I Heart Faces / Best of Summer 2011

This week over at I Heart Faces they are doing a People's Choice! All they ask is that you submit your favorite photo from summer (meaning any photo taken from June 1st to August 31st). The photos will be reviewed and narrowed down and then we will get to vote on the winner! I can't wait to see all the entries!

I am submitting this picture of David and Shaun taken in early July at the park down the street from our new house. We had just moved and we were spending a great deal of our time unpacking and organizing the new house. The boys were being so helpful we tried to take time out of our busy days, to take the boys to run around and play!

Daddy was spinning them "around and around, super fast, all the way up in the trees!", as Shaun would say!

Stop over and check out all the other summer favorites, in this weeks People's Choice!

Week 2 Homework Assignment

Part 1 of this weeks homework was to work more with understanding depth of field. We were to select a scene that had a close foreground and a distant background (like a person standing in front of a building that was off in the distant). Usually I try and get my boys to participate and be my subjects but they aren't always in the mood, plus these assignments require a subject to stay in the same place for more than 3 seconds!

So let me introduce you to Cat, one of the boys stuffed animals. By using a stuffed animal I can set the scene up that I need and keep it there while changing the settings or focus points to create the different images that I need to create.
In the first image we were to use a single autofocus point and focus on the forground, in this image the foreground will be sharp and the background blurry. This is done by using a large aperture.

In the second image we were to ignore the subject in the foreground, due to the shallow depth of field the foreground is now blurry.


Part 2 was all about white balance. White balance which is basically the color of light. In manual mode there are different settings for your white balance. Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent and Custom. The first part of this assignment was to set up a scene (in this case I used the same scene with Cat from above) and shoot an image using each of the different white balance settings.

Auto:


Daylight:


Shade:


Cloudy:


Tungsten:


Flourescent:


If you look closely at each image you can see that the coloring is different in each one. Especially as you get down to Tungsten and Fluorescent. Notice the blueish hues.

Now for the second part of the white balance assignment was to custom set the white balance. To do this you need a gray card (or if you don't have one a white sheet of paper will work). Snap a photo in the lighting your shooting in with at least 80% of the image being the gray card (or white sheet of paper). It doesn't have to be in focus, you just have to make sure that the majority of the image is the gray card (or white paper). Under your menu settings go to custom white balance and select the image you took of the gray card or the white paper and hit OK! Now any image you shoot in that same lighting will all be correct.

You can see the above image is the best quality straight out of camera! It was very cool learning this feature since I did a lot of my photographing at the Rec center in terrible fluorescent lighting. If only I had known this I could have customized my white balance before each party!

Tonight is the lens class! I cannot wait to try out all the lenses that I have had my eye on! And now that I have a better understanding of Depth of Field, I am really looking forward to trying out the 50mm 1.4 prime again!

I Heart Faces / A Touch of Sun

This weeks theme over at I Heart Faces is A Touch of Sun! It's something that I have loved seeing in photographs and had been trying to practice. I had the honor of photographing a wedding reception over the summer so that I could continue working on my skills. I love this picture. Not only was it my favorite from the night, but it is one of my favorites over any other moment I have captured. It was the first time that I was able to capture the sun and not only did it work well (well at least in my opinion) in the photograph, but it was such a beautiful candid moment captured of the bride and her daughter.

To see more please stop over at I Heart Faces and check out all the beautiful touches of sun!

Fun with Slow Shutter Speeds

Last night in class the teacher was giving some fun examples of ways to creatively play around with slow shutter speeds. One scenario in particular I knew would be a big hit to practice on with the boys. The boys are mostly willing to be my test subjects but sometimes they are just not in the mood. They are little so I don't push it and in fact one of these days I think I might just set up some stuffed animals to practice on! However, this one I knew they'd be on board for. I told them to go grab their flashlights and meet me down stairs. I was going to turn them into ghosts and make them disappear!

To achieve this you will need a tripod, a dark room, some flashlights and a really slow shutter speed. You have probably seen those really cool pictures where people spell words using sparklers (something I can't wait to try next summer!), however, this is a safer way to achieve that same affect when you have small children! I set them up on the square carpet and told them to move the lights when I said go, and voila!

Shutter: 10 seconds
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO: 400

Pretty cool, right! I can't wait to play around with this some more!

Week 1 Homework Assignment - Exposure Compensation

Tonight is my second photography class and so I am spent a little time this afternoon practicing the last part of the homework assignment, exposure compensation. This was something completely new to me. I have always seen the button on my camera but had no idea what it did. I set the camera in program mode or P on my camera settings and then pushing down on the +/- button I adjusted it to underexpose -1 and snapped a picture of David, he volunteered to be my test subject!

Then I changed the settings to so that it was overexposed +1.


And to have a control, an image back to 0 (or the middle!)

After taking the images we were asked to look at the histograms of each image. The first image's histogram would be skewed to the left, showing that the image was underexposed whereas the second images's histogram would be skewed to the right showing it was overexposed. That will bring us to the start of tonight's class which will cover topics like white balance and more on the histograms!

I also feel the need point out that all of my homework assignment images that I am posting are of the images straight out of the camera. I usually like to edit all of my images before posting but editing them would defeat the purpose of the assignments!

I Heart Faces / Back to School

This weeks I Heart Faces theme is Back to School. This year was a big milestone for us as our oldest started Kindergarten. Two weeks ago I packed his back pack and snack and sent him off to the big school, Elementary School. It was also my middle son's first year of preschool. This is a picture of the two of them on Shaun's very first day of school. David having been to preschool for 2 years and already had his real first day of school a few days before was a seasoned pro at "First Days of School".

All morning he was explaining to his younger brother what school will be like and when I asked him to put his arm around his brother for a picture outside. This is the shot I got! As a mother it made me feel all warm and fuzzy. David was such a proud big brother that morning and I think it really shows!

Stop over I Heart Faces and check out all the other great back to school entries!

Week 1 Homework Assignment

On Wednesday I started my first photography class. I signed up for a four week Intro class at a studio located in Manchester. I really enjoyed it and I am very glad that I signed up. The class is a lot of fun, very laid back. I am already excited for next weeks class, though I am most looking forward to week 3 when we get to try out all kinds of amazing expensive lenses! Just in time to start my wish list to Santa!

In the first class we discussed the 4 basic exposure modes and what makes up an exposure. A lot of this I had already read about online and in books so I did have a basic understanding of the concepts but it was still nice to have an actual person explain it face to face. His analogies helped me grasp the concepts better too! We were given a homework assignment but we don't have to turn anything in, so I though I would use my blog to post my assignments and keep me accountable!

The first assignment was to practice using the exposure modes on the camera. Part 1 was to capture motion using the Shutter Priority feature (TV on Canon or S on Nikon). To capture motion you are looking for a slow shutter speed like 1/15.

I took a bunch of pictures of moving things like David riding his bike down the driveway. This one of the pinwheel is my favorite. You can see that the spinning motion of the pinwheel is blurry but the background is relatively sharp.

Shutter: 1/15
Aperture: f/20
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO: 200

Part 2 of the assignment was to stop motion. Ever wonder how you could get that perfect picture of your kids jumping up in the air and have it all be in focus? Well this is how! To stop motion you want a fast shutter speed. So if you are using 1/15 for capturing motion you would want something much, much faster to stop it. For this assignment I used the recommended 1/1000 and spinning the same pinwheel you can see that it looks like it's perfectly still.

Shutter: 1/1000
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal length: 50mm
ISO: 200

Part 3 & 4 of the assignment related to Depth of Field. A deep depth of field, will have foregrounds and backgrounds in focus whereas a shallow depth of field will have a sharp focus on the foreground and a blurry background. To create a deep depth of field you want a small aperture like f/22 and for a shallow depth of field you would want a large aperture like f/4 (and yes that is correct, aperture is backwards the small number = large aperture).

Shutter: 1/60

Aperture: f/22

Focal length: 90mm

ISO: 200

Shutter: 1/1250

Aperture: f/5.6

Focal length: 90mm

ISO: 200

My lens is very limiting. Some of the nicer (more expensive) lenses will have apertures that are as low as f/1.4. But you can still see a difference in the background in the two pictures.

There is one more part of the assignment that I haven't worked on yet but I will this week. It is using the exposure compensation feature on the camera. I am looking forward to seeing how these ones turn out. It will be a good intro into really learning how to read the cameras histogram.