30 Day Gratitude Challenge - Day 6

Day 6 is Books, and I am so excited since Santa brought me my 50mm f/1.4 lens a little early. I have been wanting to try photographing shallow DOF with text. I grabbed one of my favorite books, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and opened it up to a random page. It's not perfect, but I did want to get the entire open book into the image as well. Something for me to continue practicing!

30 Day Gratitude Challenge - Day 5

Today's challenge was the Morning Sky. I am grateful that it was today and not tomorrow since I would have to get up at 6am to get the morning sky, and today getting up at 7am was just right! I don't love this image but that is what the sky looked like at 7am this morning looking outside my picture window in my great room. You can see the grain in the shadows from having to up the ISO. What I should have done was set up my tri-pod, but I was lazy and it was cold outside! And if I really wanted to get a spectacular morning sky, I could have gotten in my car and driven over to the nearby Country Club, but again. I'm LAZY!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude - Day 4

Day 4 of the 30 Day Photo Challenge is leaves! Today was a great day to be outside and photograph leaves. I snapped some neat images of the swirling leaves blowing in the wind, and the boys rolling down the hill in the leaves, but in the end my favorite ended up being close up image of some leaves on my lawn!

30 Day Photo Challenge: Gratitude

I found this idea on Pinterest and decided that it would be a good way to get in some more practice. Especially since Santa, out of the kindness of his heart, came all the way down from the North Pole to deliver the 50mm prime lens I have been wanting, a little early!

Since I'm a little late to the game, I am going to post the first three in this blog post!

Day 1: Favorite Food
This was easy, I just made my favorite dinner tonight and photographed it for my food blog!

Cuban Pork! YUM!


Day 2: Smile
I have lots of pictures of smiles, but I want to use one I actually took today so I am posting this one of my Shaunie kicking the leftover snow from the freak October storm we had last Saturday!


Day 3: Happiness
I don't think it gets any better than a picture with my 3 little guys!! I am lucky that they genuinely love to play together, it's never forced! They have lots of fun together and I think it shows!

I Heart Faces / Let Them Be Little

This weeks challenge over at I Heart Faces is featuring the the little ones; the babies and Tiny Tots! I am submitting this image of my (not quite) 18 month old (all the way on the right) and his brothers, friend and cousins all trying to jump rope. Evan is ALWAYS trying to do things the big kids are. He refuses to accept that he's just a tiny tot! One part of me wants to scream "just stay little" but the other part enjoys watching him grow and explore new talents!

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If you're in need of a baby fix, head over to this weeks I Heart Faces thread, it will be impossible not to smile!

Week 2 Homework Assignment

Tuesday night was my last photography class. I am sad that it's over since I really enjoyed the night out talking about ways to take great images. I learned so much in the process and was happy to get some positive feedback from the teacher. Below are the images I submitted for the assignment. Part 1 of the assignment was to capture and stop motion.  I did this before during the first class using a pinwheel.  It's fun to play with shutter speeds.  In this class though, we learned how playing around with stopping and capturing motion can create some really creative images.

The first image I used was of the boys throwing leaves from the pile into the air.  The blurriness of the leaves gives the impression of movement.

I took this one of the Halloween decoration in the yard. Because of the windy day and the slow shutter speed, I was able to create a ghost like feel. As opposed to the next shot of the ghost where it's all in focus.  I think the first image is much more interesting to look at!

And now using a fast shutter speed, I am aiming to stop the motion, or capture it!  I love this one because you can see every pine needle in clear focus, it just looks cool!  Plus it doesn't hurt that they are obviously having a blast!

Here is another example of capturing motion.  Plus I also incorporated some viewpoint into this one that makes it a really fun image!

Depth of Field has probably been one of the trickiest concepts for me.  Especially trying to find the right balance of blur/sharpness.  This picture is finally me acing it!  This is my example of creating a shallow depth of field.  You can see the blurriness of the front and back but Shaun is completely in focus, creating a small area of focus or a shallow DOF.  Something that is worth mentioning is that the better the lens, the easier it is to get really great shallow DOF.

And my example of a deep DOF where everything from the foreground to the background is (for the most part!) relatively sharp!

This was the most fun I had doing the assignment, working on angles, perspective and viewpoint!  Thinking outside the box of the typical shots from 5 to 6 feet.  This image got a lot of compliments from my peers.  Everything down from the angle, the point of view, to the lighting right down to the look on Shaun's face.  I am really proud of this image!

I had a fantastic time in class and I am looking forward to taking a few more.  I made my wishlist and I think after Santa (hopefully) brings me a Speedlite for Christmas, I'll be signing up for the Studio Lighting class after the Holiday!

I Heart Faces / Tickled Pink

October is Breast Cancer awareness month and in honor of that, I Heart Faces is doing a PINK themed challenge!

The photo I chose to enter is a photo of my niece Savanah. Savanah is the lone pink in a family of all boys!! 8 cousins in total and she is the only girl! She is all about pink right down to her strawberry blonde hair! She loves her princesses and she loves pink!

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Check out all the other pink entries in this weeks Tickled Pink challenge!