MomShots

I’m not posting anything really photography related today. I need to sit down and write a post in response to a question I got the other day (Kelsey I am going to answer your question about collages/storyboards on my next post). I just have been letting my pregnancy induced laziness take over my life this week. I also need to figure out what to do for this week’s 52 Week Project. I’m thinking I might either photograph body parts, like feet, ears, noses, eyes, etc. or maybe I’ll have the boys pick a toy and we’ll photograph them playing. I don’t know. It’s Thursday already and I had better do something quick or it’ll be Saturday and have to race to figure something out!

So I just saw this cute GIF on a blog I follow. I love your comments so I thought I’d post the GIF and tell everyone how much I appreciate you who actually read what I have to say. I’m not quite sure why you keep coming back but I enjoy writing it so I’ll keep it up! Your comments always make me happy. This isn’t a plea for comments. I know you’re there. I love you even if you don’t comment!

I have to say that I even love my spam comments. They never fail to make me laugh. I don’t show those to you so they are kind of like my personal little joke.

This is from a 1943 book Stunts and Tumbling for Girls by Virginia Lee Horne. If you want to include this GIF on your site go to her blog post and grab it. She’s giving it away free.

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.

Have I told you my news? I know I mention it on my family blog and on FaceBook all the time but I don’t think I have officially came out and said it here…

I am pregnant.

Again.

With my fourth child.

I’m exhausted and scatterbrained beyond belief but I know that this is the right thing to do for my family and I take comfort in that. Four kids… That’s a lot.

I think I need to go cry in a closet right now.

Not really, but I do get overwhelmed by the thought of having four kids if I think about it too much. Especially on a day like this when I spent a whole bunch of hours running around the house picking up, folding, washing, cleaning, wiping, spraying, sweeping, vacuuming and feeding and then I look around the house and it looks like nothing was done. I could have just watched TV all day and my house would look the same. Anyway, I digress.

I’m pregnant. Due at the end of April. I find out the gender on the 21st of this month (come on girl!!!!!!).

So MomShots has kind of taken a back seat for now. I think about posts and actually have a few written that just need some final touches. But it’s not high on my list for now. I’m just too dang tired.

Anyone want to help? Anyone have any shots they’d like to share? Anyone have any ideas they would like to get out to us camera yielding and wielding moms?

I would love to share your shots and ideas here. I would love to give you the podium and let you take as much or as little time as you’d like to pass along your thoughts.

Any takers? Really. Anyone of any experience level is welcome. All kinds of thoughts are welcome. All kinds of takes on photography is welcome. Even if you just want to share a few images and don’t want to write any text. It’s all welcome.

Just drop me an email at momshots@yahoo.com, leave me a comment or use the contact page here and we can get your thoughts and images up here for the world to see.

Doesn’t that sound like fun?!?

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!

I just got this blog post in my RSS feed and thought it was pretty cool. Maybe some of you would be interested in joining this free photo editing class. I am!

Click here to find out all the deets.

Have you missed me? I’ve missed you but have been having a great time playing with my kids. Here are a few MomShots from the past month.

Oh! I forgot to tell you my lens news…

I splurged and went out and bought the 35mm f/1.8 AF-S. It’s great because I don’t hate my camera anymore! I have this love hate relationship with it because of the auto focus/lens capatability issues that the Nikon D40x has. It will only auto focus with lenses that have an internal auto focus motor. There aren’t as many of those lenses available and the ones that are available are more pricey then their counterparts. I have been struggling with this issue for a while and finally decided that it would be a better choice to buy a lens then to buy a new camera, for the time being.

So I have been playing with that lens and having a great time.

This is a little spontaneous afternoon drive that I took my boys and their cousin on. We drove up to Cascade Springs and then got out and ran around. We saw some fish, a whole bunch of cool birds, beautiful wild flowers and even a snake. We had a blast. By the time we got back to the Provo area we were FAMISHED! We stopped and got corn dogs and chocolate milk and everyone’s spirits were lifted and tummies were full. It was a beautiful afternoon.

These were all shot with the 35mm and the f/stop was probably around 1.8. I like to open it all the way up.

Ulysses is such a sweet boy. He tells about 400 times a day that he loves me and he loves to bring me flowers. He is going to make some nice girl very happy one day in the very far off future.

Shot with 60mm f/3.3 with a shutter speed of 1/2000.

I think this was the night before I broke down and bought the 35mm. I took the boys to a park to run off some energy before bedtime. The sun was setting behind these trees and mag was perfect in the light. It’s a miracle I got any shots from this evening that weren’t blurry as I had my old lens on. There were a few.

Shot with 42mm f/5.3 with a shutter speed of 1/20.

We have been going to the pool whenever we can. There are a lot of really great kid pools in the Utah Valley area. I’m really surprise by that for some reason. I guess it is because I grew up in an area where people went to the beach instead of the pool and so pools were pretty rare. Here they are very plentiful. And very cool too!

Shot with 34mm f/4.5 with a shutter speed of 1/100.

Well that’s about it for now. I hope you are still snapping away and playing with your camera. I have been experimenting with depth of field and with different aperture settings. I love to get some areas in focus and others not. I have also been playing with sun flares and their relation to my aperture settings. I’ll try to post again in a week or so.

Cioa, my friends!

I’ve been in major blog neglect mode lately. Have you noticed? It’s so strange. I’m still totally motivated. I think about photography all the time. I rarely leave the house without my camera around my neck. I’m still pretty much obsessed.

Strange…

I think it has to do with the weather. Or the fact that these are the last few months before my oldest starts school and life changes forever. I may be subconsciously trying to soak up every single second I can with my children. I’m not sure.

Whatever the reason is, I don’t really think it is going to change any time soon. I just don’t see it happening. I’ll still think about posts frequently but I probably won’t actually sit down to write them up very often.

I’m just being honest here. I guess this is an apology of sorts. Sorry.

This is my blog birthday month too. I was hoping to do a big birthday celebration but I just can’t seem to log on for any serious amount of time.

Spring Fever has got me. Got me hard.

Here are a few of the things I have done lately. And by lately I mean the past three months.

A few senior portrait shots of my former neighbor. Isn’t she beautiful?

Here is my current favorite of my new niece. I showed you a little tryptech a few posts back. I can’t wait until I see her again and try to get some more shots.

Before we went to California, my sister and I drove up to Washington and saw my family.

That’s right, Cora is wearing a cape and a tutu. She’s awesome.

Here is Uly getting ready to fly.

More Cora.

Uly looking at the water on the ferry to Port Townsend, WA.

Mag is really sleepy here but he sure is cute! I love the light in his hair in this shot.

This is Mag enjoying all the candy he can eat on Easter morning (it’s really been a long time since I put together some good pictures, hasn’t it?!?).

This last one is one of my favorites. Olea might kill me but it’s worth it. We were at the Bellingham, WA farmers’ market and she was eating a super yummy gyro. She’s such a cute prego! It is really fun to live so close to my sister and watch her grow and get ready for a baby. It’s been great!

I think I’ll end with that.

Keep MomShots in your RSS feed and I promise once in a while I’ll update, but right now, it is just not going to be as often as I used to. Thanks for being so understanding, my friends!!!

I wish I could think of a REAL word for large that starts with a “U”.  I love alliteration.  I couldn’t think of anything so I just made one up.  It sounds pretty big doesn’t it? 

Now I’m also thinking this may be a bit redundant.  With the alliteration the words undertaking and underway seem to be the same thing.  Whatever!  I’m sticking with it.

So are you wondering what this very large project is?

To answer that question I will tell you a story…

Once upon a time there a mom who was obsessed with her oldest son turning 5 (sound familiar?).  She was puttering around in Photoshop one day trying to create a little medley of photos to add to her daily countdown to his birthday.  She took four photos of cute and silly faces, sharpened them and cropped them all to the same size of 5″x7″.  Then opened a new document to put them all on to make a little collage.  This new document was huge; 100″ x100″ because she didn’t know when she created the new document what she was going to do so she randomly chose a really large number so there would be lots of room to move things around.

She put all her photos on the new document and played with them a bit.  When it was all to her liking, she decided to crop it and then insert it into a frame that she found on Flickr.  

As the cropping was about to begin she got an error message that said her scratch disk was full.  Instead of panicing like she is oft apt to do, she decided to spend a few minutes doing a little Googling.  The results of said search indicated that she’s just got way too much stuff on her computer so she decided that she needs to go through her 2008 photos and delete all of the ones that she didn’t really want.  As she was going through them, she realized that what really needs to occur is a gigantic scrapbooking and/or photo album creation.

What I, ahem, I mean She needs to do is go through all the photos from last year and put them into a printable format and then actually print them out and put them in binders.  

I’m not fooling anyone.  She is actually me.  I have filled up my little MacBook to capacity and it is time for some major spring cleaning.  I’m not overly upset about this since it was one of my photographic new year resolutions anyway.  That day has just come a little sooner than I anticipated.  I am excited to put together some of these images and actually get them OUT of my computer.  I think I am gong to be working on this for the next few evening as there are quite a few photos.  I’m obsessed or haven’t you heard?

I was eventually able to get the result I was after by deleting a few not so great shots of grass and fences or something.  It’s a start and I’m excited to continue on the project.

Have you made any progress on your New Year resolutions?  Have you made any progress on actually getting your photos out of your computer?  Any suggestions or tips for me that might make the process a little easier?  You know I would really appreciate any tips.

Or help.

Anyone want to come over and help me?  I make a mean peanut butter and home made jelly sandwich!  

If you haven’t, you might want to stop by and spend a few minutes perusing the group Photostream.  There are a bunch of great shots there for your enjoyment and inspiration.

Also, if you haven’t joined the group yet, I hope that you will.  Feel free to post up your favorite shots of your kids.

Last, just a side note, even though the name is MomShots, that doesn’t mean that Dads can’t participate too!!!  Don’t let that deter you from joining as it’s not meant to be literal!  :0)  We are an equal opportunity picture posting group!  

I’m laughing at myself.  I know this doesn’t really sound that funny but I just think that last paragraph really is hilarious.  It’s hilarious that I even thought to write it.  Like you wouldn’t already know any of that?!?  Of course you do!  

Ok, three posts in one day…  I’ll probably be quiet for a few days now.

So for now:

I would like to hear your opinion on an issue that is currently being discussed on one of the online Mom communities I belong to.  In this community there are a few photography related groups that I subscribe to and participate in occasionally.  

Pretty frequently there are challenges where everyone can submit a photo relating to a theme and people can submit a photo and then everyone votes on them.  Last week there was a challenge called “New”.  That’s pretty open to interpretation but a lot of the women put up photos of newborn babies.  It is a mom’s group afterall…

I didn’t do a newborn, I did the photo of Uly in the red hat that is in two posts back.  It was a new hat.  It fit.

Anyway, one member wrote up a post that talked about how she was kind of unimpressed with everyone’s lack of creativity in not only this mini-contest but in many others.  She talked about how most everyone just copied the idea from the example photo and did not come up with their own idea.  The post was intended to motivate the readers to think out side the box and encourage everyone to try to be creative and think of their own ideas.

I replied with a comment that went like this:

One of the ways that an artist starts out learning how to draw or paint is to copy or trace someone else’s original work. It isn’t done in the spirit of plagiarism or unoriginal thought, it is done to learn how make the correct pen or brush strokes and how to learn control and composition.

 

I think copying some one else’s ideas for photography is one way in which we learn to be better photographers. So many of the people in these groups are just barely starting out and learning how to use a camera. While that doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to directly copy and not think of original ideas, it is where a lot of these group members are in their development.

 

Maybe we need to encourage discussions about finding inspiration or thinking outside of the box. Perhaps that is what many of these people need in order to grow as photographers. I know I could always use ideas or ways to think more creatively and develop my own style and original eye for composition. I want desperately to develop my photographic abilities to a level where I feel like I can say that I am an artist. It is an art form that I really want to experience and truly understand.

So I think you can understand what I am saying.  I am saying it isn’t always bad to copy an idea.  In fact, in my podcast interview with Kiera Haddock she mentions getting ideas and mutating them into your own.  I mean, it’s 2009, humanity has been around for a while.  Do you actually think every single thought you have is completely original?  

Personally, I don’t.  Maybe I’m being cynical.

Anyway, I was wondering what you think about this.  Do you find inspiration from other’s work?  Do you find a cool photo in Flickr and try to shoot a similar image so you can learn from it?  Or do you completely abstain from viewing other people’s images so that you are only doing original work?  

Personally, I’m a copier.  Or at least I am in the sense that I get ideas for shots and try to learn from them.  I am not likely to be one of the newborn-baby-photo-posting-people.  I like to submit my own idea for contests, if I have them.  

I am not opposed to learning from others ideas.

And you know I can’t leave a post, especially a long post without a photo.  Uly’s birthday is on Friday.  Can you guess how old he will be?