Cake Smash! Baby Boy!

When I first started with photography, there are two things I said I would NOT photograph, weddings and cake smashes.  Weddings to me, are to me, so intense and you really have to be so skilled, it takes a TON of confidence and it is very easy to mess up!  haha

Cake Smashes, ugh, I always saw the photos and they grossed me out.  Baby drool, spittle of cake bits, gah.... no thanks.  Overtime though, I have really enjoyed seeing others cake smash photos, I really liked the set up, the funny, incredibly cute photos!  I decided to try my own.  I am hooked!  I loved shooting them!

The little man was NOT having any cake, in fact, he made the cutest sour puss face anytime a bit of frosting even came close to  his lips!  We managed and I am really loving the way it turned out!
I can not wait to do another!

These are a few out takes....

Baby A!

I met this little girl when she was 1 month old and again when I took their family Christmas photos.  I love when my clients call me back to capture another milestone!  I was thrilled to be able to take her 3 month photos!  Her mother and I set up a time, planned props and poses, then the day came and it was so hectic.  I scheduled right when my children get off the bus (big mistake!)  Kids flying everywhere, 10 foot backdrop, seamless paper, flahses, lights, umbrellas, not a good combo...
So we stopped and rescheduled.  This time I went to her house.  It was so much more relaxed!

A few "Bridal" photos!

First, I need to set the tone.  It was C.O.L.D.  and yes, I do live in Florida, but we still get cold here.... but not much.  So while our cold might be your winter wish weather, Ms. Heidi was freezing in her strapless gown.  It was no more then 30 degrees outside and the wind was blowing from off the water.

Heidi did a GREAT job in hiding her cold.
Enjoy some pictures from the day.
We had fun, downtown, she had brought some balloons and while the lighting was very bright and I had trouble with my exposure in the sun, I do enjoy the brightness of the photos!

Work on metering

I have been doing a lot of reading, mostly on the interwebz (google is great!) and talking to other, more experienced photogs about their exposure technique and metering.

Usually, how I work is constantly adjusting.  Take a shot, adjust, take a shot, adjust.  This works OK, but it is really mentally straining. Maybe if I had more experience, I would not worry about it, like driving a stick shift, at first it is all you can think about, but then it comes natural, however I am not there.  I want to connect with my clients, not with my camera.

After looking at others photos and talking with them, I began noticing their settings rarely change for a session.  Obviously if they went from full sun to shade, they would readjust, but other then that, the same exposure was being used. 
That got me to thinking, just because I angle my camera up to the sky, where it is more bright, doesn't mean the actual light has changed for the subject, so why am I adjusting?  This lead me to a very informative thread on a well known message board and I was so excited to go out and try it!
Who better to test this on, then my cutest kid contest winner?

I metered once, for the sky, and adjusted accordingly and then left my exposure alone!  This was so hard to do because I kept looking through my viewfinder and seeing under/over exposure notices, but I trusted my gut to just leave it. 
Here are the results!

All the following photos are shot at F2.8, 1/1000, ISO 200 with my 35mm.

Now, you can generally see the lighting is the same. However, see how in the first photo, there is little to no sky visible?  and then in the following photos, the sky is a major part of the photo.  This made my camera meter change, signaling I needed to change settings, but I did not.  I feel the photos are generally exposed well, all the same and it took little to no time in lightroom to process these images!  Usually I have to adjust each photo to have similar exposure!  I was so excited!

The same thing with this next set.  I metered off the green grass, test shot, adjusted and left my settings alone!

 

The lighting in each photo is the same, but the meter was not telling me this.  And yes, I use spot metering, even coming off his skin, the meter would still change depending on my view of the sky.  I also used my small silver reflector to push some light under his chin.

I hope you enjoyed this!  Let me know if you have any questions!

Playing with a Reflector

After my crazy Christmas rush of photos, I decided to take a step back and list a few things that I enjoyed about each photo and a few things I disliked.  Most of the likes included smiles, love, all that sappy happy mushy gushy stuff, but the dislikes were more technical.  Exposure, shadows, blowouts, lighting issues in general. 
Photography is basically light, capturing the light and turning it into a photo.
I post on a very technical message board, that is really run by people who know their stuff.  Most are older so they have been around since the film days and can really give great advice.  You have to have some real tough skin though because they can be harsh.  I don't mind, because I know I can improve and the day I stop believing I need to learn is the day I stop loving photography.
This exercise was on a whim.  I took the kids on a walk, determined to use one of the most inexpensive lighting accessories avaliable; a 5-in-1 reflector.  I believe I purchased from Amazon.com for 15 dollars or so.
So here is the first photo.  A lovely girl, playing outside.  For this, I moved her so that she was backlite, meaning the sun was behind her.  If you notice the background is bright, but her face is poorly light.  Usually what I would do in this situation was expose for her skin, meaning to make her skin bright, this would in turn blow the background out completely, the background would be so bright, you would lose all the detail of the trees, the fence, and most likely you would not be able to see the play structure.

Here in this photo, I used the gold side of the reflector and just feathered it to the right of her a bit.  Now I'm still learning this, so she did get a bit of a flash of bright light a few times (sorry) but you can see it fills in the dark shadows on her face without me having to blow the background.  It also gives a bit of detail and depth exposing for her skin only would not allow.

Now the above example is not a true test because in the first photo my shutter speed was 1/800 and in the 2nd I had adjusted it down to 1/500.  So I noticed this while going through the photos and had her pose again, this time with the exact same settings.  Both photos were taken with 1/500, F3.5, and ISO 200.  This first one has no reflector.   Not a bad picture, but still the shadow on her face, giving her the "raccoon eyes" look, really bugs me.  I feel that my photos, if taken professional for a client, should not have these shadows.  I should be able to manipulate the light in order to avoid these types of shadows. 

The 2nd photo is also take with the silver side of the reflector.  Notice the lights in her eyes, gorgeous catch lights that the above no reflector is lacking!  You can also see in the no reflector photo, the top of her gorgeous curly hair is blown, no detail can be made out of the top of her head, in the below photo, while it is bright, you can still see the detail of the hair, the curls.

I also wanted to try some full body shots.  I have two reflectors, one is actually for exposure, with a black, white and grey side, and the other side is silver, this one is smaller.  It is the one I used in the 2nd set of photos above.

For these full body shots I used again the gold reflector.  So as you can see from this photo, we are in partial shade of a tree.  This makes for very dappled light.  The girl is underexposed, normally I'd up my exposure, blowing out the background and you can already see her hair and parts of her shoulder are blown just from F4these settings.  I used the same settings in both of these shots, 1/400, F4, ISO 200.

This 2nd photo was take at the same settings, 1/400, F4, ISO200, but you can see how much more light the reflector pushed on her, even adding depth and dimension to her hair and skin!

 

Now, I am not saying this is a perfect example but it has really pushed me into wanting more and more practice with different lighting, adding fill with reflectors and even getting into some off camera flash.

I hope you enjoyed my little lesson and I'd love to see your examples using reflectors and without!

My New Year Blog Post....

I had major plans for things to come on this day, but I've done nothing to accomplish those plans.

Before I restructure the business side of my photography, I've decided to work on my exposure and composition side.
I'm going to do a lot of experimentation, going to get a lot of error, but with that error comes knowledge.  I've learned more about light in the past 8 months then I've probably learned about education or ultrasound over the past 11 years, believe that!

As I speak to other photographers, some who are very informative and love to teach (like myself) and then others that have more delicate ways of giving you advice (both of which I appreciate dearly) I realize I don't know anything.

I might get a few good/decent/ok images per session, but I have no idea why, all I know is I take a picture, look at some graph thingy, read it, and adjust my settings accordingly, but why?  I can not tell you, because it is just something I have learned over the past few months of teaching myself... ok the graph is way too far over that way, I need to open up/speed up/slow down/stop down, but actually taking a light reading and setting my camera BECAUSE the light is telling me to do so, I can't.

I don't want to have to keep telling my clients, hold on, or more importantly miss that shot of their toddler because my settings were off.  I want to nail that exposure and know why I did so.

I have a ton of photographers on my facebook page, there is a span from friggen awesome (I hate you/love you deal) to wow, there are no words.  I am sure I fit in both of those categories at times and I don't want to. 
I want to knock it out all the time.  I know that is a huge goal, heck even the amazing ones have their off days, which is fine, but I want to have my off days and know WHY they are off, not get home and look at a bunch of crap from my card and try to push it off as a good job.  Or vice versa, I don't want to get home and look at the pictures and think wow, these are pretty good and have no idea how I achieved that look.

I'm going to pay more attention to settings for this year.

I am so very thankful to everyone who has helped me get this far, the beautiful families, models, my own family, my cats.....

Get ready for growth from me.  I will need test subjects.  Stay tunned in 2011!