June 7, 2012 / Leslie

Armchair BEA: Beyond the Blog

Writing Tips

Today’s Armchair BEA topic is to share some tips that will help you move your blog forward or perhaps your own personal goals of writing and making an income from what you love to do.

The blog is a hobby for me, I don’t make any money from it. Sure, I get free books to review, but I don’t derive any income from my writing. I hadn’t even considered it until recently when my day job went away. Would I monetize the blog? Probably not. I like it the way it is; any deadlines or pressure are self-imposed and mine alone. Would I like to move into writing or publishing for a new career? That’s a possibility I would like to explore, and hopefully I can pick up some tips during Armchair BEA.

Beyond the Blog

For those who don’t have writing tips, the topic is to share a fun aspect about your blog or life that may be completely separate from books.

I spend a lot of time with my camera. People who stop by regularly from Alyce’s Saturday Snapshop are probably familiar with my obsession with bird photography, but I also shoot a lot of landscapes, nature, wildlife, and scenery.

My Camera

My camera is a DSLR, Canon Rebel XSi, also called the Canon D450. Most of the time I shoot with a 55-250mm zoom lens. It’s lightweight, easy to carry around and relatively inexpensive. That’s important because if it’s too much trouble to carry the camera, it will stay home.

What’s the trick to taking good photos? Like anything else, practice and patience but here area a few easy-to-do tips:

Take a lot of photos of the same scene. When you review them later, delete all but the best ones.
Use photo editing software to crop and sharpen the photo before posting or printing it. It often comes with the camera. I use ACDSee Pro.
To get a clear shot of a bird or animal outdoors, use manual or single point focus. On auto focus the camera will focus on the tree leaves, not the bird. You can leave the camera on automatic but still change the focus option.

My Garden

I have an ever expanding flower garden which is another one of my hobbies. I’ll end this with few photos of last year’s flowers, no birds today:

Gerbera Daisy

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Joe Pye Weed

Heliopsis

Any questions about my camera or photos, feel free ask and I’ll do my best to answer.