TIP OF THE WEEK - Kids, Bribes and Winnie the Poop

I said I could get her to look at the camera. I never said she'd be happy about it.

Bella has come to expect chocolate every time I take her picture, otherwise she ignores me and my dear camera, which makes me even more annoying (oh, how I wish there was a good translation for the word "pesada" in English, because this is the perfect word to describe what I'm like with my camera - somewhere between "heavy" and "annoying") If only she'd just learn to put up with me for a few minutes so she could then get on with her preferred activities.

Singing

Having a conversation with me probably about King Kong and his friend,the giraffe, who often come and visit us at dinner time because they are cold and hungry and want to eat french fries.

That's where my little friend bribery comes in. Yes, I'll admit it. Bribery and I are chummy. I use things like chocolate and tv to encourage Bella to be my photography model (BAD MOMMY!) But they work... sometimes... for a limited time. Even with the bribes, I still can't get her to actually look at the camera.

So, today's Tip of the Week is Getting Them to (at least) Look in Your General Direction.

My newest tricks are either singing with Bella (she loves Five Little Pupkins and The Wheels on the Bus at the moment) or I say something that I want her to repeat and then make up a funny ending that she's not expecting. To get these shots, it went something like this -

Me: Say "I love mommy"

Bella: I wub mommy!

Me: Say " I love Papá!

Bella: I wub Papá!

Me: Say, "I love Winnie the Poop"

Bella: "ah ha ha ha! I wub Winnie the POOP!"

She was so done by this point. This is the closest I came to having her interact with the camera.

I hope this helps someone! Have a fabulous weekend!

And this little munchkin is a challenge as well! If all else fails, have someone stand behind you and make silly faces and noises. Works like a charm.

TIP OF THE WEEK - Shooting in Direct Sun

Yikes!  I nearly forgot about my promise yesterday to post the TIP OF THE WEEK today. It's nearly midnight here, and now I'd better get my bum in gear!! Now, that's dedication for you.

Ok, so the tip for this week...
I've been avoiding shooting in mid day sun like the plague until I learned a very important tip - 
(Drum roll please.... )

If you're shooting in  bright mid day, direct sunlight, turn your subject so she's standing IN FRONT of the sun.

In other words, the sun should be BEHIND your subject. I always thought that you, as the photographer, wanted to the sun behind you. Turns out, that's not true. If you have soft, even light, like at sunset, then yes, that light will rock your world. During the day, though, you want to rotate your subject, otherwise you're bound do get squinty eyes and shadows that are very unflattering.

This was actually taken pretty late in the afternoon, but check out the shadows under her eyes. It makes her eyes seem hallowed.

SO, turn your subject away from the sun, and spot meter of her face. This will dazzle you. I swear.

See how much better her face looks? There was a bit of light bouncing back up off the table which evened it out nicely.

Ok, how cute is she?! And look! No dark shadows.

And these are later in the day, but I just love back light, so I'm posting a few that I thought were super cute.

Bella's fashion sense. I love it!

 There you go, my friends. I hope this is useful to some of you. Have a wonderful weekend! Take it easy and keep on clickin' on! ; )

TIP OF THE WEEK - WARNING: Backgrounds Not Child Appropriate!

Do you notice anything, I don't know... out of place in this photo? No?  Ok good, that makes me feel much better. Here, I'll give you a hint. I'm pretty sure that black graffiti above Bella isn't supposed to be a lotus flower. You'd think I'd have realized this before or even during this mini shoot, considering I took about 40 pictures here! On top of that, before taking this shot, I'd read a bazillion critiques on the photography forum I'm a member of, and the reoccurring criticism was that the background was distracting.

I'm apparently not distracted, or even aware of graffitied penises on walls, or stake-like trees that go right through children's bellies. But you should be. This is one of those kinds of tips - "do as I say, not as I do" (but really, all of my tips are going to be like, because I'm not a professional. And I'm not a robot. And I'm certainly not a professional robot, so I'm going to make many many photography-related errors, and you will too. At the end of the day, though, we can still pat ourselves on the back and have a good laugh at all the ridiculous things we did throughout day, knowing that it was already in the cards to begin with.)

So, my tip of the week? Pay attention to the background.

You want to watch out for any distractions in the background. This includes bright colored objects, garbage cans, trees and poles growing out of heads, and signs (anatomical graffiti included, of course). A the moment, I am reading a book about composition and the author was talking about how much the eye is attracted to writing in paintings and photographs. Interesting stuff.

Another thing to try to avoid is a lot of clutter. If you have the choice between a plain wall and toys scattered and strewn across the floor, choose the wall (unless, of course you want to include the toys as content).

I didn't have time to clean up, but I wish I could have removed some of the clutter.

Obviously there will be times when you just don't have the option of choosing your background because the moment is more important, but when you have a little extra time to compose, take a look around and see what is right behind your subject.

I adore this shot. Too bad she looks like Daisy-Head Maiyze.

Exposing Myself

(I wonder how many times that title has been used in reference to photography. I bet a BUNCH of times!)

Oh, Exposure, my clever foe. Why must you insist on wrecking havoc on my photos?

As I promised, I'm here to share with you a bit about what I'm learning. Have I mentioned that I'm working on exposure?  This is a difficult thing to share tips on because a). I obviously struggle with it and b). once you switch your DSLR into manual mode, this is initially the main difference between a point and shoot and a DSLR, meaning it's a HUGE topic (and if you don't understand why that's a problem, see point a.)

I shall do my best though! Here we go... 

SOOC Underexposed. ISO 160 SS 200, f/2.0

Properly exposed, after Lightroom.

We'll start off with SHUTTER SPEED today, so you don't get too overwhelmed, ok? Relax. If I can figure this stuff out, you can too. It just takes time and patience to get it right. Quietly set your camera to M for manual! (Now you can yell and jump around because Yay! you did it!), set your aperture to 5.6 (or a lower #  if you want and can), leave it there and go find some nice light (evening light or open shade. Stay away from direct sunlight.) Aight, on we go...


Shutter Speed.
These are your  numbers like 40, 60, 80, 100, 160, 200, 250 and up into 1000... etc. This is the speed of your shutter (revolutionary explanation, I know!). This is essentially what makes your photo tack sharp or completely blurry. The higher your numbers, the faster the shutter opens and closes - freezing the image in time. So, if you have very low numbers, you can easily get blurry photos if ANYTHING moves because you're allowing your shutter to capture motion just by having it open longer. (Does that make sense?). The longer it's open, the more motion it's going to capture resulting in a blurry image. Have I beaten this horse enough? I hope.


Things to keep in mind:

•  Use your meter  inside the camera's viewfinder!  That's the little line of itsy bitsy lines and a 0 in the middle. You want to be on the 0 to get correct exposure. It's super easy if you pay attention to this (but it doesn't necessarily mean you'll always have correct exposure. BELIEVE ME!)

•  Lots of Light use  High Numbers
  
  
• Less Light use Lower numbers. The numbers are actually fractions of a second. So 200 is really 1/200 and is faster than 40 (1/40), if that helps.
  
  
• The general rule is when photographing kids or anything that moves quickly and unexpectedly, don't go lower than 160 or you'll most likely get blurry images. I'd compensate with a lower aperture or higher ISO. More on that in the the weeks to come.
  
  
• When you're photographing kids (or anything that moves unexpectedly), keep your shutter speed at  160 or higher (you  don't want to go lower, or you'll probably get blurry images) Hmmm... didn't I just say this? This must be incredibly important. YES, it is!

And this is to show that practice does pay off. NEARLY perfect exposure TA DAH!! I'll keep working on it, and hope that someday Exposure and I will be able to co-exist peacefully.

This one is pretty close to proper exposure. ISO 160 SS 250 f/ 2.0

I upped the exposure not even a  half stop in Lightroom.

After RAW Class Number One

Though I'm still not the Photoshop master I thought I was going to be after this RAW class, I did learn some important things about white balance and exposure and all the fun toggles in Camera RAW (the program that is part of Photoshop and starts up immediately when you open up a RAW file).  I typically use Lightroom, but it's more or less the same. (and for those of you who don't know what the heck I'm talking about, it really doesn't mater that much...unless you really want to know. In that case I'll tell you... but only if you ask me ;-))
So, this is what I came up with after this class. Julietta still looks like an alien child to me. Her face is too bright, but I'm not sure how you lighten the face without making someone look like they're from another planet. I am really interested to see what next week holds.

Here is the newest edited photo:

Before Class:

Straight out of Camera (SOOC):

I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. The goal is to get it right IN CAMERA!!! I  swear, I was trying to work on getting good exposure, but sometimes you (or, I guess, 'I') just don't have time to change your (my) settings to get the shot. This was one of those moments. My girls were actually sitting down for a few seconds next to each other, so I ran like a maniac, got way down on the ground and started clicking away. It wasn't until about five shots into it that I realized I needed to lower my shutter speed quite a bit (or open up my aperture). RATS!

What have I learned from this whole lesson? That I really need to keep working on nailing exposure! So off I go...


Until next time, my friends, keep on clickin' on. Ha ha ha!

Birth of a Photographer

Since there's a blog for everything these days, I thought I'd better start one up for this...

(drum roll please)
I've decided I'm going to try to do it. I want to become a photographer.

I feel so silly about this, and I don't know why. Maybe because it seems so artistic and "out there" like wanting to become an actor or painter. I don't know. Maybe it's because I've changed my mind so many times before about what I wanted to do when I finally grew up that I'm afraid no one will take me seriously. I'm not sure. I do know, though, that ever since I got my first camera when I was eight years old, I've loved taking pictures. When I finally got a real manual camera a little over a year ago, I started learning about how to use the camera. Now that I am finally learning about the art of photography, I'm hooked.

I know that I'm not a REAL photographer. Not yet anyway. And in order to get there, I have my work cut out for me. Right now I just want to learn learn learn!
At the moment, I know I screw up BIG TIME and OFTEN. I still get the wrong exposure when I'm chasing Bella around (especially when the light is changing). My focus is off now and again, I make lots of technical no nos like cutting off body parts and overexposing spots on hair and shirts - constantly... And my post processing?? Let's just say if I don't spend WAY TOO MUCH TIME on one picture in Photoshop or Lightroom, it leaves much to be desired. Let's not even get started on the most complicated - composition.

If I posted this picture up for critique, it would get torn apart. (straight out of camera or "SOOC").
I underexposed the foreground, overexposed parts of the sky, and cut off parts of both Alex's elbows, and both of Bella's feet. OUCH!
Still... I like the composition and the feeling of the photo. It makes me smile. And check out the fabulous colors.

And that's just the stuff I know about. Two months ago, I didn't even realize you weren't supposed to "blow out" parts of your photos. Hell, I didn't even know what "blow out" meant.

I do now, though! And this is where you come in, my very faithful readers (Hi to the five of you!) I thought I'd invite you all along on my journey. I'm sure it will be entertaining to watch, and at the very least, educational. You can learn a few photography tips as I learn them, and practice your skills along with me.

TADAAA! A blow out, just for you!!
See her cheek and arm? When you overexpose and lose all detail, it's called a "blow out". When I took it, I thought I was doing some real artistic lighting. Little did I know.

Anyway, here's the elaborate plan for this blog:

I'll try to post a little blurb about what I'm currently working on and learning about at least once a week. I'll share "the good, the bad and the ugly" of photography and post some of my photos (the good, bad and ugly ones, of course).


Pretty cunning plan, isn't it?

And someday... (sigh)
I'll become a REAL photographer.