Just some more Peace!

Hmmm... This is from a long time ago, but it seems I never published it..... But I did, but it is gone now. I am SO confused. One day I will get all this blogging stuff down.

This one didn't quite turn out as cool as it was in my head. I can't put my finger on why though. Maybe I should have used a flash to make their bodies darker and separate the feet more? Hmmm... Don't know...

Bounce Flash!

My beautiful girl! I was just playing around with bouncing flash off of my front door. Just thought I would share!

Today I learned....

Today I worked on using fill flash in the bright sunshine. Usually if you are shooting in the bright sunshine, they tell you to put the sun at the subjects back and meter for the subject. Using that method you have a nice back lit halo around the subject, no harsh shadows on the face, but the sky is completely blown (white without detail). If you use a flash, you meter for the sky to get that beautiful and then the flash compensates on your subject. My flash technique still needs some work, I need to figure out the settings for the flash and the best distance from the subject, but look at the difference. Isn't that cool! I am such a nerd. Now... the new hip thing is the pocket wizard. It is a transmitter so that I could have my flash off my camera and still get it to fire. That would give me more natural looking light.

Another day of Peace...

The whole week is peace. So I had to come up with another peace picture.

But getting out the face paints was anything but peaceful!

So far to go...

I am feeling like I have so far to go. The more I learn the less happy I am with my current body of work. How fair is that? Anyway... One of the forums I frequent's current weekly theme is Peace. I am amittedly a wee bit sarcastic as can be seen with my submission today that I titled World Peas!

Just a quick pic...

Just a crazy Monday around here! I just took this picture of the baby yesterday. Today I played with one of the several different ways to convert it to black and white. Tomorrow I am wither going to see tulips and take pictures there or accosting a friends child to practice on. :)

The light on the stairs

Our stair case of all places get great light in the morning. The baby and I played on the stairs this morning...

I LOVE her expression and her sideways pacifier...

Grrr... Difficult models!

I was trying to take pictures of my dear 3 year old, but she wouldn't cooperate. I had to bribe her with marshmallows. Then, my goofy battery- straight off the charger pooped out. I definately need to go get a new battery! I have seen a lot of people who rave about using fleece as a back drop, so I thought I would give it a try. I found a piece of black fleece in my closet the other day so I decided to use it today. The people who rave about it must not have pets. Mine is so covered in dog hair and lint, thank goodness for photoshop! All in all I got one (maybe 2) that were half way decent....

Eggs!!!

I got an early birthday present. It is a 18-200mm lens. I played with it as the girls dyed Easter eggs.

Easter

I volunteered to take pictures with the Easter Bunny at our church's annual Easter Egg Hunt. It was a busy day. I got more experience in mass quantity of quick shots... Very few of them are GREAT, but they are all good. They are free and just get emailed, so expectations aren't high. In previous years they have just been Polaroids, so these are very high tech in comparison. It was fun... I realized that white paper was probably not the greatest choice. Next year... maybe turquoise?

Will work for food...

My friend had me over for lunch today and because I have driven my own kids crazy taking pictures of them, I brought my camera along. I ate lunch and then took pictures of her oldest.

So I took 8 pictures in all and all of the were good... I just picked my favorite 4. This is big excitement for me... I LOVE that my ratio of the ones that I am happy with is going up. The other thing I wanted to see if I could take professional quality portraits in someone elses house with little to no set up. Needless to say I was pleased. The other four (these are unedited, straight from the camera.)

Flickr...

I bought background paper today... We play a bit with it (see picture). I also am working on gathering my pictures for a portfolio of sorts. Right now I have it as a set on my flickr account. Feel free to check it out. I have more images to post on there, but I am working on properly preparing them.

My Flickr

Goofing around with Photoshop...

There is a tutorial on a forum called "Ice Grunge." It is by a photographer in Finland who does phenominal work. My attempt doesn't come anywhere close but it was fun... To my credit, I don't have the cool photoshop brushes that she has. She posted a link to download some "grunge" brushes, but they require a more up to date version of photoshop. Anyway I am out of disk space on my hard drive, so there is no where for them to go. Anyway, I thought I would share my attempt.

So much to learn...

I found this new forum that is for people interested in children and family portraiture and wow is it eye opening. I am realizing now HOW far I have to go and how much I have to learn. It really bruised my little ego, but I guess a little ego bruising now and again is good for us all... Anyway I took a couple of pics of A and her friend yesterday. Thought I would share-

Sharpening for the web...

I so proudly posted this picture on a forum for critique. Actually I posted three of E from the last post. I was so deflated when the only response I got from people was that they were out of focus. I couldn't see what they were talking about and was really bummed. Then I start looking at other things and see the term "Sharpening for the Web"... When you downsize pictures to post on the web they lose their sharpness. So I found an explaination of sharpening for the web and applied it to the attachen picture. Learning something new every day... but then again, isn't that the goal?

Hmmm... On here I can't tell the difference...

Pictures by the river

We went out today to practice using the reflector. The oldest didn't want to model for me but she made an awesome assistant. I quickly realized the need for a much bigger reflector.

The New Guitar

Well... It's not THAT new anymore. We have had it about 4 weeks now. Anyway husband got a new hobby, and if you know him you know that when he takes something on he goes all out. I am amazed by how much he is accomplishing, so quickly. Anyway I was goofing around taking pictures of the guitar, having a grand ole time when he took it away from me. He took it over to the neighbors house...

Strawberries!!!

Okay... So it is nap time and I have got a little time to myself. I REALLY should be cleaning the kitchen or something constructive, but what is the fun in that? There is this technique I just learned about for all of us who are lacking a macro lens. There is a way to put a regular lens on your camera backwards. To do it correctly it still takes equipment that I don't have. So just to test the theory I just held up my lens to my camera backwards. It was fun! The last two were taken in the normal fashion to exlemplify this weeks theme... Abandoned. The rest of the strawberries were savored and enjoyed, but these poor stems were left on the cutting board. (See I REALLY should have been cleaning my kitchen... :) ..... )