Newborn pictures

One of the main reasons I wanted a nice camera was to take great pictures of my kids. I love professional pictures, but, obviously, I would rather do it myself. Here is my first attempt at a "real" photoshoot - this one was for my newborn baby, at 9 days old.

It was FUN!! I loved taking pictures of such a still subject. I didn't have to worry getting sharp shots as much because he wasn't wiggling everywhere.

 Something that I can't stand about a lot of newborn pictures I've seen is that people try too hard. They do newborn shots, but the baby is hidden in mounds of pink fluff, sitting in a vintage stroller, with a vintage sign above the stroller, with a giant pink flower on their head, and all you can see is their little eyes peeking out from all the fluff. Oh, and don't forget the rose petals scattered around on the ground.

Okay, so maybe it's not *THAT* bad. But I've seen some pictures where I really start to wonder what the focus is in the pictures. Is it a baby, or is it cute props?

Personally, I actually LOVE props. I think they can add a lot to a photograph. But not in excess. I want to focus on the tiny fingers and toes, the little wrinkly forehead...and the props are just there for fun composition, maybe a color pop, or perhaps some sentimental value (like, for example, my husband's jacket and football). I wouldn't do a shot like this one unless it had sentimental value, because I think for just the sake of having props, it would be too much.

I had a great time taking these pictures. I would probably change a few things if I could go back, but overall, I love them. I think they turned out nice!

More moving water.

 f/36 3.2 sec. exposure, ISO-100, 55 mm
We finally made a little trip to Provo and I was able to go to Bridal Veil Falls to get a picture. The water looks great, I think the color is kind of terrible, it looks a bit overexposed and very blue to me. Also, it's not very sharp. I don't know how to make it any sharper, because I had the camera on a tripod and used the timer so I wouldn't be touching it at all. I wonder if it has to do with the exposure time, and what I can do to help that? Besides make it less, of course, because that would defeat my purpose of getting the moving water effect that I want...

Indoor studio

I've always wanted to be able to take great pictures inside, mainly so I have some really good "studio" type pictures of my daughter. I took a few pictures for the fun of it earlier and I learned a couple of things. One thing I learned is that for now I won't or don't have to worry about any special lighting. I don't know about a sunny day yet, but on a cloudy day, the huge window in our living room provides great lighting. Backdrops are another story, and I'll probably work on that next.

Another thing I learned was I have to be veeery careful to focus just right. Zooming in on her eyes in this picture, I get this:

Yuck!! I can tell it's not quite focused anyway, before it's cropped or anything. Unfortunately, I can't tell from the little screen on the camera unless I zoom in. I need to be really careful about that, because it's hard to focus on wiggly, squirmy toddlers. I guess it's just something that I'll have to practice. Now compare it to this one that I took awhile before:

Yeah, that's much better. It does help that she was sitting more still in this one, but I can't let that affect the quality of my photos too much. I need to remember to re-focus more often, and not just set it and go crazy. I would like to make it take the picture a bit faster, but I don't want to mess with the ISO too much if I can help it, and keep it on the lower end, so I think this is going to come down to practice.

Moving water.

I have studied camera settings before. Before I had a camera that could do anything, I learned all about ISO and aperture and shutter speed, and what they did. I've forgotten every bit of it. Makes sense, because I learn best when I do hands-on things, and I couldn't really do anything hands-on without a camera that was capable.

Anyway, I want to learn. The auto settings - I HATE THEM. Not because they take bad pictures. On the contrary, they're fine pictures. But I can't do anything if I want the skin tone to be a bit lighter, if the shadows are just a bit too dark, if my daughter's white sweater is looking "glowy" I can't do a whole lot. I just have to take what I get. I can change the exposure on one auto mode, but it really doesn't work quite how I want it. Of course that was one of the main reasons I wanted a camera like this in the first place, so I decided that even though it's a bit overwhelming, it's time to start learning the settings forward and backward, till it's natural to me. I wish I had more time to do it, but being a mom and wife, it's honestly hard to do. (As I type, I hear a very loud crash coming from my daughter's room...) But my first goal: get one of those cool pictures of water, where the water is completely soft and smooth looking. It's not something that you see in real life, because...well, that's not how our eyes perceive motion. I've always thought it looked cool in certain pictures. I must warn you, the pictures are NOT pretty. My goal was to find moving water, and it WAS moving water, so it worked for me. I'll work on the "pretty" part later.

This one is f-18, 1 second exposure, ISO-100, at 50mm. In case you cared. So this is my long exposure, but not long enough. It sort of looks more like someone took a smudge brush in Photoshop to it, not the pretty, smooth water look that I was going for.

This one is just on auto - which ended up being f/2.8, 1/60 sec exposure, ISO-100.

Alright, so I did not get my desired effect. Not even close. The exposure time was still too fast, which I knew it was, and I knew I wasn't getting it how I wanted it, but...I didn't know how to make it longer than it was. I later realized I can go to a 30 second exposure. Uhh, yeah. About that. I'll try again soon...although, I don't know if you can do a 30 second exposure in the middle of the day. I'm not sure if my camera would be capable of that, or if I would need a special lens or filter or something. But I think a couple of seconds would suffice, especially if it was faster moving water, which I wanted in the first place. Either way, I know I can get the results I want with what I have, I just need to try again.

Family Pictures

My first "real" attempt at using my camera: family pictures. I had a bit of time to get used to how things worked, so I decided to give it a shot. No pun intended. I think they are okay, but not great. They need a lot of work.

Things I like about this picture:
I think for we're in good positions, we look natural and it doesn't look forced or too posed.
I like how the tree is on the side, giving it a bit of personality and not taking attention away.
This has nothing to do with the actual taking of pictures, but I like our outfits, they seem to blend in well enough and yet have a bit of the pop that they need. I hate family pictures of everyone wearing white shirts and jeans. Ugh! Although, I have to give these people the benefit of the doubt - do YOU know how hard it is to coordinate several people, but not be too matchy-matchy, and not make anyone upset with what they have to wear so they're pouting in all the pictures? I know how hard it is, and sometimes white and jeans is what works. And that's cool. 
Things I would change:
I don't like the background. I think it either needs to be a bit more blurred out, or completely different. At least take away the houses and the light pole. Those throw it off.
The lighting is a bit...wrong. I think it might be been a bit too harsh, because the sun started to just barely come out when we took our pictures. I might need to look into getting a reflector, or perhaps experiment more with angles. Using the flash may have also helped.
Overall, it simply does not look professional.

I love this picture. I think the pose is great, the expression is cute, and the lighting looks really good to me. The only problem was Daddy making a funny face in the background!

This one, again, is the background. I mean, behind us, of course. ;) The house there is so in the way.

So I've concluded that the main thing that bugs me in these pictures is the setting. I don't know this area well yet. It's hard to find somewhere online, because there are so many. So we settled on a park close to our house and I think we could have done a lot better. There are a lot of things to think about when taking pictures, and when you have a squirmy child and it's cold outside, you've just got to get it done. Hopefully soon I'll get to know this area a lot better and know of some better places to go.

Introduction

I believe I first started getting really interested in photography when I was around 12 or 13. It may have been a bit later than that, I can't remember exactly. I had a simple little camera, and although I badly wanted a DSLR to play with, I had a lot of fun learning about photography with my camera and my family's video camera, which took extreme close-up shots (very bad quality, though!). I got a book about it and learned a few photography basics, like the rule of thirds, and simple things that can make the difference between a really good picture and a terrible picture.

I had fun looking at things at a different angle and finding new ways to see regular things. This picture was photoshopped a lot.

The main things I learned from playing around and reading, though: one, you do not have to have an expensive camera to take good shots. Two, having an expensive camera does not, by any means, make you a good photographer. It has the ability to take good pictures, but that's about it.
Nothing bothers me more (okay, maybe some things do, but this is a huge pet peeve of mine) than people who think that if they have a nice camera, they must be able to take wonderful pictures. Or someone who thinks that if only they had a nice camera, they would be able to. This is simply not true. A lot can be done with a point-and-shoot! Yes, it has severe limitations, but with some creativity and a good eye, you can get some great shots.

 This was taken right after it rained in MN. The sun came out, and was setting, and I got this little gem. It is not photoshopped, but it is extremely low quality. Any print of it would be very grainy.

I loved taking pictures with my little camera. Growing up, I would go around our farmstead for hours, just playing with things and trying to get cool shots. I definitely got a few that I was proud of. I did feel quite limited by it, but I didn't let that stop me. Whatever I couldn't do on the camera, I would do my best to fix it on Photoshop. Of course, sometimes all the creativity and all the photoshopping in the world just didn't cut it, and I wouldn't be able to get it how I wanted. But the main thing was, I didn't let the limitations I had stop me from getting great pictures. I knew that I could learn so much with a basic camera, so I learned everything I could.

This was taken in downtown Nauvoo. I set it to nighttime landscape and turned the flash off, and had my camera on a tripod. It is slightly edited, for color. There was a bright blue sign that stuck out. It's a bit fuzzy. I don't think my camera could handle it being so dark, even with a tripod.

 
I wanted more than anything to be a photographer, growing up during my teenage years. It was like...my dream job. But in all honesty, I was too scared. I was scared that I would not be good enough for it. I wanted to go to college and get my degree in photography, but I didn't, because I thought a degree in an art would just be silly for me. You have to be some prodigy to be able to do that, right? That's how I felt, anyway. That I would never be good enough. I met someone right after I got married, and she was a photographer. She was in school for it still, and I was talking her and said something like "Oh, I'm so jealous. I would love to be a photographer." and she said "Well why don't you then??" ever since then I kept asking myself that. Why don't I? Why can't I do it too?

 There is nothing really that special about this picture, but I took it on my cruise to the Bahamas. I loved the colorful apartments.

I just kept going on the way I had before, doing my very best with what I had. I got some pretty good pictures of my daughter. I wanted to continue on and at take pictures of friends' kids, and maybe someday go farther. However, if I wanted to charge people for pictures, or even just ask them to come over for a quick photo shoot, I felt like I would indeed need a better camera. Point-and-shoot could also be called "hit-or-miss", I think. Sometimes you get awesome shots. Sometimes you spend an hour and get one shot that just happened to be in focus where you wanted it. Sometimes, you spend two hours and not one single shot comes out quite right. That is downright depressing. Other times, you get a few good ones, but they're still off a bit, so you spend hours on Photoshop seeing if you can get the right effect. I definitely didn't have the confidence, with those odds, to ask people if I could take pictures of them.

This is our 2010 family picture. I blurred out the background a bit. I think I may have exchanged a head from another shot as well, but I can't remember.

So to be honest, I did need a better camera to go farther. I couldn't get consistent, good shots with my camera. That's just the way it was. And really, I didn't have the money. Who knew if I could ever get people to pay me for pictures? I was scared that if I put money into it, I would never get any money out of it. Not only that, but I simply didn't have that money lying around anyway. I kind of gave up for a while. I even stopped taking many pictures, because I was just tired of fighting so hard to get good ones. I was tired of blurry pictures where I didn't want the flash on but it wasn't quite bright enough to get a clear shot without it. Yeah, sure, I could get cute shots of my daughter with the cats, or her making silly faces or poses, but nothing really good. Just everyday around-the-house shots.

I always loved this picture. The problem? The focus. If you look close, you can tell it's on her hat, rather than on her eyes. My auto-focus wanted her hat, because it was closest. Other than that...I think it's a great picture.

And then, I got a Christmas present from my brother. I don't know exactly why he chose to spend the money on it for me. I can only assume that he sees potential in what I've done and thinks I deserve it. I don't know what else it could be, but I am so excited to get into it. It might take a little while, because I have a lot to learn, but...I will do my best. :)