Forty Minute Black Out

Ok :D First "real" blog.

Pretty much..yesterday was one of those days were, if something could go wrong, it did.

I picked up my camera and was excited about the trip that I have been so dying to attend. For those of you that don't know, don't recall, or weren't really listening when I told you, We (myself and a group of anonymous individuals) were going on a weekend "camp out". During this camp out, studies of the riparian habitats of some streams and rivers on our route needed to be conducted (yeh..I hang out with ecology nerds <3)

So Saturday comes along, and I'm waiting...and waiting...and waiting...when my ride decides to bail on me...lovely.

Yesterday, pretty much the same story...I'm not going to get into specifics about that because, really, all kinds of weirdos lurk on the internet, and there are some things you guys just don't need to know (sheesh....weirdos...). This time, there was a verbal altercation that resulted in one absolutely livid Brittany. I paced up and down the side of my house trying to cool off from the argument, but I just kept getting more angry. I am not a violent person by any means, but for some reason I stopped in my tracks, turned, and punched the side of my house as hard as I could. Needless to say, my left hand has been throbbing all night (I actually think I may have broken a knuckle or something).

Now, I've been doing pretty good at getting pictures on a daily basis...not all of them "good", but hey...practice is practice.

After being rather irritated about missing yet another day of Absolutely GORGEOUS weather (clear skies, 70-75°F or 21-23°C, light breeze....perfect...) for the trip and after feeling foolish about punching the house....I decided to go get some sunset pictures. This is where things get fun xD

Please let me take the oppotunity to shed some light on something.

I am hypoglycemic. This means that my body does not maintain its blood sugar the way normal people do because my pancreas is an idiot and doesn't create the insulin that is needed to do so. Cool, right? Well...Here's something even cooler: If I don't eat, my blood sugar has this awesome little habit of plummeting faster than a fat kid rolling down a hill.

Taking that into consideration, here is more info that you need to know:

I woke up at 4 am. I waited and waited for my ride, fearing that if I went to make breakfast, she would start playing on the computer and change her mind about taking me. I tried waking her almost every 20 minutes for nearly 8 hours before she finally got out of bed. At about 2pm, I ask her if she has any intention on taking me to meet up with my group as she had promised they day before. This sparks the argument, which lead to me puching the house, which lead to me spending 4 hours sulking and moping about the house, whining to Herman and José (you will probably hear alot about them in future blogs, so get used to seeng their names) about how lame it was that I was missing my trip, which ultimately lead to me deciding to go out and take sunset shots. Do you see what I didn't do?

Yep. Me too...only I didn't realize it until I was jogging through the woods with my camera bag slung over my shoulder and started getting light headed. Me, being the genius that I am, decided that I HAAAAD to get some pictures, continued on my merry way to the beach. By the time I reached my destinaton, I was so dizzy that I couldn't hold my camera steady enough to get any decent shots. After taking about 50 photos...I sat down to rest a few minutes before meandering my way through the woods on my way back home.

Upon returning home, I announce my arrival to Herman and José and proceed to upload the images onto the computer. I send one of the images to José and, to my dismay, he informs me that the image is -sobs- in jpeg form. In my eagerness to get out and take pictures, I had forgotten that my camera (the replacement, not my original camera...I broke that one...) still had manufacturer settings and had not changed it to Raw format (for info on that, here is a nifty link: http://digital-photography-school.com/raw-vs-jpeg). This, of course, gets my emotions all worked up because it seemed everything was failure after failure. I'm not sure what exactly happened after this...because, if you hadn't noticed what I have still neglected to do at this point, I passed out. Yup..I was out like a light....

About 40 minutes later, I wake up slumped over my chair and all of my limbs feel like my bones had been replaced with lead and an unbelievable wave of nausea had made itself more than present. I was confused at first, but after looking at the timestamps on the conversations with both Herman and José, it was pretty easy to figure out what happened. I took my blood sugar reading...67...Sixty freaking Seven. This was AFTER my body had time to work on "straightening itself out"....I don't want to think about what it was before...

Obviously I am fine now...xD

Lessons Learned:

-Gradient Filter for Sunset shots

-ISO does not need to be set at 1600 for sunsets

-Always check the settings before shooting

-Remember to keep an energy bar in my camera bag....

THANKS FOR READING