MomShots

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.

I could have used my flash. I didn’t do this but I wish I had so I would have an example to show you of how it would have looked. Maybe I’ll try to reproduce this for another post.

I could have used a reflector. I also didn’t do this. I don’t have a reflector but have been thinking about making one out of cardboard and tinfoil. Again for another post…

I could leave it as is and bring it into PhotoShop and try to lighten it up a bit.

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!!!

So you got your fantastic new camera and you’ve been clicking away at everything under the sun. You may have gotten brave and moved it out of Auto and tried out some of the different modes. You may have even tried to shoot some shots in Manual mode. If you have, I am so proud of you!!! I think it’s kind of a big step to to try out the different modes and start to get familiar with how your camera works and how photography works. It’s pretty exciting!

When I first started with a DSLR, my camera didn’t have an Auto mode. The Nikon D100 only has Manual, Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority. So I was stuck hunting and pecking and trying to figure out what I was doing for a long while before I finally got the hang of it.

I really wanted to share with you my method for learning how to shoot in Manual mode. This worked for me and maybe it will help you as well. This is by no means the only way to learn to shoot in Manual, but it is the way I recommend.

Have fun!!!

Step 1: Turn the dial on the top of the camera to “M”. Ignore all other settings and modes. You can do it. Wipe the sweat off your brow and let yourself go. It’s not as hard as you might think and you will be so happy with your results.

Step 2: Open up your aperture. By that I mean, turn your aperture setting to the lowest number your lens will allow you to go. If you are wondering what aperture is, I think of it as how open my camera’s “eye” is. The lower the number, the wider the opening in your lens is and more light is allowed in. There are other factors that come into play with this, like depth of field, but I don’t want to worry about that right now. We can discuss at a later date. Check out this post if you want more details about what aperture is.

If you have a Nikon D40, 40x, 60, 3000 or 5000 you do this by pushing the little plus/minus button on the top right, near the shutter release button while you are turning the dial on the back.

If you have a Nikon D70 through 700 you do this by turning the dial on the front right, below the shutter release button. And honestly, if you have a D700 and don’t know how to do this, I would be glad to trade you my brand new D90. I don’t want to talk down to you but seriously, that’s the current camera of my dreams…

To change the aperture on a Canon you hold down the AV button and turn the wheel or on other higher end Canon models you just turn the wheel on the back and don’t need to hold down the button. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t have Canon experience and looked this up on Google.

If you have another brand of camera or are having trouble figuring out how to change your aperture please look it up in your manual. If that is still confusing, try doing a Google search or shoot me an email (MomShots@yahoo.com) and I can try my darndest to find out for you.

Step 3: With your aperture wide open, you are now going to only play with your shutter speed. You just leave your lens alone and adjust how fast your camera “eye blinks” (that’s how I think of my shutter speed). If your camera “blinks” slowly then more light will get in and your image will be brighter. If your camera “blinks” quickly then less light will get in and image will be darker.

Just a side note to confuse you… There are other implications of using a fast shutter speed. You can freeze action when your camera “eye blinks” fast or you can blur motion if that “eye blinks” slowly.

Your camera has a cool tool called a light meter that can help you decide how fast your shutter speed should be. I didn’t discover this trick until I had been shooting in manual mode for a few months. I will share it with you and hopefully save you months of hunting and pecking. Obviously if I had read my manual from cover to cover I may have understood that but when I first started out I don’t think I understood enough about photography to even know why a light meter would be a good thing to use.

This is what your light meter generally looks like. If you look through your view finder you should see something similar on the bottom of your view.

How to read the light meter:
Point your camera at something you want to take a picture of. Your camera is going to gauge the light that is bouncing off of your subject. Your light meter has a plus symbol on the left and a negative or minus symbol on the right. In the center is a little “0″ and/or a larger vertical dash. The goal is to adjust your shutter speed to get your light meter to read “0″.

As you are pointing at your subject, press your shutter release button down half way and as you do, watch what happens. Do you see those vertical lines on the bottom? Move your shutter speed control (email me with your camera model if you aren’t sure which dial this is) and watch as the little lines move toward the left or the right.

Do you see that?

Now move the dial until the light meter is telling you it is at “0″.

Now push the shutter release button down the rest of the way.

You have just taken a photo that your camera believes is properly exposed. Nice job!

My suggestion is to now go play with your camera. Take lots of different pictures using different subjects and in different light. Get a feel for how this affects your photo. Watch what makes an over exposed (really bright with white spots) image and what makes an underexposed (very dark) image.

As you become more familiar with what proper exposure feels and looks like then I suggest start adjusting your aperture. You will then be able to see how shutter speed and aperture can work together to create some really cool images.

The key, for me anyway, is/was to start small with a bite sized concept like shutter speed. It really helped me to get familiar with my camera and comfortable so that now I can much more quickly adjust everything and take a properly exposed photo the first time. Usually.

Now go out there, open up your aperture and watch your light meter as you adjust your shutter speed!!!

An oldie but a goodie MomShot. Using a wide aperture you can get that nice blur in the foreground and background, keeping your subject in focus.

Shutter Speed: 1/50, Aperture: f/3.5, Focal Length: 50mm, ISO: 200

When I first started out in the World of Photography, nearly two and a half years ago, I was really confused on what some of the key terms meant. Words like Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO were all so confusing and didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I didn’t find definitions of those words in my camera’s manual yet the book kept using them over and over again. It took some time and patience on my part to seek out and and understand what those terms meant and what their practical applications were.

If you are in the same boat and are seeking to figure out what those terms mean, you can find some answers on Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman’s photography site. She has reposted a four part series explaining, in great detail with examples of what Aperture and Shutter Speed mean.

You can find Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four at each of these links.

I’m kind of taking the lazy mom’s way out here by pointing you to someone else’s hard work instead of taking the time to explain in my own words. However, if you still have questions or want my take on it, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll be glad to talk about it. You can always email me at MomShots@yahoo.com.

As a side note, I’m really excited by all the responses I’ve gotten about this new 52 week project. Let’s work together to keep each other motivated! I’ll be posting my weeks here to help remind and motivate you.

Obligatory MomShot… This photo has absolutely nothing to do with this post. I just think it’s kind of cute because Ulysses is being such a tough guy and is all decked out in Nerf gear. I can’t very well have a MomShots post without including a MomShot, can I?

Shutter Speed: 1/200, Aperture: f5.0, Focal Length: 58mm, ISO: 640

I was playing with my kids on my bed and taking some random shots this morning. They were making faces and showing me their newest Lego spaceship creations. While I was quickly snapping away, I had my White Balance on Auto.

Maybe I should back up a little bit. Do you know what White Balance is? A simple way of explaining might be to say that White Balance is the basis for how your camera judges the colors that it “sees”. If the color white has a blue tint, then all the other colors it sees is going to be biased towards blue. Same goes for red. If your camera sees white and thinks it has a red or pink tint then all the other colors will lean towards the red side of the color wheel.

You may have noticed taking photos inside and think that they look too orange or even too blue. I always get photos that are heavy on the oranges when I take photos in my living room and kitchen. This photo below is a prime example of what I am talking about, my niece is sitting in an orange basket, but what we are concerned with is the overall warmth of the photo. See how her skin tones are very yellow?

EXAMPLE of heavy on the orange.

White Balance on Auto. No Flash. ISO: 1600, Shutter Speed: 1/30, Aperture: f/4.8, Focal Length: 48mm

The point of the White Balance is to tell your camera exactly how you want it to see white. Your camera probably has a a few options that you can choose from. They usually have Auto, Sun, Shade, Incandescent (or Tungsten), Fluorescent, and Flash. Those are the pretty much the basics but some cameras have an additional Custom setting - and there are varying degrees of how custom you can get that depend on your camera.

I generally keep my White Balance on Auto because I can pick up my camera and snap some shots quickly (good for kids) and then if I find that my Auto setting isn’t meeting my needs I adjust to the kind of light that is present.

Back to my original inspiration for this post. I was snapping a few shots of my kids while we were wresting and playing on my bed. The first few shots were kind of grey-blue looking.

EXAMPLE of White Balance on Auto. No Flash.

ISO: 800, Shutter Speed: 1/60, Aperture: f/4.5, Focal Length: 35mm

I turned on the flash because it was just a bit too dark. This is my result. You can see the difference, I’m sure. Much warmer looking. His skin has that nice creamy, pink appearance that is much more accurate to how he really looks. Not all sallow and grey looking.

EXAMPLE of White Balance on Auto using on camera Flash.

ISO: 800, Shutter Speed: 1/60, Aperture: f/6.3, Focal Length: 105mm

Then I decided that I didn’t want to take shots with the flash because I wasn’t liking the dark shadows that show up. I opened the window blinds a bit to let in some more light. My problem was that my camera was still on Auto. Auto just wasn’t making the correct reading. It was still too grey looking.

EXAMPLE of White Balance on Auto with a little more sunlight coming in.

No Flash. ISO: 800, Shutter Speed: 1/60, Aperture: f/7.1, Focal Length: 92mm

So my next step was to adjust my White Balance. Since I decided to adjust the White Balance I had to determine what kind of light was available to my camera. I didn’t have the ceiling light on in my room and so the light was coming in through the window, but even though it is sunshine I decided to put my White Balance on the Shade setting because we were not in full sunlight.

EXAMPLE of White Balance on Shade.

No Flash. ISO: 800, Shutter Speed: 1/60, Aperture: f/7.1, Focal Length: 92mm

See how much better and more realistic the colors are in this photo? It has nice pink tones, soft shadows and generally just looks better.

So as not to play favorites between my boys, I am adding one more photo example of the White Balance set on Shade with my youngest son. You can see how the colors on this photo are far superior to the first two photos at the top of the page.

EXAMPLE of White Balance on Shade.

No Flash. ISO: 800, Shutter Speed: 1/60, Aperture: f/7.1, Focal Length: 52mm

Next time your photos are showing up with a goofy tint, try thinking about the type of light that is available and adjust the setting on your White Balance. You can also play with it to create an effect to further your artistic expression. For example, a photo with a blue tint might give the impression of cold.

I have a photo that I took at the end of summer 2008. It was a very chilly day and my son was outside barefoot playing in the yard. I took this photo and didn’t adjust my White Balance. My camera was seeing the light as having a slight blue tint. I actually really like that tint because it shows me how cold it really was. On first impression, one might look at this shot and say, “Oh, too bad you didn’t adjust the White Balance.” But I like it that way, it’s part of my artistic expression on this particular shot.

EXAMPLE of White Balance setting to create a mood.

No Flash. Shutter Speed: 1/200, Aperture: f/1.8, Focal Length: 50mm

In the future we should discuss White Balance even further. A lot of cameras will let you tell your camera what white is. You can set a Custom White Balance and tell it exactly who the boss is. But that’s for another day. Have some fun playing with your White Balance settings and see what you think.

I have two things I want to discuss. Quickly.

The first is Photocamp Utah 2010. I’m super excited about going this year. I’m not speaking so I won’t be stressed out about it but that also means my ability to meet people is going to require more work on my part. I am not really shy but I don’t tend to meet people easily. So promise me you’ll seek me out and say Hi, OK?

Registration opens for Photocamp Utah 2010 on Monday, January 11, 2010 at 9am. The fee is a totally reasonable and awesome price of $15.00 I’ll try to post another reminder on Monday so everyone who wants to gets a chance to sign up.

This year the venue will be located in the Salt Lake area. It is going to be fun, entertaining, exciting, educational, inspiring and all around fun (I am aware that I typed fun twice). I hope that if you are in Utah you will make the effort to go.

Second.
This is my MomShots Tip of the Day…
I wanted to mention that during these winter months we often have overcast days and grey skies. I am of the belief that grey skies are wonderful for taking photos in. I love the soft light and shadows that fall. You will still have slight shadows in the same places you would if you were taking a photo in bright daylight, they are just softer and less harsh. I think those softer shadows tend to add some dimension and texture. I know that not all photographers agree with me on this. It’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it!

These photos were taken on an overcast day in Washington in early December. My parents designed this osprey t-shirt and we needed some model shots for their blog. I like this grouping because of the silly attitude that Ulysses is showing. I love shots like this!

So next time the sky is cloudy run outside and take some photos and see what you think!

Third.

I know I only said there would be two things but I thought I’d throw in a third just for good measure.

We have had a couple of wonderful guest posts and there are a few more lined up. All levels of photographers are welcome. All levels of experience. All levels of talent. All levels of interest… Etc. Am I getting my point across? This blog would be greatly enriched by your personal stories, photos and thoughts on photography. I even have a guest post coming up that is going talk about photographing pets. Since pets and children have so many of the same challenges I’m excited to see what her thoughts are on the subject!

Send me an email if you have any interest in being a guest blogger. I would absolutely love to meet you and help share your images and thoughts.