I've had a couple of emails about the camera work I've been posting this month and all I can say is, soon April will be over and I will stop incessantly posting photos of every stupid flower that grows around my house. Until then, humor me - I'm enjoying one of the prettiest Springs I've seen in a long time. Also, damn, I wish I had gone ahead and majored in photojournalism like I considered back when I was a senior in high school because I've been having the most fun taking pictures lately.

What I didn't have and could have used back when I was trying to set up a dark room in my parents' laundry room on top of the deep freezer, is the Internet. There are a ton of great websites out there with tips for photographers, PhotoShop tutorials, etc. I'll admit that one of the things that deterred me from declaring photography as a major was cost. There were no digital cameras back then and if you were going to major in photography, you'd better be ready to pay hundreds of dollars a month for film, emulsion paper, chemicals and other equipment because the school certainly wasn't going to eat the cost for you. Now, you can take a thousand pictures a day and all for the initial investment of the camera. If I'd had a digital camera my senior year in high school, I might be on a whole different career path now.

I thought I'd pass along a tip I just tried out and love: How to make your own flash diffuser from an old film canister. I wouldn't have expected this to really work, but I had a film canister sitting around so I thought it was worth a try. Here's a photo of The Caterpillar without the diffuser:



And with the diffuser:


See the difference? I love how much more realistic it makes the photo and how much warmer the skin tones look. And all for the cost of something I already had in my house would probably have thrown away anyway. A quick Google search reveals professional flash diffusers in excess of $23. Take that, THE MAN.