Looking through a metal cutout on a treehouse door at an intricately carved post

Do you ever take a photo of something and think, “Oh, that’s really, cool!” only to be sorely disappointed when you look at the image on the big screen later?  This happens to me more and more.

I attribute this phenomenon to a combination of 1) improving pickiness and 2) diminishing sight.  I see what the image looks like in my head.  I look at the relatively small screen on my camera or phone and think it looks pretty good.  Then, I get home, look at the same image on my much larger laptop screen with my reading glasses on and think, “Oh, no!”

This is one of those lessons I learned and unlearned.  After getting home with too many photos where I had missed focus and didn’t realize it, I invested in a loupe that is contained in a rubber “plunger” that goes over the screen on my DSLR.  The loupe magnifies the image and the “plunger” part blocks the sun so I can see the image clearly.

I’d learned to use the loupe religiously.  While I don’t bother taking it with me when I’m shooting birds or other wildlife–by the time I figure out how the image looks, the subject is gone–I’d come to depend on it in most situations.

But shooting with the iPhone erased this lesson.  After all, am I seriously going to walk around with a loupe looking at my iPhone screen after every shot?  Suddenly, I found myself shooting with my DSLR much like I’d shoot with my iPhone–no tripod, casually grabbing shots, and loupe-less.

As a result, I visualized something really cool when I took this shot:

But, when I looked at it with glasses on, I was sorely disappointed.

This made for a good time with the Aperture curves feature.  I still don’t have the shot I imagined, but I felt free to modify to my heart’s content since I didn’t like the image.  It’s fun to feel like a kid again.

While I wile away the time adjusting photos, Tisen takes cuddling in a blanket to new heights.  When we settle down for the evening, my husband and I each take our place on the sofa in front of the TV.

We sit down and Tisen stands on the floor and stares at us.  We call him up on the sofa and he blinks.  Then, when I pull the blankets out of the closet, as soon as I throw one over my husband, Tisen jumps up on the couch and immediately ducks his head under one edge.  Tonight, Tisen burrows his way under the blanket, up onto my husband’s lap and leaves only his tail end visible.

I cannot resist putting the Camera! app to the test.  Its flash feature allows you to turn the “flash” on so that it stays on while you frame the shot and shoot–really handy when trying to capture my ground-dog burrowing in the dark.

Tisen is in there somewhere–not sure how he’s breathing though