Intro and Edge

(D70, f5.6, 1/50s, ISO 200)

Hi all! My name is Lindy and I heard about this blog from my amazingly talented friend, Carly Carlson. The above photos was taken in my kitchen at about 7:30 am after having been up all night. I had just gotten Rachel's invite and a request for a self-portrait after getting out of the shower, so here I am in all my wet-haired, un-make up'd glory! Which is why it's in black and white, to mask the horrid red blotchiness that is my bare skin.

I've always had a love for photography, but that love went on a brief hiatus after college...a three year hiatus, to be exact. My senior year was, for me, a very discouraging year, photographically. I had, what I thought, a great photography professor, and yet my photo skills were not increasing. I've just started to realize that all of my frustrations have stemmed from one simple problem: I never bothered to learn how to take my camera off of automatic and actually BE the photographer. I always relied on my automatic settings, never forcing myself to learn how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO all go together. It made for a sad, bleak world.

But then the other night at work, at approximately 3 am when absolutely NOTHING was going on, I 'snuck' onto Pioneer Woman's photography site and read through her tutorials. Sge managed to teach the basics of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO without being too overwhelmingly technical, yet without sounding like she was teaching a 5 year old. So tonight I dug out my Nikon D70 digital SLR and spent a good hour just fiddling with the controls. Oh my heck, it's like a whole new world has opened to me.

Other than that, I've been married to my husband, who is a professional photographer, for almost three years. We live in Oregon, in the town I grew up in. I'm a mom to 5 1/2 month old twin boys, who absolutely rock my world, which would be why you see the bottles in the background of my self portrait. I'm a 911 dispatcher and am currently on graveyard shift, 6 pm-6 am, which is why I was up all night.

And now the assignment. Keep in mind that this was taken at around 3 am, as a series of photos I took while fiddling with the aperture and shutter speeds. I honestly don't remember what shutter speed I used, but I was in ISO 200 and I believe f6.3. I didn't do "Edge" literally, it more symbolizes me regaining my photographic edge, as I love how the depth of field turned out after trying several other f-stops.


I used gradient map in Photoshop to make it black and white, and then backed off on the opacity to give it a little more warmth, which makes it look like it almost has a sepia tone to it. Which was always my favorite tone in the darkroom. CC