MomShots

Last night we went to the park down the street and had a picnic dinner.  After we ate, I followed the boys around with my camera for a while trying to get some good Momshots.  I have to say that they are getting better at being photographed.  They are starting to strike little poses.  I don’t know if posing is good or not, but they are beginning to understand that if they are moving when I take the picture it will be blurry.

Anyway, there was a little section that was shaded by a large tree.  Magnus was crawling around in that area and he was just adorable so I decided to try out the trick with using the flash to eliminate shadows.

This idea is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately.  My Uncle Eric (who is a fabulous photographer) posted this tip here.  He said:

…the photo of the grape juice, try using the flash to fill in the shadows.

So I thought I’d give it a try.  My results were less than perfect but I’m OK with that because this is all a learning process for me.  This first one is overexposed but I can see that if I had used different settings it might have been a great Momshot.  The EXIF data on the picture says that I used an aperture of f/3.3 and a shutter speed of 1/180 of a second.  I probably should have sped up the shutter a little bit.  Maybe 1/200 would have been enough to get more definition around his jaw line.  He’s pretty cute though, isn’t he?  

This second one isn’t perfect either but I think it is closer to the desired effect.  He isn’t engulfed in shadow but he’s not totally blown out either.  Different settings made a big difference.  I used an aperture of f/5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/180.  So the smaller aperture made quite a difference.

It looks like I was playing with adjusting the aperture.  I usually play with the shutter speed and leave the aperture alone pretty much alone.  

I read the other day that one of the differences between an amateur photographer and pro is that the pros don’t ever show anyone their bad photos.  Well, since this is a site dedicated to learning photography, I am going to be showing a lot of my not so great shots.  Maybe one day that will change.  I keep hoping that I’ll download my camera and it will be filled with awesome Momshots.  One day…  

So I guess the moral of the story is to practice, practice, practice.  I am going to keep at this until I get some good consistent results.  That’s what this is all about.