RIP My Dell

This will be a short post, but with a happy ending.

I haven’t been able to upload and edit my recent photos because my old faithful, my Dell laptop final stopped working.

Well, the battery did anyway.

I finally got in touch with a IT/Computer company that could find a battery for me and it will be delivered to me in the next 2 weeks. Until then all I have is my netbook, which is in need of an upgrade, so I can’t download any Adobe software to it to finish my edits.

In short, expect an update from me again the second week of April.

And as always, thank you for stopping by and supporting me on my photography journey!

 

-Soprano Musings Photography

The American Cool.

My last post ended with a promise of mobile photography on the way, and that is something that I am still working on.

Though, with this month being Black History Month and me spending the last few years in South Korea, there is something that I want to say.

For the longest time, I struggled with how I would start this topic. Until I realized that I could use every medium that I have available to me to sum up my thoughts. Which is how I came up with the idea of my mission statement for Soprano Musings Photography.

Which is also the title of this post – The American Cool.

I will share more about this over on my Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube soon, but I wanted you all to be the first to see the photos!

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I kept the layouts simple, because I want my message to be clear and to the point. Again, I will talk more about the message behind these on my social medias, but for now I would like to know what you think of the photos.

So snap away in the comments!

-Soprano Musings Photography

What a Difference a day Makes!

When days turn into months was the original title, but I love the word ‘difference’ more. For this post, difference is what I wanted to highlight.

A few months ago I shot my first waterfall and it was great for a first timer! Once I really focused on my shutter speed and iso, I was able to capture some decent shots. You can check a few of them out over at Unsplash if you haven’t already.

Right now I’m participating in a 10 day challenge and have gotten back in the habit of carrying my camera with me more often. After my 9 to 5, I wanted to revisit that waterfall site, so I made sure to stop by before calling it a day. Surprise after surprise is what I got once I arrived. The waterfall area was bone dry, full of crackling weeds and brightly colored burnt blood orange looking bushes.

With not a single cloud in the sky, I went to work. This is a sample of what I was able to capture (after some light editing).

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You really get to see what the water has done to the man made stone over time, as well as the change in the weather. Though I do plan on going back when I can shoot earlier in the morning so that I can get some shots of the interior better.

Any constructive feedback on these, or any of my other shared photos is always welcomed. The next blog will be all about mobile photography!

Until then, thank you for stopping by and I hope you’ll visit again to see what else develops.

 

–Soprano Musings Photography

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Hello and Happy (belated) New Year!

At the beginning of the month, I met a few new acquaintances in Seoul and had a great time shooting at the Harry Potter themed cafe.

Although I did not purchase the HP birthday cake, I did walk away with something much sweeter – the ever growing curiosity to hone in on my talents as a cosplay photographer!

Here are a few photos from the event:

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Now that I am upgrading my Adobe editing software, I have lots to study and try out in the next coming months. And with the new gear purchases over the last few weeks, I am feeling more confident in my plans to go to Seoul for Fashion Week and take on more street photography!

Until then, I will focus on the basics (as usual) as I take more self portraits and landscape photos in preparation for Cherry Blossom season. Looking forward to sharing with you all what develops, so thank you for visting my blog and stay tuned!

 

– Soprano Musings Photography

2020? Are You Ready?

Yes!

The plans are underway and I am beyond excited about the things I have in store for you all next year.

First up is a bi-weekly newsletter! Well, once I finish up the business aspects needed for Soprano Musings Photography this month that is. Since I have had a the tiniest interest in a few of my photos over on my Facebook page, I have decided to give selling a few prints a shot.

That is only one of many sells that I will attempt in 2020, for the rest you can visit me again in January for more updates!

Then there is my YouTube channel. I want to document more of my journey and would love for you all to join me there, if for nothing else then to see the many trials and errors of me trying to record and take photos. That has been one funny challenge over the last few months!

In short, I have plans for Soprano Musings Photography next year, and I want to thank you all now for following me on this journey.

Looking for inspiration behind the lens, to share with all of you, as been amazing.

And I can’t wait to do it more in 2020!

-Soprano Musings Photography

SMP Mailchimp (2)

Book Cover Photography

A recent trip to Goheung inspired more to seriously consider creating book cover art.

I still am learning how to improve the basics and am still under contract with my current employer, but I can at least look into the requirements for this profession, right?

My thoughts exactly!

Especially since I enjoy traveling and doing more freelance work. Why not add another profession, another title to the list? I want to continue traveling overseas, taking photos, writing stories, and the idea of adding another revenue stream to the list that will fuse well with my future plans after leaving South Korea is too tempting to pass up.

Which also would explain the lack of photos in this post.

I have found three companies that I can submit my photos to, but until I understand how everything works in regards to what quality of photos I can submit, I want to make sure that any photos I have taken recently will be considered. And the one thing I have notice about all three companies is that they seem to prefer work that has not been published elsewhere, which I understand.

If you happen to know more about book cover art commission work, please let me know.

Until I do know more, expect lots of self portraits!

Thanks for reading and I look forward to sharing more of my photography journey with you all soon.

 

-Soprano Musings Photography

My Favorite Subject

Before I get into all the other photos that I have taken in the last month, I want to address the ones I took in my studio apartment in September.

I promised myself that I would not buy any ‘cool’ photography equipment (besides the necessities) until I can fully grasp the basics, and after looking at these….it’s going to be some time before I buy any cool back drops to play with.

From this shoot, I learned that I have ‘mouth breathing’ tendencies’ and that’s really annoying to me. I still need to work on my aperture skills too, because I felt that these photos would have benefited from that.

Since my background is so basic, I wanted to have a sharper overall appearance. For some reason that seemed to make sense to me and not being able to execute the exact look that I wanted bothers me. Though I must admit that learning what angles and poses I prefer for future self portraits was fun!

And in the next post you will see what I mean by that, because I took Flash (yep, I named my camera ‘Flash’. lol) outside and had a rather long Fall Photo shoot. That post will be by the end of the month, as I am still working on the edits using Adobe Photoshop Express. In the meantime, stop by next week for my ‘Book Cover Artist’ post.

Thank you for reading about my rookie photographer journey and feel free to leave in constructive critique in the comments!

 

-Soprano Musings Photography

What’s in a Mood?

Seoul Fashion Week is next week and I’m not sure if I will be able to attend.

I know that I said that I would, but it just doesn’t seem to be feasible for me to make the trip. Now I’m in a funky mood as I review some of my previous work. So much so that photos I once loved are making me cringe from the editing flaws that I’m finding within them.

For my Instagram, I’ve created several collages to showcase some of my work, and even though I’m in a pretty rotten head space I will post the collages there today. If for nothing else but the satisfaction of looking back at these photos in a year’s time to compare my more recent work and see how much I have improved.

For now, you all will be the first to see some of them. Enjoy!

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This weekend I will finish up my business plans for Soprano Musings Photography so that I can ‘work work’ back in the States. Really looking forward to that actually!

Also, this Saturday I have a small project happening in Seoul that I will share more about with you all afterwards. I am super excited about this one because it involves a proper photo studio and I finally get to use my new equipment on models other than myself.

Until next time!

Soprano Musings Photography

 

For the Culture!

Now that I have more experience under my belt and have decided on what I want to focus more on with my photography, I have started recruiting some pretty rad folks to pose in front of the camera!

These shots were from my first (successful) group photo shoot a few weeks ago.

 

 

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These lovelies were fun to shoot with, had great concept and location ideas, and were willing to go the distance to capture the photo! Now more than ever do I want to make sure that my editing skills are on point, since I’ve decided to keep it light and work on enhancing the lighting within my shots. I had a great time during this shoot and I hope that my models are happy with the editing photos that I sent them afterwards.

There was a bit of an embarrassing moment after editing, where I accidentally sent one of the models a wip edit…ugh!  Though other than that, I am over the moon impressed with myself and pleased that I had these incredible people to work with for one of my first shoots.

Since this photo shoot, I’ve purchased an external flash and will be testing it out soon before my next photo shoot, which is at the end of this month.

Thank you so much for joining me on my photography journey, and I look forward to sharing more with you real soon!

 

Soprano Musings Photography

 

 

Chasing Waterfalls

A few weeks ago I had some time off from work and decided to test myself by taking shots of this manmade waterfall in the neighborhood. There was plenty of morning traffic, but with my headphones on, I was able to tune it out as I started taking photos.

Here are a few edited ones that I wanted to share.

Still not sure about the editing on the last one, but other than that, I am quite pleased with myself for capturing these shoots. This impromptu shoot gave me the chance to test out changing the ISO (as the weather went from cloudy to sunny super fast) as well as the white balance and f stop.

And if you have taken a peek over at the updated Portfolio ’19 page, then you know what the next post will be about already. I will be discussing that experience in the next post. Until then, share some of your recent (or most inspiring) photography work in the comments!

 

Soprano Musings Photography