For me this picture was one of those surprises, I had been messing around with the aperture and I got really really close to the leaf and all that caused for the main subject to turn out blurred but to have the whole background extremely sharp... and although it wasn't what I planned I loved how it turned out. So that was a nice unexpected surprise.