MomShots

I can’t pass this one up. I have a photo… actually this photo:

that I want to print as an 8×10 and hang on my entry way wall.

MPix.com is having a sale on the printing of 8×10s. 50% off, to be exact! Just my cup of tea.

The sale ends tonight at Midnight, CST so you don’t have much time to take advantage of it. If you do choose to get something printed, use the code 8×10printsale when you check out to get 50% off your purchase.

MPix produces excellent results or the highest quality. I have never been disappointed with any photos that I have had printed there.

Anyway, just thought I’d pass on the word to you in case you’re thinking of getting some 8×10s printed. Today…

Since Eva Marie has been born I have taken a lot of pictures. I’m sure you can imagine! Today I stripped her down and took a bunch of photos using the natural light that comes in through the large East facing windows in our family room.

I tried to figure out some props to use. I pulled a couple of things from around the house; an old scratched up kitchen chair, a sheepskin, a cute pillow, a knit yarn sack thingy, a baby blanket from when I was a baby, a few cute flannel blankets and the Boppy. I also used our olive colored love seat and my old wooden desk since they were pretty basic back grounds.

I had a little trouble with my white balance. I wasn’t sure if I should use the cloudy or the shadey preset. I think I should have actually done a custom white balance because I had slightly adjust each image. I will try that next time. Maybe tomorrow!

I also am going to try that chair image again but instead of on the carpet of our family room, I will try it on the hardwood of the living room. I think that will look a little better.

I also pulled my older boys in for a few shots. I made them all take off their shirts. I just liked the look of that better than the mismatched t-shirts they were wearing. It also adds an organic element that looks more natural and innocent. I found four that I really liked and am planning on putting them together in a collage. Something like below.

These are pretty much straight out of the camera. I only adjusted the white balance a tiny bit. I would like to try some other editing but for now that’s all I have the energy to do.

So what did I learn?

It’s the anniversary of this marvelous blog today, and Jess is sadly without internet to post about it, so let’s surprise her when she gets back!

MomShots has changed how I look at taking pictures of my daughters, by not only encouraging me to simply get the camera out and shoot, but giving me bite sized pieces of information, new techniques and ideas to improve my pictures. It has de-mystified photography, showing me that while it is a skill to be developed, it’s not an impossible, elite activity. Perhaps more than anything, it has inspired me to read my camera manual, which has opened my eyes to so many new possibilities for my camera. My hard drive is filling up with beautiful pictures, and it’s largely due to MomShots.

So thank you, Jess, for sharing your love and passion, and inspiring us to capture our own.

If you’ve learned something new, been inspired, or just entertained by MomShots, please leave a comment and say so.

Happy MomShots Day! Here’s to many, many more.

I haven’t written up my thoughts about Photo Camp Utah yet. This morning a talented photographer and blogger, named Gail Vehar wrote up some thoughts that I wanted to share with you. Even if you aren’t interested in Photo Camp Utah, you should read her post. She has wonderful info that applies to everyone who holds a camera.

That’s you!

Shooting Seniors is really hot right now. Check out the great post at I Heart Faces to read their tips. I learned a thing or two!

Obligatory MomShot taken in March of 2009:

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?

You wake up at 2am and since you can’t fall asleep again until 7am you lay in bed composing photographs in your head.

So I may be a zombie today but at least I have some good ideas for my upcoming photo shoots.

Have I told you that I have some coming up? I don’t think I mentioned it. I’m scheduled to do an engagement session and two senior portraits this next month. I’m kind of super excited about April. It’s going to be a busy and fun month!

Maybe at some point I’ll have a baby too. Who knows?

Maybe I’ll get back on track with my 52 Week Project too. I did take some shots yesterday that I think will be useful for this week’s collage. We took our boys fishing. They loved every minute of it.

Instead of the obligatory MomShot, I will leave you with a quote that I read at Photo Camp. Which was unbelievably awesome, by the way!!! I promise I’ll tell you more about it later.

Making photographs…
is a way of shouting, or freeing oneself,
not of proving or asserting one’s own originality.
It is a way of life.

~Henry Cartier-Bresson

Tomorrow is Photo Camp Utah 2010 and I could not be more excited. It’s going to be so much fun. I know I am going to leave so inspired and excited. I am going to learn some really great things and hopefully make some new friends.

The tickets sold out fast and so there were a lot of people that didn’t get a chance to get one. They only had 300 spaces and those were gone in one day. Who knew that year #2 would be such a hit?!? Pretty exciting, if you ask me!

So if you were one of the people who were not able to get a ticket, put away your sadness! You will be able to watch live streams of some of the classes on the internet. Ustream.com will be broadcasting the event, thanks to photographer Shane Dansie (follow him on Twitter @NikonRookie).

You can either click on this Ustream.com link or go to Ustream.com and search for #PCU2010. Both ways should work.

Obligatory MomShot:

We went to the park yesterday. I took my camera but didn’t end up with very many “good” shots. I do like this one though. I am thinking I may have over processed this one but I’m not sure. I have a hard time telling. Oh well. I’ll figure it out one of these days and when I do, I’ll write up a post about it.

One of the many blogs I follow is Jessica Sprague. She’s a digital scrapbook extraordinaire and entrepreneur who has many resources on her site. I haven’t really taken advantage of all her site has to offer but I have enjoyed glimpsing the really creative scrapbook pages I have seen on her site. I especially love the mixed medium projects that she highlights on Thursdays. For some reason I am a sucker for mixed mediums.

On Wednesdays she offers one of the products in her store for $1. Today I really thought it was cute and wanted to share it with you. It is a vintage camera kit by designer Danielle Thompson. Adorable, huh?

So for a $1 I decided to purchase that kit. This is actually the very first kit I have ever purchased. All the other kits I have were ones that I found for free. I couldn’t pass up this vintage camera cuteness and wanted to pass on the info in case anyone else has a penchant for this same thing.

I have a question for you and I actually need your response. Can you help me with this? It will just take a second.

Salt Lake City based photographer, Sara Boulter and I have been discussing putting together a workshop for moms (and other photography non-professional types) to teach how to take better pictures. Better pictures of your children, friends, the entire world…

Sara taught one of these seminars a couple years back and I went to it. It was great! I learned a lot and had a really fun and yummy time. She is hilarious and also had great prizes for everyone who came, including a new camera.

I should also mention that the cost was really affordable. It will be so this time as well.

So here’s the question:
If you live in the Mid to Northern Utah areas would you be interested in taking this one evening seminar?

What do you think?