by Bettye Sue Austin

Before moving back to Cookeville, I used to take pictures of my flowers with a small Canon point and shoot camera.   I never took a class so I really didn’t know what I was doing at the time.   I hybridize daylilies and wanted to run a daylily seed business after retirement.

With this plan in mind, I moved to Cookeville bringing my daylilies along with me.  My goal was to learn how to get clear images of the daylilies, so I could display the two plants I crossed on my web page. I bought a DSLR camera and signed up for a class taught by Bill Miller, a member of the Cookeville Camera Club.  

The class changed how I view my surroundings!  I learned to see angles, shapes, texture, and color in this beautiful world we live in.  I learned how to compose my images to make them more appealing instead of just taking a snapshot.  I learned how to take close-up “macro” shots of my flowers.  I also learned how to take portraits of my family members.  I really enjoyed shooting the images for each class assignment and looked forward to sharing them with the other members in the class. After I completed the class, I practiced what I learned every day. Continue reading Life Changing →

By Steve Kuss

Drones are one of those new technologies that can be an indispensable tool, a toy, a photographer’s dream, or perhaps the latest scourge unleashed by your neighbor. New models seem to come on the market weekly, each with a whirlwind of specifications, making an intelligent purchase decision nearly impossible. If one is purchased, the buyer becomes the neighborhood whiz kid, or the purveyor of all that is evil in the world.

 Drones come in all shapes, sizes and costs. Some are just for sport. They exist purely for the fun of piloting an aircraft by remote control. Others are built for speed. They have motors, so there is a huge group of people involved in racing the beasts. Then there are those used in law enforcement, mostly in the search and rescue sector. Contractors, farmers and surveyors use them with infrared sensors for incredibly detailed mapping applications. While drones are most known for shooting video, they take still shots as well. As such, they make a nice transition vehicle for the casual photographer looking to start shooting video. Many women are helping to lead the charge. (www.2dronegals.com) There are even Facebook groups devoted to drone photography. Continue reading The Best Ways to Use Drones in Photography →

By Wanda Krack

When you hear the ‘honk, honk’ of high flying birds, and see birds flying in a V formation, you might think “there goes the Canadian Geese”.  The high flyers will most likely be Sandhill Cranes, either returning to their wintering ground just north of Chattanooga, or flying North to their m ating grounds.   It is estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 Sandhill cranes spend around two months in the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Tennessee.  The refuge is located on about 6,000 acres of land, around the confluence of the Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers, north of Chattanooga, near the town of Birchwood, Tennessee.  Birds come to the Hiwassee Refuge because of the combination of shallow water feeding and roosting habitat, with wet grasslands, marshes, and grain fields.  They are omnivorous animals, eating seeds, berries, cultivated grains, insects and small mammals.  The Tennessee Wildlife Resource agency encourages their yearly return by planting corn and other grains in the fields around the area. As a photographer it’s exciting to hear the cranes fling overhead and to know they will be available for a couple of months for picture taking.

Continue reading How to Take Pictures of Sandhill Cranes →