The Pioneer Woman Redefines Digital Photography as an Arts-and-Crafts Movement

With blog posts titled “Exposure Compensation Saved My Life,” the Pioneer Woman is changing the face of photography, creating a kind of arts-and-crafts movement within photography.
When you arrive at her site, thepioneerwoman.com, it appears immaculate in its design the photographs are crisp and inviting, the graphics look professional, and the ads are placed so they don’t overwhelm you. There’s a deep web of information that centers around women and crafts.

When you first arrive at the site, you wouldn’t necessarily know that it contains a massive amount of information about photography. The navigation tabs at the top of the site include Confessions, Cooking, Photography, Home & Garden, Homeschooling, and Tasty Kitchen. But when you click on the Photography tab, a whole new world of photography, focused on its use in crafts, opens up on your screen.

The Pioneer Woman has brought Actions into popular culture.
On that page there is an additional set of tabs containing topics of interest to photographers. Each tab links to a page of blog entries about the topic. The tabs are: Contributors (photographers she has writing for her on the site), High Res Downloads (high-resolution downloads of Drummond’s photography that you can print out), Miscellaneous (including posts about Lightroom), Photography Assignments (includes different photography themes, such as portraits, sunsets, and so on), Photography (including composition, exposure, lighting, and so on), Photoshop (including layer masks, layers, Photoshop before/after, and shooting in Raw), Photoshop Actions (including downloads of free Actions and links to buy Actions to use in Photoshop), and Photoshop Elements.

The Pioneer Woman has taken Photoshop and Photoshop Elements Actions to a new level. There’s even a Pioneer Woman Actions group on Flickr with more than 3,000 members and more than 10,000 photos.[2] While Drummond gives away some of the Actions for free, she has also collaborated with Doug Boutwell at Totally Rad Actions. Boutwell’s ultimate goal is to sell you 50 Actions for $150, but his site contains quite a few freebies and is filled with slick video tutorials.

Perfect Light

One thing about Europe is that it can offer perfect light if you're at the right place and time.

This image was taken last Christmas on the top of a building in Barcelona, Spain.

I didn't use a tripod because I didn't have one, but what I did do was to set the camera on a wall that circled the building.

I experimented with different shutter speeds in Aperture Priority mode, with the aperture set at the tiny opening of f/25. The shutter speed was 1/6 seconds.

I really like the way the golden light landed on just the buildings in the background, leaving the rest of the shot less visible

Best Breakfast I Ever Had

I just had the best breakfast in my life (and I'm not that young).

The breakfast was served at Franciso's Country Kitchen Restaurant in Santa Maria, California.

I had an egg white omelette with chili beans and hash browns, and all of it was home made.

Even the bread used to make the toast was home made.

The restaurant is at 1701 North Broadway in Santa Maria, CA.