Happy, happy, joy, joy

I *think* spring may have FINALLY arrived! The weather is looking really nice for the weekend with temps in the 60's :) Hope you have a great weekend!

Columbine

Just a quick snap. I hope to play with it more tomorrow. I'm definitely pushing the color on this a bit, but it's kind of fun for a change!


f/8 @ 1/125. ISO 320. Hand held, window light, no flash.

This one IS a poppy!

No plant confusion here, this time anyhow ;)


f/16 @ 1/60, ISO 320

Liking it better against the green...

...rather than the yellow background from the other day:


f/11@1/60. ISO 250, hand held, window light with bounced flash

Another anenome

There is something about these flowers that just keep drawing me back to them. I think it's the simplicity of their colors.


f/16 @1/40, ISO 640 flash bounced off ceiling.

I am itching to use my tripod again, which rarely happens. I'd love to shoot these all the way or nearly all the way stopped down to get all that gorgeous veining in focus. I pulled the tripod out today only to find that the thingie that screws in to the bottom of my camera (which I typically just leave on all the time but for some reason took off) is in pieces. I can't get it back together, so I guess I'll stop by the camera shop this week and see if they can fix it.

I lied

Last week I posted a photo of this plant and said it's a poppy. It's not. It's an anenome. Oops! Couldn't help but shoot a few more pictures of it, it's just so springy!



Not thriled with the composition on this one, but it sure is a pretty bloom, isn't it?




All shot at f/13, 1/50 second, ISO 250, flash bounced either off window to camera left or ceiling.

What's she thinking about?

Wish I had had eye contact, but I like it even still. She seriously is the cutest baby and has the best personality. We went to Ikea yesterday and she had everyone in that store eating out of her hand.

On my keychain I have a photo of Colin. She always wants to see it and gives him a kiss every time. She's won a little bit of my heart.

Oral fixation?

Teething time - the fingers are almost always in the mouth.

Snagged the quote from {Mandy's} blog. I love it, and it is so fitting for little Miss H. If I'm having a bad day, she always brightens it up!

Just some quick snapshots from the other day:

Be prepared ;)

April is likely to be tulip month around here. Hopefully you won't get too bored with them! The colors on this one remind me of sherbet:


f/5.6 @ 1/160, ISO 250, window light.

with a couple of different texture attempts: yes? no? constructive criticism? please :)

Thank you Pat!

Yesterday {Pat} posted some gorgeous tulip photos which were very inspiring to me. The colors were beautiful, the lighting made the tulip petals glow, and her background was an incredible blue/green which showed off the yellow and orange to perfection! Even though she is living the same dismal, cold, rainy and snowy spring I am, she was able to make a picture look like something from the tropics.

I bought these tulips on Sunday, knowing that I wanted to photograph them before they wilted, but I just wasn't feeling it at all, so there they sat looking pretty on the kitchen table. After seeing Pat's shots yesterday I gave it a go.

Shot right next to the window on a very gray, rainy afternoon with my flash bounced off either the white ceiling or the window at camera left. Handheld. f/3.4 to 4.5









I'm including a SOOC so you can see just how amazing the colors are by doing a CWB and without any processing at all.

SOOC


C just sent me this link: PLAYBILL ARTICLE and photos. This is why B and I went to MI last week (and of course to spend time with C as well). How cool is this that they got a write - up and 17 photos?!?

A trip down memory lane

I was cleaning out my "garbage" folder today and ran across some older pics of C. While I had been interested in photography for several years prior to this (using auto settings), I started getting interested in really LEARNING photography the spring of 2006.

I took this photo of him in April of 2006. He was sitting on the floor right next to our living room window. My main goals were working on focus and getting good light in his eyes. I was THRILLED with this photo! I posted it for CC and all it's technical shortcomings were made clear to me. I had no idea what half of them were at the time (what does *blown out* mean?), or how to make them better, but I kept plugging away at it. Looking at the file name I gave it makes me smile, I called it "best version."

APRIL 2006
50mm lens @ f/2.5 (compare the facial distortion on this to the later images. THIS is why people do not recommend using the 50m lens length for portraiture)!


The following February I did some quick headshots for C outside, on the side of our house. I think he ran home from school one day to do them, he needed them for something specific and we were running out of time to get them done.

I blew out the reds so badly that we had no other choice but to convert to B&W. In hindsight I see now that I am not a huge fan of broadlighting, and for C it doesn't really accentuate his facial structure well.

FEBRUARY 2007
85mm lens @ f/2.4



Then in January 2008 we needed to do headshots for his college auditions. He really wanted someone else to do them, but to be honest, I put my foot down about spending the money to hire someone else. I had just started using lighting indoors at the time, and we played with that a bit, but he really wanted outdoor pics. It took several different "sessions" (both of us were stressed about them) and probably 300 or more shutter clicks to get one he was satisfied with. This also was taken outside our house.

JANUARY 2008
105mm lens @ f/4



The last headshots were when he was home at the holidays this past December. He wanted a headshot that wasn't so serious looking at the one the year prior. Looking at this one now I see just how much his face has matured in less than a year. This session was in our garage with my flash off camera in a 50" Wescott Apollo softbox. I had just gotten this softbox and was still getting the hang of using it. This session was the quickest and most painless (that mom/son dynamic did not rear it's ugly head)we had ever had. 30 minutes and we were done.

Looking at this makes me see how much I still need to work on lighting, and getting skin tones consistent, and also makes me realize just how badly I need a hair light! At our old house I did "studio" pics in our dining room. It had high windows which worked as a natural hair light. Boy I miss those windows!

DECEMBER 2008
105mm lens @ f/3


When I look at all of these, despite all their technical shortcomings, I see how far I have progressed, but I also see how much I am still learning - and will likely always need to learn. It kind of drives home to me that photography will always be a journey for me....

PS: the head swap yesterday was the guy in the brown shirt in the middle (nice job Becky!).

Head swapping

This is the image C used for the poster at the freshman show. In the original one of the kids was looking away (which I didn't have the time to deal with and get the print delivered in time). Since I'm having copies made for each of the students to keep and I have the time now, I did a head swap on this on. Can you tell who's head was swapped?



Oh and totally off subject, but it snowed here this morning for about 2 hours. SNOWED in Seattle on April 1st. Was it someone's idea of an April Fool's Day joke? Seriously!