MomShots

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?

So I totally bombed week 5. I took some photos on Saturday but I don’t like how any of them turned out. I think I’m going to just skip week 5. Maybe not. We’ve been looking at houses in hopes of moving soon and so I took a bunch of photos but I was focusing more on the houses instead of my kids. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be able to pull something together for week 5 but I’m not going to worry too much about it now. It’s onto week 6!

Today my boys were all hanging out on my bed (I’m sick today). We were playing with Legos, building spaceships. I built one for my youngest son but then lost interest in building and pulled out my camera and started shooting photos of them. A few turned out OK and so I put them together for my week 6 page. It was fun to do because I did a different action on each one. I guess it’s a bit incoherent design-wise but then I’m not a designer, that’s my husband.

EDIT:
I got off my butt and made a week 5 collage. On our house hunting adventures I did end up taking a few shots of my kids. I thought maybe I could use those. So here it is…

If anyone wants to share their 52 week projects, we would LOVE to see them!

If you want to use the little 52 week graphic, feel free. The html for posting it into your post is:

May I introduce a two new words to your vocabulary?

Triptych - pronounced Trip-tick. Originated from the Greek words, tri- “three” + ptychē “fold”
Diptych - pronounced Dip-tick. Originated from the Greek words, di- “two” + ptychē “fold”

These words were introduced to me about a year ago from the Digital Photography School. They had an assignment that centered around Triptychs. I can’t remember what I submitted or even if I did submit anything. Prior to that I don’t recall ever hearing those words. Since then, I have really enjoyed putting together both triptychs and diptychs. They seem to speak to my indecisive mind. I don’t have to choose just one photo, I can go with all three.

Lately I have been making a lot of triptychs. I have been using this free action a lot instead of making them from scratch in PhotoShop. It’s pretty fast and I like the result. They also have a great diptych action as well; also free. I love the CoffeeShop site. Rita makes wonderful actions that are really fun to play with for storyboards and photo editing. However, you don’t need an action to make these. They aren’t hard to make and you may really enjoy the results.

This is one of my recent favorites. I couldn’t decide on these so I put them all together in one triptych. It makes making up my mind so much easier!

If triptychs and diptychs are new to you, I hope you give it a try and see how you like them.

Zoooooom!!! This week went by fast! I realized last night that I had not taken any photos of all my kids together so I had to put some effort into it today. I took them for a little hike to a nearby trail and brought my camera along. This is my result.

I love a lot of the free digital scrapbooking kits from Shabby Princess. You can download quite a few here. Did I mention that they are free? The kit I used for this is called Happy Go Lucky. I think it’s really cute. I will be using it again as there are many papers and elements that I didn’t use in this collage.

If you want to share your current 52 Week project results, enter your info in Mr. Linky below.

If you want to use the little 52 week graphic, feel free. The html for posting it into your post is:

I live in a house with six giant windows in the living room. Not your average home at all. It has many crazy features, one of which is that it is round. That causes all sorts of decorating dilemmas. I’m not even going to mention that the moron person that built it had no idea what a straight line was. I digress. My house has many, many faults but the large windows in the living room is not one of them. I love them. I want every house I ever live in to have such wonderful windows. Always.

One of the wonderful things about these windows is that on overcast days I have the most wonderful light that comes in. I can set children pretty much anywhere and they are bathed in beautiful, soft and multi-directional light. I don’t get harsh shadows and can get bright skin tones with ease.

One sunny days, it proves to be a challenge because I can get too much bright light but it is a challenge I gladly accept. If I weren’t so lazy about decorating I could probably solve that bright light problem with a few translucent or hazy curtains. But I am. Our living room has no furniture in it. Why? Because I’m lazy. Also because I really love the large open space that is always being used by my sons and husband as a wrestling ring, Jedi sword fighting arena or Nerf gun battle zone. Who needs furniture when you have great light and children with imaginations? Not me!

I took these photos yesterday of my adorable niece. She was over for a few hours and when she’s here I can’t help but get out my camera. I need to start thinking of more creative ways to photograph her but for now, this will do.

Thank you wonderful overcast day for your beautiful light filling my living room. You are welcome to come back often.

After yesterday’s great post by Rachael and Shanda, I realized that I wanted to get in on the action of the 52 week project too. I have been noticing that I have been taking fewer photos than I used to. I have lots of excuses, like being tired, sick, trapped in the house by cold weather, etc. It’s all just excuses. I am the master of excuses. I will transcend those excuses!

Another reason I am excited about this is because I have such a hard time putting together compilations of photographs of my kids. Again, I have good intentions but poor follow through. You might think that since I take so many pictures of them that I would have photo albums all over the place. I have none. That’s right; none. That HAS to change.

I tried the yearbook challenge last year and got a month into it and then I didn’t keep up my motivation. I just can’t let that happen anymore!

I decided to participate in this project so at the end of the year I can easily print out the 52 pages and have a great compilation of the past year. This will also force me to weekly work on my Photoshop skills. Hopefully that will also help me keep my goal of getting better at Photoshop.

I have decided that all my pages will be 8.5″x11″ at 300 dpi so printing and compiling should be a breeze. I am going to do it scrapbook style - or at least my version of what scrapbook style is. Sometimes I will add embellishments sometimes I won’t. Who knows? I’m spontaneous like that…

Here is my week 1 page.

Anyone else up for joining? Or have you already started? I’d love to see and/or share some of your 52 week project pages. Email me at MomShots@yahoo.com.

I am excited to see my Photoshop and photography skills by the end of 2010. I can’t help but get better if I keep up with this project and forcing myself to take pictures and compile them. It’s going to be fun!!!

Note from Jessica: I am super excited and inspired by this post. Rachael Grotegut and Shanda Atwood are both talented photographers and busy moms who live in my area (the Utah Valley). They are great ladies who never fail to make me laugh. I feel lucky to know them.

Text by Rachael Grotegut:

Last summer my friend Shanda and I each opened up a photography business. While its been fun to photograph other families and build our portfolios. We noticed that we both stopped photographing our children as frequently as we used. In fact besides a few shots for my oldest sons birthday, and Christmas card pictures. There is not much to show for the past seven months. I look back on the date labeled folders from other years and they are filled with memories. In 2009 I completely fell flat!

A few weeks ago Shanda brought up the idea of doing a 52 week project and I just had to jump aboard. Fifty-two weeks, one memory every week, captured on film…er…I mean digital media :). The idea is to capture their every day, the big moments, the small, and everything in between. Then compile the memory or memories you photographed and share them on our blogs, Facebook, etc.

I think this is a great challenge for all of us. Pull your camera out and get creative. Even if it might seem mundane at the moment, years from now you will look back and cherish these memories.

Encourage yourself to take more pictures.

Photo by Shanda Atwood.
Caption: Week one. My mother in law got each of my girls a porcelain doll for Christmas. Kayleigh named this one Kristy, because it’s Kristy’s doll haha. She named hers Kayleigh I did this shoot thinking it was her doll, I didn’t find out it wasn’t hers till the next day, oh well!!!

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!!!

So I was thinking that I need to remind myself to get the camera out every single day and practice what I am learning. Maybe you need a reminder to take a MomShot every day too. Maybe not. Thinking about learning how to use our cameras and thinking about what makes a great photograph is nice but unless we actually get out our cameras and take those MomShots, we are not going to progress as fast as we’d like.

Some people are involved in projects like the 365 Project. That is where you take a photo every single day for a year. Can you do that? Personally, that’s too much pressure for me right now. I know I will miss days and then I’ll probably end up abandoning the whole project. That’s setting myself up for failure and I don’t like that. However, I could probably do a 52-Project or something less demanding. A photo a week is better than nothing, right? I DO take more than one photo a week so right there I know I’d be OK.

I am going on a road trip next week. My sister and I are going to drive up to Bellingham, Washington to visit our parents. It’ll just be me, my boys and my sisters. We are going to have a blast. While I am gone, I plan on getting out my camera every day and taking a MomShot. I always find inspiration when I travel, it’s the nature of going to new places. I’m excited.

I think I am going to do a MomShot a Day Project for the time I am gone. I’ll try to post them as the week progresses. Anyone want to participate with me? We could put them in a special Flickr group if that works for you. Let me know. Its always fun to have company!

So I just read this awesome post on a blog I follow and I wanted to lead you over in that direction. The blog is called Digital Photography for Moms and she often has great tips. This morning her post was about shooting in RAW vs. shooting in JPG.

If you are not sure what I am talking about let me explain a little bit:
These are file formats. I believe all digital cameras can shoot in JPG. You can usually choose how large of a file you would like it to use - small, medium or large. I believe most DSLRs have the ability to shoot in both JPG and RAW.
When your camera saves your file as a JPG, it compresses it and then runs the file through an algorithm that determines what the final result will be. Basically your camera makes choices for you like how blue or dark the image will be.
When you shoot in RAW, your camera doesn’t compress the file. It saves this giant file and then when you bring it into your computer you can make choices about how you want it to look. If your white balance was off or you have areas that are a bit blown out, you can often save those pictures and correct them to look better very easily.

So from that really simplified explanation, you can see that shooting in RAW gives you more control. There are a lot of benefits from shooting in RAW.

I have been shooting in JPG all this time and I just switched my camera to RAW on Saturday night for the Photocamp photowalk. I was really surprised by how much control I have in the editing process. I could lighten some of my images or change the white balance. It is pretty cool.

So I’m still experimenting with it and I’ll get back to you with more information about it. Don’t feel like you need to switch over this very second but it is a fun change and it opens a new level to my post processing.

On another note, I need to announce the winners of our giveaway from Friday and I need to put together that much anticipated catchlight post. I’ll get on those as soon as I can. Things have been a little crazy in my part of the woods lately. I was so obsessed with my presentation from Photocamp that now it is time to get back to reality! So the point of this little paragraph is that those posts are coming soon. So hold your horses! I’ll get on those items soon.

Obligatory MomShot:
A little triptych I made using images from a morning shoot after I gave Mag chocolate cake for breakfast (yeah, I’m that kind of mom too). I really liked how it turned out. I love the brightness of the colors and the lightness of the background. Even though you can see my brown chairs and cupboard behind him, there is a certain “airiness” or “lightness” about these shots that I really dig.

The shot on the left and the one in the middle was shot at 50mm f/1.8 200 ISO, the shot on the right was shot at 50mm f/3.5 200 ISO. All shot with natural light. I decided I’m going to start giving you my settings. I always like it when other people do that so I want to do the same for you.