Happy Mother’s Day to all of my family and friends!
Category: Photography
I’ve been trying to compile a list of really simple and EASY ways YOU can help Japan via facebook, twitter, and other websites.
Help with Facebook.
Voskos Greek Yogurt will donate $1 for every ‘LIKE’ on this facebook status HERE (note: you have to first ‘like’ their main fan page before you can ‘like’ the status) *I liked it
Dog Bless You started out donating up to $1 for every page ‘LIKE’ and hit their goal! They’ve now received a grant PLUS their search and rescue dogs are now on the ground in Japan doing their wonderful job of searching for victims. Although now ‘liking’ the page won’t donate any more money (as far as I know), it’s still a wonderful page to follow and support. *I liked it
Explore.org is donating a $1 for every LIKE to their facebook page HERE *I liked it
Causes.com has a few quizzes and movies you can watch, each earning around .10 cents for relief . Choose ‘give money’ to donate actual money or choose ‘give time’ to take the quizzes/watch movies, etc. to have them donate money for your time. *I did it, but didn’t finish them all, will go back and do more.
CityVille,FrontierVille, FarmVille, etc. each have ways to purchase virtual goods in the games to help Japan
Other Ways To Help
The hello bar (which for some reason I can’t get the website to pop up yet, it could just be my browser or the site might be temporarily down) is a way to embed code into your blog/site to help Japan, more info HERE
Text To Donate: The American Red Cross has once again launched a texting campaign to raise money for relief efforts in the Pacific region. Last year, the Red Cross was able to raise over $20 million for Haiti relief through simple text donations.
If you would like to donate to the American Red Cross for Japan Earthquake Relief, just text REDCROSS to 90999. Each text will provide $10 towards the Red Cross’s humanitarian efforts.
itunes Open up your itunes by clicking HERE to donate through your itunes account.
Lady Gaga has created a ‘rubber bracelet’ (the type made popular by ‘Livestrong’) for Japan. MTV reports, “A bracelet that Lady GaGa designed to raise money for the victims of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has raised over $250,000 in just 48 hours.” buy your own HERE. You can buy it for just $5.00 or choose your own price and add a donation on top of it. *I bought one.
Bands For Arms has a relief bracelet as well for $10.00, you can purchase it HERE (you’ll have to scroll down to find it, they offer several sizes as well so check the little drop down menu to make sure you pick the right size for you). Their website says, A portion from the sale price from this bracelet will be donated back to The Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund for Japan
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/japan-earthquake-tsunami-relief/ *I bought one.
More Information:
Twitter published a blog post detailing ways you can help with the relief efforts. Not only have they updated Japan’s mobile website with the latest information on the disaster, but they have also published a list of hashtags to tweet and/or follow related to the crisis. You can read the full blog post HERE (your internet browser should automatically ask you to translate the page into english for you, if not a website like babelfish should be able to do it for you)
News Links:
NHK – NHK World English
I will be the FIRST to admit I suck at landscapes. Ok so I’m not so bad at photography in general 
…but when it comes to creating a landscape photo I pretty much shoot what I like and compose the shot later by….yikes….cropping! Hey, I admit it! I love landscapes, love to look at everyone else’s landscape photos for inspiration but for some reason none of it sticks and I end up doing it my own way in the end…must be the stubborn Aquarius in me!
I figured I’d share some of my past (and favorite) attempts at landscape photography…
This is a recent one, shot last week at sunrise. I didn’t add a gradient, all I did was just boost up the colors that were already there a bit in photoshop. I kind of like the way it came out…and I guess flickr did too…because yesterday it made position #20 in Explore.
*Canon XTi and Canon 18-55mm kit lens
Another fairly recent shot at sunrise. This one is just about straight out of the camera with a little color boost in photoshop.
*Canon 50D and Canon 100-400mm f4/5.6 USM IS L
This one I really like taken of Bell Rock in Sedona, AZ, I actually thought about adding those flowers to the foreground…more thought than I usually give my landscape images!
*Canon 50D and Sigma 10-20mm
And another one I did give some thought to of the Virgin River in Zion National Park. My butt almost got wet taking this one, and good thing I remembered my iphone was in a lower pocket of my pants and moved that baby up to a hip pocket! I wanted a bit of a longer exposure so you could see the flowing of the river, but I didn’t have my tripod. So, I just had the camera hanging around my neck and actually pulled down on the camera and braced with my neck and shot this without looking through the viewfinder…using that pulling/bracing action to keep the camera as steady as possible.
*Canon 50D and Sigma 10-20mm
This isn’t really a landscape but it is one of my FAVORITE images of all time. I went into Upper Antelope Canyon with my tripod and ended up not using it. This is hand held.
*Canon 50D and Canon 18-55mm kit lens
I didn’t put much thought into the composition of this one at Paine’s Creek (Cape Cod, MA), but I did put the thought into bringing my tripod and using a longer exposure. Snapping several shots as the sun sank into the bay, but also staying and waiting till the sun was gone to get this image above. This area is special to me, we used to visit here every other summer when I was a kid. So I wanted a really nice image of it for myself. It was also wonderful to just sit in the sand with my mom and take it all in.
*Canon 50D and Canon 18-55mm kit lens