MomShots

Confession: I am a snob. A Manual function snob.

Learning to use my DSLR, rubbing shoulders with some really talented photographers and reading photography blogs and books has made me a Manual function snob. I have swallowed the whole school of thought that if you don’t know how to shoot completely in Manual then you can’t be a good photographer.

I very rarely turn my function knob off of the little black M surrounded by silver to any of the other letters. Once in a while I would flirt with the S or even the P but I would always quickly switch it back to the M while I furtively glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one saw my little foray into autonomy.

The day after Christmas I had a realization while walking around The Living Desert looking at amazing desert animals and thinking about how much it would hurt to fall onto one of the bajillion types of cacti lining the pathways. My realization was this: As Miss MomShots, I need to get off my high horse and embrace the Auto function. My goal is to teach parents photography so that they can take beautiful photos of their children. While I want people to really learn to use their cameras and learn the art of photography, there is no reason that the Auto function can’t be a valid method of learning those skills.

I completely believe that learning to shoot in Manual is something that anyone can achieve. However I feel like I have done a disservice to Auto. If Auto is necessary for you to use your camera then I think it needs be embraced. Then when you feel more comfortable, take the steps to learn Manual.

I spent the day with my camera in Auto function. It was kind of refreshing. It was kind of fun. I generally feel pretty comfortable with Manual but when using Auto, I just let go and completely relied on my camera to make the choices for me. It was actually kind of freeing.

So I say if you are out with your family and are chasing the kids around with the camera, don’t hesitate to use Auto if you feel more comfortable in that mode. Manual function can be saved for a time when you can give it more attention and spend some time learning to use it’s features. Spend the time you have enjoying your children and use the tools that are available, such as the flash turned off Auto feature with out guilt!

As an after thought, one benefit of having the camera set in Auto is that you can pass it onto your 7 year old son and he can take a photo of you. It’s nice to have at least one photo of yourself per year, right?

It’s Christmas time!!! Yay! We got to come to my husband’s parents house and we will be surrounded by lots of cousins and aunts and uncles in a day. I am so thankful for such a large and wonderful family. I really hit the jackpot when in it comes to my in-laws!

The MomShots Tip of the Day is to keep your camera close by. Someplace out of the way of rough housing and great big hugs but someplace close by that you can grab it and shoot some of those beautiful holiday memories in action.

My mother in law has a bookshelf that has a bunch of photos on top. When I am here, I like to hide my camera back behind the picture of my kids. It is safely hidden from the eyes of kids who might want to play with it but easily accessible to grab when cuteness spontaneously happens.

Here’s my camera in it’s secret hiding spot:

Here’s a shot of my boys’ Christmas letters to Santa hung on the tree.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Festive Festivus and Crazy Cool Kwanza to everyone!!!

My baby isn’t a baby anymore. She’s a 19 month old toddler who is turning more and more into a big girl every day.

One of my favorite things to do lately is to turn my screensaver on and just watch my computer pull photos from my files for me to look at. Is that the 2011 version of a photo album? It is at my house. My kids will sit with me and we will all comment about who is in each photo, what that person was doing. It’s been great fun and really shown to me the importance of photo albums. Which is something I need to rededicate myself to for 2012.

Here is one of my favorite things about photos, and I’m sure yours too: You can look back and see the details of that growth from baby to toddler, toddler to big kid, big kid to teenager, etc. You get my point.

This photo is from September 2010 and she was just a little 4 month old baby.

Now she’s rapidly growing up and using tools like chairs to get what she wants.

So the MomShots Tip of the Day is to take a minute and compare those little bodies to how they looked a year ago, two years ago, five years ago or more. Take a minute to enjoy who they were and who they are now. Give them a hug and tell them that you love them. Saver that moment in time.

Another thing I have been thinking about… Camera Straps. Will you please leave a comment and tell me about yours and why you like it? Seriously. I will love you forever.

We recently took a little weekend trip to Southern California. On our way from Utah to SoCal, we stopped at our favorite hotel in Las Vegas, the M. It is on the extreme south end of The Strip. So south that you really have no idea that it is still on The Strip at all. But it is our favorite. It is so nice and they always give us amazing prices.

This trip was no different. We showed up without reservations, as per usual. We were given an amazing room, as per usual.

Our room was a triangular room on the 11th floor with floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the entire Las Vegas area. Not a room for someone with extreme acrophobia. I have been known to get a little white knuckled in height related situations but not this time. All I could think about were places that I wanted to put my boys to take their photo.

The beautiful morning light came and I pulled out my camera and started bossing my boys around in hopes that I might get one or two good photos. I came away with a few that I liked. This one is my absolute favorite. It may be my most favorite photo of these three brothers that I have taken in a very long time.

Do you see the problem with it? The focus is soft.

That means that it is ever so slightly out of focus. Ever so slightly.

What that really means is that my aperture was too wide. I couldn’t fit all three boys into the same plane. My depth of field was too narrow. I needed to open up my aperture just a tiny bit. This was shot using my 50mm lens. The aperture was set at f/1.8. That was my mistake.

The rule of thumb for shooting groups of people is to use at lease an aperture that is equal to the number of people in the photo. For example, there are three people in this photo so my aperture should have been set to f/3.2.

Next time…

Anyway, I decided to play with it a little bit in Photoshop and ended up adding a bit more grain. It almost makes my lack of focus seem intentional. Ummm, yeah. Intentional…

Oh well! I don’t care. I love this photo so much. I am thinking about printing it out and hanging it up in my home.

Sometimes you just have to ignore those kinds of mistakes and get on with your life. If you love a photo then you just have to go with it. You can’t beat yourself up over little mistakes. You have to move on and just do better next time, learning from your mistakes.

This is me moving on and learning from my mistake!

More shots from our hotel room:

These are a few of the other shots I took, including a snap of myself. I don’t take shots of myself very often. Here is me and our amazing view.

Magnus making faces at himself in one of the mirrored pillars.

My sweet baby toes. A very wide aperture of f/1.8 makes this shot. Everything except her big toe is out of focus and blurry. A more narrow aperture would have made the other toes in focus, or the rest of the room depending on how much I narrowed it.

There’s what is called a “Hot Spot” on Ulysses’s nose. It is that bright triangle. In photography, that is generally not acceptable. Too bright. No data recorded. I’m ignoring it in favor of his smooth, youthful skin being kissed by the beautiful morning light.

Again with the wide aperture of f/1.8. This time it makes Gar in focus while Uly is lost in bokeh (that’s the fancy schmancy photography word for blurry).

Well, that’s a bit from our trip. My MomShots Tip for this post this: Move on and learn from your mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up over shots that didn’t turn out exactly as you wanted them to. Try to figure out why your photo is not exactly how you’d have liked it to look and what you need to do to remedy that in the future. My big issue in this little photo shoot was not adjusting my aperture. For some reason I was stuck on using a wide aperture and it bit me in the tookus!

A few more MomShots Tips that you can find in this post are:

I promised last week that I would discuss composition and the Rule of Thirds. I need to deliver on that promise; at least a little bit…

So the Rule of Thirds. Have you heard about it?

No? Hmmmmm…. How can I explain it?

I like to think of it as splitting a photo into thirds, both vertically and horizontally.

What exactly does that mean?

This is what you do… Place an imaginary grid over the top of your composition, like such.

Your goal is to make the subject line up with one of the lines.

That’s the gist of it. There really is a bit more to it than that, but that’s the starting point.

Here’s an example of a handsome young man I was recently able to photograph, Zack. See the original photo and how I framed him? He was right in the center. I did not follow the Rule of Thirds.

When I edited it, I cropped it and laid a Rule of Thirds grid over the top and rearranged how Zack sat in the composition.

I want to say that I didn’t actual place a grid over the top. Is that silly that I feel like I should say that? I just want you to know that this is an imaginary grid. Got it? OK…

I lined Zack’s body up with the far left line and also put his face on the top horizontal line. It’s kind of a double whammy since I lined him up with both horizontal and vertical lines. That’s not really necessary but it can’t hurt, right?

Here’s another example. My niece Gina. I can’t get enough of her! She is so beautiful. Here is the original:

I really liked this one. Her one eye is in sharp focus and you can see that when you lay the imaginary Rule of Thirds grid on top, it matches right up with the bottom horizontal line. Score! I didn’t have to do any editing or make any changes except to make it black and white.

The last example I want to show you is a bit more interpretive.

I really liked this photo of my son at the beach. I thought it caught a bit of the whimsy and joy he was experiencing. Every single time we would see a beach on TV, drive by a lake, river or even a puddle, Magnus would shout out, “Beach! Beach!” He has been wanting to go to the beach so bad this entire summer and this was his two hour chance to go. He was making the very best of it.

Sidenote: Did you see what I just did? I totally accessed the emotional aspect of photography for myself. This is why I take photos. This affects no one but me, but it is the number one reason I point that camera at my children. I’m sure you can all relate. It’s a MomShot and DadShot thing, isn’t it?

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

Now I lay the Rule of Thirds grid over the top and I see that things don’t quite line up. Not exactly, anyway.

But do you know what? I really like it like this. I think that the lines on my Rule of Thirds grid line up enough that it works.

Or maybe that’s my motherly emotions shining through.

Either way, I like it!

Plus, that’s the awesome thing about holding the camera; you are the boss! You get to choose how you want to frame the photo. You can choose to follow this rule to the letter, or you can choose to interpret it anyway that you would like.

This is my current favorite postcard from my postcard project. I love detail shots. Shots of cute little piggies, eyes, ears or even an adorable curl are the kinds of things that as mothers, we want to bottle so we can pull them out and remember how cute they were at that specific age. Photographing those details is a great way to do that.

Here’s another detail shot from my postcard project that I love. My Magnus’s eyes will melt my heart every time. He gets in trouble and then smiles up at me with those sweet chocolate eyes and my anger is always lessened. I love those eyes!

Summer is in full swing. Bike riding, playing in our wading pool, parades, carnivals and lots of beautiful sunshine and of course fireworks. We even managed to sneak out and take a trip up to Bear Lake (on the Utah/Idaho/Montana boarder) and have a mini vacation. We have been busy, busy, busy. It has been fun.

And busy. Did I mention that?

I have been trying to grab my camera bag every time we leave the house or venture out to do some kind of activity. My goal for this summer is to try to take more action and bright sun photos. But the catch is to try to make them look professional and not snapshottish.

Snapshottish. That’s not a real word but I’m using it anyway.

One of my goals in starting MomShots was to discuss how I am learning to take more professional photos of my kids. To me, that doesn’t always mean in a studio setting. In fact, not in a studio setting is my favorite way to view my children and other children. I enjoy photos of children that are more natural and free flowing. Don’t get me wrong, I feel that there is a place for studio photos and I do enjoy looking at them and trying to figure out how the light was set up and such. It’s just not my thing right now, but one day I am sure I’ll venture into that area of photography. I do want to. Just not today.

Anyway, summer is busy. Take lots of photos. That’s my shpeal today. My MomShots Tip of the Day, if you will.

I haven’t been very active on here recently. That’s not likely to change for a while. We’re too busy having summertime fun. I love my MomShots readers, but I’m sure you will understand if I say that I love my kids a tad bit more… So I am soaking up every moment I can with them. That may be why it’s 3am and I am writing this… If anyone has any post ideas that they would like to contribute to MomShots, I would love to put them up.

What have you been photographing this summer?
Has your photography moved outside in this nice weather?
Do you have any specific photography related goals that you are currently working on?
Are you working on any fun projects?

I would love to hear from you and find out how you are doing.

Here are a few MomShots from the last few weeks:

We went fishing the other day at a near by lake. Maybe it’s more like a pond. It is pretty small but in its defense it does have the word “Lake” in its name. I spent all my time chasing my kids around with my camera.

As usual.

I came away with a few photos and thoughts that I wanted to share with you. The two following photos are straight out of the camera.

To set up the scene, my son, is sitting in the crotch of a tree. His face is in the shade. The sun is quite bright but shining behind him. I was standing a few feet away and snapped a picture using the light meter in my camera. The camera gathered lighting information from the bright snowy mountains behind and the from the dark tree trunk and shade covered boy in the foreground. It had to balance things out. I was shooting in manual mode and had my aperture closed all the way down to f/25. The light meter told me at what shutter speed to shoot. I blindly followed its instructions and put my shutter speed at 1/500 of a second.

The results are pretty well balanced tree trunk but my son is quite dark. I don’t like those results.

So to correct it, I scooted up close to his face and took a reading there. My light meter was not taking into account the bright mountains in the background or the dark tree trunk, just his face. I left my aperture was alone at f/25 and the light meter told me to slow down my shutter speed to 1/200 of a second. That little bit of slowing of the shutter was just enough to lighten up his face.

However, you might notice that the mountains in the background are kind of blown out or in other words, very white and bright. That is the trade off. As the photographer you have to choose what is more important. Is it more important for your background to look perfect or is it more important for your subject to be visible.

I chose the subject.

There are a couple of other ways that I could have lightened this up.

My personal preference and goal is to know how to fix problems like this while I am shooting. I don’t want to be a photographer who relies on PhotoShop to fix the problems I couldn’t figure out how to take care of in my camera.

That being said, I do think it is handy to know how to fix problems in PhotoShop. So on my next post, I will show you how I took the darker of the two photos and lightened just my son’s face in PhotoShop.

Until then… Keep those cameras clicking!

I was thinking it would be fun to have a catch phrase at the end of every post. Any ideas what it should be?

I have been following Kate from Chronicles of a Country Girl for a couple years, I think. She’s a very talented photographer and a really cool lady as well.

She recently posted a great tutorial for adding a texture to a photograph using PhotoShop. If you are interested in checking out her method, click here.

There is also another blog that I have recently started following. Jerry Jones, from Shadowhouse Creations is a wonderful resource for free and awesome textures. He makes and posts quite a few each week. They are free to use but if you do use one, be sure to use your manners and thank him.

Jerry recently posted a tutorial for applying and blending textures.

This photo is a true “MomShot” because it is of me, the mom. It is from this past summer right before I got pregnant. I had finally reached a point in my weightloss where I felt comfortable tucking in my shirt. I’m excited to have this baby and start working on that again!

Anyway, insecurities aside, I followed Jerry’s tutorial for applying and blending textures. I did not always use the exact textures he used but chose ones that closely resembled his choices. It’s a fun thing to try and I’m very excited to experiment and develop a better trained eye at this.

This is a cross post from my family blog. It was photography related so I thought I’d share it here too. Happy Valentines’ Day!!!

After much deliberating, I finally decided what to do for Uly’s Valentine cards for his kindergarten class. I was originally going to make this really yummy looking candy popcorn. I liked the idea of sending Uly with a treat instead of a traditional valentine card. However I started realizing that it was going to be a bit more work than I wanted to invest for all of his classmates.

This morning, (my sister) Olea sent me an email with a blog post to check out with a note that said, “Wish Lala was bigger so we could make these!” When I read that, before I clicked on the link, I was wondering what she was talking about. I started thinking about sewing for little girls or something like that. I wasn’t thinking Valentines’ Day. When I finally clicked on the link I was excited by what I saw because it incorporated photography, my kids and candy. I don’t think you can go wrong with that combination!

This photo of the finished product is not as good as I’d like it to be, but I think you’ll get the idea. You take a picture of your child with his hand in a position like he’s holding flowers or something. Then cut out a slit, punch a hole, or cut an “X” above and below the child’s hand. Then insert a lollypop. It looks like he’s handing you the sucker.

I loved the idea. Plus it looked easy!!!