MomShots

Note from Jessica: Today I am very excited to announce that our guest DadShots post is by Brett Birdsong, of Birdsong Photography. Brett is an extremely talented photographer from Pensacola, Florida but travels all over the US shooting amazing photos. If you want some inspiration, spend a few minutes looking through Brett’s galleries on his site!
I hope you enjoy this post as much as I did!

I have two little monkeys.

Jacob, who is 5, and Kylie, who is 4.

They are bundles of personality, independence, and insanity. Basically, small versions of me. This round of photos came about during a summer’s day about a year or so ago, in an honest attempt to get some “normal” portraits of the kids. I fall into that odd category of taking thousands of photos during a weekend in wedding season, but have virtually jack squat when it comes to photos of my own kids. I’m horrible I know, but I’m working on it.

So the scene before me was a big, fenced backyard, two freshly bathed kids under the age of 5 in clean clothes. Daddy, the professional photographer, with his fancy cameras and lenses, and the two perfect children to photograph. I could handle this right? I’ve dealt with crying mothers-of-the-bride, intoxicated wedding guests, and fainting officiants…I think I can handle normal photos of my own kids. Right?

In the time it took me to look down, adjust my camera settings, and fire off a few test shots of Jake, Kylie had found dirt, which had made it’s way on to her shirt and face. Jake found this worthy of a belly laugh, which encouraged Kylie, and within 5 minutes of walking outside with calm, clean kids, I had Goofballs 1 and 2 belly laughing at each other while I sat there watching, capturing the scene unfolding before me.

Lesson #1 learned - When I photograph kids, I now have no preconceived notions or ideas of what I’m walking away from that particular session with. There are no backdrops, no lights, no ” sit here and let’s give Sears some competition” photo sessions at all. To me, photographing kids, especially my own, is completely about working with the moment. Sit back, relax, let them be kids. You’ll end up with some really fun shots.

During the the course of the next 15 minutes or so, betwixt belly laughs and smudging dirt on each other, I had each of the kids stand in front of me and make a silly face. Anything silly, I said. I’d make a face at them, they’d make a face back. And out of the silly faces that were made, this collage of photos was born. Now granted, I didn’t get exactly what I had intended to that day. But what I did get was a few photographs of a brief moment in time where my two kids and I sat in the sunshine on a warm summer’s day and made silly faces at each other, and laughed together.

It simply brings back a really great memory of spending time with my kids. And I honestly couldn’t ask more than that from a photograph.

One of my goals for 2010 is to learn Photoshop better. I am confident in my familiarity with the basics of the program but I want to be able to rock the house with it by the time the year is over. I haven’t made much progress yet. It’s still January…

So I Heart Faces’ theme this week is Texture. I think that could mean many things. I have been wanting to play with some texture overlays in Photoshop, so I tried a few out on this photo. I ended up going with this one called PaperBox 2 by ShadowHouse creations. I like it but I’m not sure I like it on this photo. The photo is already pretty textured with the grass and tree leaves all around Uly. Oh well. I can’t spend any more time on it right now. My kids are hungry and I need to go make some kind of dinner.

This will have to do.

One piece of advice I heard last year at PhotoCamp was to show less photos to people and be more discerning about the photos that you do share. It’s kind of an “I only take good photos” attitude. I don’t only take good photos. I take some pretty bad ones. I take some good ones too, but I show all kinds photos; good and bad. I don’t think this is one of my better ones. I don’t really follow that advice.

It’s been a really long time since I entered the I Heart Faces weekly contest. I thought I could probably find something in my photos that might fit the bill and I chose this one. It’s from my sister’s 5 year wedding anniversary photo shoot that we did last February. It’s about time to get them together for a 6 year anniversary photo shoot; especially since they have a new addition to their family now.

I didn’t really have any current photos that I liked enough to enter. It’s about time I got out the camera and took some pictures!!!

Did you enter? If not, maybe you should? It’s a pretty wide theme that I am sure you have something that fits.

There are so many ways to utilize your photography skills to beautify and enrich your home. This project is one I just decided I must do this year. I won’t be going to Paris anytime soon (that I know of) but I can do this exact same project in my own neck of the woods when I am out and about.

The site that originally did this project can be found here, in case you were wondering. They’ve got some cute and inspirational photography on their blog and you can purchase one of their calendars if you’d like to go that route instead.

It looks fun, huh?

I’m writing this here to officially commit myself to it. That’s how it works, right? I make my intentions public and then I have to follow through?

I sure hope so!

Do you have any photo projects that you are working on or that are rumbling around in your brain? What has caught your fancy lately?

This is a crosspost. I don’t think many people read my family blog and I wanted to share the good news with you, my fantastic MomShots readers.

Plus, I’m kind of on a posting spree. Have you noticed? This will be the third post in as many days. Maybe I am coming out of my slump and will start writing some posts with substance. I am thinking about hosting a cool contest next month too. That’s fun!

I think I totally spaced mentioning it here. I put everything on Facebook but since this is kind of my diary/journal I need to put it here too. We went in for the ultrasound on the 21st of December and are happy to report that everything looks good. Besides having a healthy baby, we are excited to report that our 4th and final baby is a girl!!!! We are beyond the moon excited about this fact. We were happy to only have boys and thankful for all of our children but there was always a little part of us that hoped we would also have a girl. Ben is finally getting his “daddy’s little girl” and I’m going to get my little dolly. We are so thankful and excited for this gift.

So my friend Scott is in Mexico right now. He is an amazing photographer and just wrote up cool little post about using a point and shoot with underwater houseing while on his trip. I thought some of you might be interested in reading his post. He has some cool photos and some interesting points.

Check out his post here.

One another note…

I have been feeling kind of sentimental lately about photography. This is October 2009 and that marks the two year anniversary since my initial decision to start to learn this crazy art form of photography. My husband was out of town for a business trip and I had my children all dressed up in their adorable Halloween costumes, we had just carved a super cute pumpkin and when I went to take a photo with my trusty little point and shoot camera, I realized it was broke beyond repair. I then mustered up my courage and searched for and found my husbands big scary DSLR (the Nikon D100) and tried to take some photos to remember that day. The problem was that his camera doesn’t have an Auto mode and I could not figure out how to make it work for me. Each shot that I took was too dark and nothing I did was making a difference.

I called my husband to try to get his long distance help but all I got was his voice mail. I was upset and frustrated.

Other than what you see above, I did not get any usable shots from that day. I was disappointed with myself, the camera and anyone else I could blame (I’m sure I tried to blame my husband but that didn’t go over well). I decided right then and there that I would not be held captive by my lack of knowledge with a camera ever again. I vowed to learn how to use an SLR.

I started my quest by looking at the user manual. I am always telling people that if you want to learn how to use your camera you need to start with the user manual. I stand by this. However, starting with the user manual can lead to some frustration if you don’t understand what certain terms mean like “shutter speed” or the ever elusive word, “aperture”. Then there are words that seemed even more strange to me like “white balance”, “autoexposure lock” and “shutter-priority mode”. I found it difficult to start with my user manual because I wasn’t understanding what I was reading and how it related to me.

Instead of throwing in the towel I decided to keep searching, and not giving up on my user manual. I kept it in my camera bag and took it out and read a little bit here and there whenever I learned a new concept or word and then I was more able to relate it to my situation and therefore my little brain was able to process it more thoroughly.

My search took me to the Internet and to the library. I started talking to strangers I would see holding a camera and I was talking to anyone I knew who knew how to use their camera. I was a researching fool!

It was a slow process and I am aware of the vast amount of information I have yet to learn. But I feel that I have learned a so much in these short two years. I have really enjoyed sharing my milestones and thoughts with you, here on MomShots.

I love that photography is an art form that I can incorporate into my daily life. I love the portability of a camera. I love hearing the sound of my shutter closing and opening. I love that photography gives me a chance to explore design, concept and execution in a visual medium as that is something that I always shied away from since I didn’t feel like I had any talent with drawing or painting. I enjoy learning how to be an artist and learning how to find ideas, thoughts and emotions that I can express visually.

I <3 photography!

So I just found out that there is a photography competition at the Utah State Fair, held in early September. I am thinking about trying to find an image to submit. Any suggestions?

If you are in Utah and are interested in participating click here to find out all the rules, regs and to find an application form you can download.

If you are not in Utah, I urge you to find out about your state or county fair and enter one of your shots.

I don’t think entering the competition is about winning but about stretching yourself and putting yourself in situations that help you to grow and become a better photographer and person. Who knows, you may really be inspired by the other entries and learn something new.

You don’t have to have a fancy camera to do this either. It is about your results not the equipment you use.

This shot is not my entry, it just reminds me of fairs. It was taken on an afternoon where my mom, my sister and I were making chili and putting it in quart jars to preserve for future quick dinners. It was my first pressure cooker experience and was a ton of fun.

This week’s theme over at iheartfaces is Hats. I have this MomShot of Magnus wearing the Indiana Jones hat. I really like the sun lens flare here. I have been playing with sun flares a lot lately.

I haven’t really discussed lens flare so some of you might be wondering what it is. I was going to type up the definition I found on wikipedia but it is long and confusing and I have a sore throat so I’m going to skip that part right now.

You can experiment with lens flare by shooting directly into the sun or off to the side a little bit. It can completely wash out your photo or you can get some really fun bright spots and rainbows on your shot.

This photo is a bit washed out but I still like it. I love it because of the hat. When my son puts on the Indiana Jones hat, he starts to sing the theme song from the movie and he grabs whatever is available and starts swinging it around making whip noises. It is super cute. Super cute!

Here’s my entry for this week’s iheartfaces competition.

This is not my entry but I liked it too. It’s just a cropped version of the above photo but I like it because it focuses on his face.

Here’s a shot my cousin Kristina took of her daughter Bella. This shot is so beautiful it looks like Bella has a sun crown and bracelet. Perfect for a little princess like her!

Princess Bella by Kristina McPherson

Do you have any shots with cool lens flare you would like to share with other MomShots readers? I would love to see them!!! Email them to me or send me a link to where they are online. MomShotsatYahoodotcom.

Did you notice how infrequently I posted last week. It’s funny how some weeks are like that. Then there are other weeks, or even days for that matter, where I will post a whole bunch. That’s probably because I’m not one of those bloggers who have a schedule. I just post as the whim strikes. That’s pretty much of how I operate in most aspects of my life. I’m an “As the Wind Blows” kind of girl.

Anyhoo… So Sunday was my wedding anniversary. We celebrated on Saturday and Sunday. It was great!

We have been married for 12 years now and for some reason, I was really excited for this milestone. Much more than I was for 10 or recent past anniversaries. I don’t know why, I just was. Maybe it is because when I was a kid we could only have birthday parties on certain years and 12 was one of those years so now as an adult the number has a bit more significance than others. That’s probably it.

I actually have a photographic point to telling you this. The tie-in here is that for an anniversary present, Ben got me a copy of Aperture 2. That is the Apple pro-level photo editing and managing software. I have read many great things about it and I’m excited to try it. I’ll probably be installing it tonight or tomorrow after I have my current to-do list checked off. I’m excited about it and I’ll let you know what I think.

I use iPhoto to manage my photos but I don’t use it to edit them, I use Photoshop CS3. I have been pretty happy with that relationship until I tried to switch over to RAW and then I encountered some minor hiccups. iPhoto would convert my photos into JPGs when I imported them to Photoshop so I wasn’t able to use the Adobe Camera RAW program and that was a bit frustrating. Then I solved my problem by bypassing iPhoto and pulling the files directly off the camera. That works but I don’t like it as much because I like to have my photos all organized in iPhoto so they are in one place and I can easily find them.

Aperture is supposed to fix this problem. I’ll let you know after I install it.

It’s a new week over at iheartfaces. The theme is Natural Light. Since that’s pretty much all I use I thought I would enter. I am going to enter in both the children and adult categories this week. I rarely have adult photos to use but I am going to use one of the shots from my sister’s anniversary photoshoot. I have posted both of these up here previously so sorry for the repetition.

If you are thinking about entering the competition, DO IT!!! It’s super easy and super fun. It is great to look through the other contestants and get inspiration. I love it. The deadline is Tuesday so go get crack-a-lackin’ and one of you natural light shots to enter!!!

My Kid’s category entry:

This is my entry into the Adult’s category:

The final word from me today is about iheartfaces giveaway. They have partnered with Photojojo for this contest. I am pretty sure I have mentioned them in the past. I love Photojojo. They always have the best newsletters full of either awesome products or projects to make that have a crafty photographer in mind. I always look forward to new newsletters from them. They never disappoint!

So I just read this awesome post on a blog I follow and I wanted to lead you over in that direction. The blog is called Digital Photography for Moms and she often has great tips. This morning her post was about shooting in RAW vs. shooting in JPG.

If you are not sure what I am talking about let me explain a little bit:
These are file formats. I believe all digital cameras can shoot in JPG. You can usually choose how large of a file you would like it to use - small, medium or large. I believe most DSLRs have the ability to shoot in both JPG and RAW.
When your camera saves your file as a JPG, it compresses it and then runs the file through an algorithm that determines what the final result will be. Basically your camera makes choices for you like how blue or dark the image will be.
When you shoot in RAW, your camera doesn’t compress the file. It saves this giant file and then when you bring it into your computer you can make choices about how you want it to look. If your white balance was off or you have areas that are a bit blown out, you can often save those pictures and correct them to look better very easily.

So from that really simplified explanation, you can see that shooting in RAW gives you more control. There are a lot of benefits from shooting in RAW.

I have been shooting in JPG all this time and I just switched my camera to RAW on Saturday night for the Photocamp photowalk. I was really surprised by how much control I have in the editing process. I could lighten some of my images or change the white balance. It is pretty cool.

So I’m still experimenting with it and I’ll get back to you with more information about it. Don’t feel like you need to switch over this very second but it is a fun change and it opens a new level to my post processing.

On another note, I need to announce the winners of our giveaway from Friday and I need to put together that much anticipated catchlight post. I’ll get on those as soon as I can. Things have been a little crazy in my part of the woods lately. I was so obsessed with my presentation from Photocamp that now it is time to get back to reality! So the point of this little paragraph is that those posts are coming soon. So hold your horses! I’ll get on those items soon.

Obligatory MomShot:
A little triptych I made using images from a morning shoot after I gave Mag chocolate cake for breakfast (yeah, I’m that kind of mom too). I really liked how it turned out. I love the brightness of the colors and the lightness of the background. Even though you can see my brown chairs and cupboard behind him, there is a certain “airiness” or “lightness” about these shots that I really dig.

The shot on the left and the one in the middle was shot at 50mm f/1.8 200 ISO, the shot on the right was shot at 50mm f/3.5 200 ISO. All shot with natural light. I decided I’m going to start giving you my settings. I always like it when other people do that so I want to do the same for you.