MomShots

If your kids are anything like mine, they are always going full speed.  There is no chance that I can gather them together, pose them in a sweet angelic way and then be able to snap some beautiful photos that show how cute and adorable they are.  Not gonna happen until they are maybe 20…

Does that sound familiar?  Well if it does, you may think this Momshots Tip is pure genius.  I do!  

Contain them.  Put them in a box.  Put them in a basket.  Put them in something that makes it difficult for them to run away.  They enjoy the novelty of being inside a container and you get to snap some shots while they are immobilized.

I took a series of photos with my three boys in this wooden planter bucket.  We use it as a laundry basket and so the boys thought it was really fun to climb in and play around it.  

Try this tip yourself and let me know what you think.  I would love to see some of your results.

******

The next item of business is the new Tip of the Week.  We are focusing on the letter B this week.  For B we are discussing Backgrounds.  Check it out and the next time you start snapping your Momshots, think about what is behind your subject.  Are your darling kids going to end up with a tree or telephone pole growing out of their head?  In some situations that would be really funny.  However if that is not your intended purpose you might be disappointed.

I love your feedback.  Don’t forget to leave a comment.  Do you have any funny shots where shovels are growing out of your kids’ ears?  Do you have any great ideas of containers you can stick your kids in to get some good shots?  Let me know.  I love to hear it.

Have you seen Martha Stewart’s blog?  I have been a fan of Martha for years.  She is a force for creative good in this world.  She often has great ideas and projects that I want to attempt.  Her recipes are fantastic!  

In her usual Martha-ness and love of sharing information she is promoting and helping people blog.  She has a great article about how to get started.  It’s pretty informative and interesting.  Here’s the link for that article.

In other Momshot related news, I have a fun idea for some photos.  I am going to attempt to take some shots today and share them with you in the very near future.  Check back tomorrow, my friends!

Do you know what DPI stands for?

In the photographic and printing world it stands for Dots Per Inch.  

You may have heard that term before - especially when you tried to print out an image using any online printing company like Snapfish, Costco, Shutterfly, Walmart, etc.

When you are working with photos and other types of images, you are dealing with dots per inch.  This is a way to measure how many little bits of color can be squeezed into one inch.  This is not to be confused with pixels per inch because each pixel holds three dots of color - red, blue and green.  There are actually three times more dots per inch than pixels per inch according to this Wikipedia article.  

When you are printing a photo you usually want it to have a high DPI of around 300.  That’s kind of the standard.  This will make your photo look better.  It will have more depth, richer colors and usually have smoother skin tones.  You can have a higher DPI than that but it usually isn’t necessary and it also depends on what kind of printer will be used.  Different printers have different DPI capabilities.  

When you are posting photos online, it doesn’t need to be very high.  A DPI of 72 works just fine.  The reason for this is that the standard for monitors is 72 DPI.  Basically, most monitors won’t show you any detail higher than 72 DPI.

So for you bloggers out there,  uploading your photos at 72 DPI is a really good idea.  This will make it possible for you to upload more photos and take up more space with all the good stuff you want to share because you aren’t filling up all your space with giant photos.

This is actually something that I was not doing before.  I just realized that I wasn’t paying any attention to that kind of thing and so I have been wasting my hosting space because of that.  Now I am going to upload every photo at 72 DPI and save myself some room.  Yay me!  :)  

Can you see a difference in these photos and any photos in previous posts?  I venture to say that you can’t.  In fact, check out the two versions of the Chicken photo below.  One is 72 DPI and the other is 300 DPI.  The only difference is that the 72 DPI version is only 228 kb and the 300 DPI is 1.2 mb.  That’s a big size difference.  I could put nearly 5 times the photos in the same space as the 1.2 mb photo.  

 Gar & the Rooster at 72dpiGar & the Rooster at 300dpi  

So the Momshot Tip for today is to lower your resolution to 72 DPI before uploading your photos online.  This will save you space and not compromise the integrity of your photos to those viewing them on a computer monitor.                               

The current weekly assignment at Digital Photography School is called Contre-Jour.  That is a term I had not previously heard.  Wikipedia says it is French for “Against the light”.  I take this to mean that the subject in a photo is backlit.  This means that the subject is lit from behind or the light source is in the background, not the foreground.  This offers a contrast between the subject and the light.  It can be a dramatic contrast or a more subtle contrast.

I am not sure how well the above photo of Gar’s curly head fits that description.  I think it does to an extent, but maybe if there was a greater contrast between Gar and the background it would be better.  Anyway, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and enter this into the weekly assignment.

I think these two above fit the description of Contre-Jour as well.  The fish tank one is open to interpretation as there is obvious light in the foreground, lighting Gar’s shirt, but I think the main light is coming from the fish tank and you can really see the contrast between the light (fish tank) and the subject (Gar).

The other one, the sunset on the road is definitely Contre-Jour but it’s not as fun as a photo that has a kid in it.  I just wanted to show another example and this is the next best one I had.

Have you stepped out of your photographic comfort zone lately?  

I challenge you to experiment with taking a Contre-Jour shot.  You might have a lot of fun playing with the light and the foreground.  Let me know what you find.

Oh man!  That’s a bad title isn’t it?  hehehe…   Someone help me, please?  :)

Title aside, my bright, hot sunny sky has taken a small reprieve and given us rain and grey clouds the last few days.  I love days like that, not only because I grew up in Washington State and so overcast skies pull at my heart strings, but because the lighting is much, much softer.  I can take my kids outside and get some Momshots without those pesky harsh shadows that the afternoon sun brings.

Trying to find good lighting is a challenge every photographer (I’m including every person who picks up a camera in this category so don’t feel intimidated) faces.  But as a mother, my photographing schedule is often dictated by nap times and the moods of my three boys.  I often find myself trying to capture Momshots in harsh sunny light.  Overcast days offer many more natural light situations.

My big plan for the day was to take my kids up to a nearby waterfall and take some photos, utilizing the overcast light.  That plan was scrubbed because of the whole nap time thing.  I guess my guys didn’t sleep last night because my two older boys are grumpier than a jack rabbit with a burr in its fur.  My youngest is still sleeping off his nap.  It looks like we’re not going to the waterfall.  Well, at least the intent was there.  I get a couple points for that, right?

Maybe I can get a few photos from the back yard…  I’m kind of sick of photos from the back yard.  I need to try harder, I guess.

The photo here is of my youngest son.  He is sitting in the stroller (Phil & Ted’s - the best stroller in the world, in my opinion) with a blanket pulled up around him.  This was taken over our 4th of July vacation up to my parent’s house in beautiful Bellingham, Washington.  We had many an overcast day.  I kind of went nuts taking photos.  I surprised myself by how many I took.  That reminds me… I still need to burn copies of all the photos for my siblings.

I would love for you to join our brand new Momshots Flickr group. We can share our photos with each other this way.  I can only see our photography improving. Awesome Momshots here we come!!!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/momshots/

We can help each other take photography to the next level. Are you as excited as I am???

Have you heard that term before?

There is a special window of time that is about an hour before sunset where the natural light is so perfect for taking photographs that photographers the world over have coined the term, “The Magic Hour”.  There is also another window of time that is bright and early and first thing in the morning.  Both of these times are ideal for taking awesome Momshots.  

This time is also called “The Golden Hour”.  Can you guess why?  The light is soft, even and warm - sometimes it has almost golden hue to it.

My suggestion for your photographing children adventures or your Momshots experience is to try a little photo shoot with your kids during The Magic Hour.  You can play with the light and deep shadows or you can get some great diffused and even lighting on your subjects.  Play around and see what fun results you can get.

I’ve mentioned it before and I will mention it again. And again. And again. It’s that pivotal to taking good momshots that I won’t let it become a subject that we read about once and then forget. What is it you ask? It is the concept that when we photograph children we need to experiment with bringing the camera down to their eye level. We can try different angles besides directly in front of them, but as a general rule we should avoid taking photos while towering above them.

One of the concepts of taking portraits is to bring the viewer and the subject together in a conversation. A conversation where the two parties are generally on equal terms. When we shoot children looking down on them, it separates them dramatically from the adults. It impresses our adult superiority on them. That’s not really the goal (unless that is your goal…).

These two momshots are taken from different angles. One is taken at Ulysses’s eye level and the other is taken from below. Neither of these impose our adultness onto him, they bring us into his world because we can see as he sees.  I really like the camera angle for these two momshots, I like the lighting as well.  I am also a little bit enamoured of the “noise” in these photos.  I need to work on using the correct ISO setting a little better, but I kind of like the result.  

The Momshot tip of the day is to experiment with the angle from which you are photographing your little cherubs.  Try something new and see how it turns out.  You may be pleasantly surprised!

Lately, I have been messing around in Photoshop, mostly converting some of my momshots to black and white. The reason? because I have taken alot of random momshots that have a loss of color coordination, due to giving up and letting my kid dress herself. The result, to many colors in the photo that are not pleasing to my eye! I noticed when changed to black and white, I just see pattern and different values of the same color (Black & White is color without hue). It seems to eliminate the non-important information and keep the essential. I have also noticed that the momshots that look good in black and white must have good lighting to begin with, because the lighting in black and white, clearly manifests itself.

How do you print out your fabulous momshots?  There are so many options out there; your personal printer, Costco, Walmart, Walgreens, Kodak kiosk, Snapfish, Mpix…  the list goes on and on.

I don’t have a lot of experience printing photos.  I have done it only a handful of times in the past 10 years.  That is a trend I plan on breaking!  Immediately!

In my recent post about decorating with photos, I decided to build a little mural of beach photos from our recent trip.  Well this evening I spent some time and edited the ones I want to use in Photoshop and cropped them all to the size I want.  I’m going with the 5″x7″ prints.  I think those will be a good size.  Big but not too big.

Now to the printing…  I don’t think that my printer will give me the quality that I want so I am going to use a service.  Of all my options, I decided to upload the files to Snapfish.  I have used them once in the very long distant past.  I was pretty happy with my results.  I don’t have any complaints.  So because of familiarity and the fact that I don’t have to leave my home, I decided to use them again.

I’ll for sure let you know what I think of the results once I receive them.

While I was weighing my options, I found an interesting photo printing comparison website.  Check it out and let me know your thoughts.  It doesn’t include everywhere but it does include many places.  In fact, quite a few that I hadn’t heard of before.