My "Hackness" is showing!

I'm struggling with photography! I think my standards have gone up, but the quality of my picture taking has not.

And, I'm struggling with PSE because really I know nothing about it, I've always just played around in it, so I don't even know if I can fix some of the things I want to fix. And I'm afraid there are things wrong with my photos that I don't even know about.

And, my printer is not calibrated to my screen, and I can't really see myself affording a calibration system any time soon, so I will continue to be frustrated by this, although the differences between the two are often small, sometimes they are disappointingly significant.

I'm loving it when I get pictures like these:

I note, these are all individual photos, or small groups. And the last one is not perfectly focused.

As noted earlier on this blog, I did a photo shoot (for free, so I could practice) with a family of six last week. Really really struggling with getting good sharp focus in those pictures!

And with getting pictures where everyone has a nice expression, no wind-blown hair in their face, no bra straps showing, no hands in an awkward place. Ugh!

I think my biggest frustration about all of this is that because I am a self-taught hack, never having taken a class in photography or in PSE use, I don't know how to fix the things that are photographer error. I know there is nothing I can do about the whole blinking, eyes looking off in a different direction than every one else errors. Those just come from taking pictures of humans. But the need for sharper focus, the inability to lighten the shadows without destroying all the natural light color, all of that kind of stuff I need to learn how to fix, get right the first time, whatever.

That, dear blog readers, is this day's frustration. And right now it seems like a really big deal to me. Must be hormones!