Competitions...why not?

So you know, you can take tons and tons of pictures you love...but lets be honest... the best part? Sharing them! For me as soon as I find myself with a picture I like. Something pleasing to my eye and soothing to my artistic side, the first thing I want to do with it is share it. Recently I had a photo featured on a website I have been digging lately. The website is www.viewbug.com, its free to join and it has contests that are free to enter (and yes, there are actual prizes!) of course you can also pay to be a member and that lets you have access to more contests, and of course...those have better prizes. For now I just keep aiming to win myself a free membership ;)

So tonight I started looking around the internet. I have decided to start putting my work out there and seeing what competitions sounded good. There are a lot of places to put your work out on the line. feedback is great, why not?

So I made a new photographer friend and he turned me onto a new software program. Like photoshop, it's an Adobe product. I've been trying it out and I must say...so far it rocks. There are some things I still use photoshop for, but then I find myself finishing up with Lightroom. I give Adobe Lightroom my 110% seal of approval! I used Lightroom on the photo above of the seagulls and lake in my back yard. It really helped make the colors pop. and I did use the vignette options to darken the boarder and draw your eye in. Lightroom allows you to manipulate colors in a more precise and quick way than Photoshop. I was able to give the water a crisp blue that, to put it bluntly, did not exist in the original raw image. balancing color, saturation, hue, etc... can be the trickiest part of editing an image. It does not take much to overdo it. Knowing when the tweaking is right and most appealing is tough. I have worked on an image only to come back later and decide it ended up awful. I've learn on some photos to step away, come back, and re-access what I've done and what my goal is for the picture. Sometimes knowing what my goal is doesn't mean that the end result was what I had first imagined. I have found some of my favorite pictures happened entirely by accident, playing around and trying new things. I have not had the opportunity to try out some of the free websites that offer photo editing. Feel free to comment and share your experience with such sites. I hope to try them all and give feedback on which ones I liked the most.

Well, short and sweet as it is late. Going to try and get out shooting sometime soon. I'm feeling inspired! :)

Happy shooting!

Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Winter offers a lot of photographic opportunities. With snow falling, lights twinkling, and kids ripping into presents, its a photo wonderland out there. So one night at work I had my camera with me when the snow started falling. Lucky for me, I had my tripod as well so on my break I went out to take some slow shutter wintery night pictures. The trick with taking pictures slower than 1/60th of a second is to use a tripod and when possible a shutter release cable. It doesn't take much movement to show blur in a slow shutter speed picture. I did not have a shutter release cable with me. however, I cheated. I used the timer setting on my camera to allow me to press and release my shutter button without having to worry about causing any movement. Just press and wait. Happy shooting!

Long Lost Me

So my apologizes for leaving you all hanging for so long with no word. I do plan to get back to blogging more regularly. Our home flooded in May and for a long time I was too focused on getting back on track with our every day lives and now things have settled enough I will make more of an effort to get back to blogging more regularly.

With that said. I did shoot a wedding in July as well as a small family wedding/affirmation of vows for my uncle. A few of my favorites are posted above.

I got a new lens and had a lot of fun with it at the wedding in July. Its not quite a fisheye, but has a similar effect.

I plan to cover some photoshopping tips in the near future. I know not everyone has access to photoshop so I'm also going to cover some free alternatives. Please feel free to post any topics or questions you would like to see covered in the blog!

one to ponder

i am inspired today by a friend. having been under the weather i will skip my usual lesson or challenge to just write a little blog about photography in our lives. my friend is in georgia with her family right now. her grandfather passed away a little over 13 hours ago. what inspired me was on this trip she brought her camera, a companion who has become more and more an extension of herself, and she stepped outside and took pictures. i think back in my own life to moments when life itself wasn't so pretty...and yet...i grabbed my camera and went out and found some pretty....darn it.

life isn't always going to be rainbows and unicorns. sadly we humans can love. sadly because when you love, you can also lose. to step away from loss and grief and pain and sorrow...loneliness or even self pity...and to go out and take a picture that is beautiful..

well... its therapy.

only much much cheaper than a person who charges you by the hour.
more times than i can count i have turned to photography to express myself as much as to capture something. the pictures she took were moving to me. they were her grandparents home...their yard.

they told a story that i can't fully express in this blog (the pictures do the telling better).

you see..i too have lost a grandparent. and i think she captured a memory she knew she needed to hold onto. tightly.

i have actually lost three grandparents. and each loss changed my family forever. no family gathering has been the same since. houses have been sold and bought...

changes like that have never been easy for me. and by looking at her pictures, and seeing the yard, the vines, the flowers, the kids smiling... i am reminded of my own family on the edge of loss and change. i only wish i had managed to capture with such simplicity the places that meant so much.

bravo amanda.

as i was searching for a picture to add i came across albums from my families trip to maine before joel's grandfather passed away. i was pleased to find it because it fits nicely here. looking at those pictures captures a time we will always want to hold on tight to. the picture is of CJ (little courtney) and par (big courtney)

Rule of Thirds

hey there people. thought i would cover some "composition" rules. please note. rules can be broken. but they are best broken if you understand them to begin with. the rule of thirds is a tool to help you with placing your subject to maximize your composition and artistic look. most of the time when you take a picture via "point and shoot" you literally point your camera in the direction of a subject and click to capture. when you are trying to do something more artistic, to create art out of a moment, you want to think before you click about what is in your frame. the rule of thirds is designed to help you do that quickly.

the rule of thirds is really basic. if you were to draw a tic tac toe board over your picture, where your lines intersect would be the options to consider placing your subject.

this works both vertical and horizontal.

why this method? it creates a more interestingly balanced shot. not that if you aren't following the rule of thirds your picture will be boring. in fact the picture heading my blog is an example of me defying the rule of thirds. my subject is in the center and bottom of a horizontal shot. it works. the lines from the lights lead your eye. its an almost "in your face" undeniable subject placement that leaves little to question. the shot is well balanced because of the black and the dramatic lighting that points to the subject equally surrounding it.

but not every shot will be so obvious to place. the rule of thirds can help you when trying to compose.

the typical person when viewing a picture tends to view it along the intersecting lines of the rule of thirds (which is why it works so well)

google rule of thirds and you will see example after example of this simple yet effective compositional "rule". it is almost always the first lesson any budding artist or photographer will be taught in classes. and for most people it actually feels really natural.

your challenge? simple! try the rule of thirds. keep it really simple for the challenge. just use an object as your subject and try shots with it in the various intersection sections of your frame. try it with minimal background to enhance the simplicity.

please note. i created my "example" rule of thirds in about a nanosecond in photoshop and to be frank...its not a good "example" i will work on making a better one. in the mean time. i think it will help you visualize what you need to visualize. the photo of the boy with the pillar is a much better actual example. its simple and places an obvious subject in a rule of thirds position.

HAPPY SHOOTING!

shooting evie

yesterday was so nice out i decided to shoot some nice spring shots of my daughter evalyn. i have a few suggestions when you are planning out these sorts of shoots (kids at the beginning of a season or holiday)

putting them in some fancy shmancy outfit just because its your fav or because well hey, they are having their picture taken, or because you bought it for a special occasion, may not render you your best results when trying to get some good kid shots. you want pictures to tell stories. its spring. allow that to inspire you. weather is warming up, plants are coming to life, flowers are blooming, trees are flowering. it would hurt my heart to shoot with the intention of black and white this time of year. it is all about color. so i knew i wanted to showcase colors that inspire me in spring. for us, we are so into planting and mulching, i decided to use that as a "theme". with kiddos you can't hold any themes too close to your heart because you can only ask so much of your subject. you have to be flexible and ready to shoot an often fast moving target. i dressed my target for the occasion. i started with rain boots. we got them awhile back from my cousin as a gift for CJ (my son) and he outgrew them before he wore them. lucky for us, evie is just the right size. next i dressed her top half in something bright (main color yellow) with large flowers as a pattern. since i had two bright busy pieces to showcase (the boots and shirt) i finished with a pair of very simple dark jean shorts. evie's hair is still growing out and thus it is often in her eyes. i decided for this shoot i would take no chances of getting that money shot only to have the wind aid in the covering of her eyes. i decided on pigtails since she rarely has her hair this way and thought it might be nice to try and get some shots of it up. i used some yellow bows to match her shirt and the season.

props can be a very important tool when shooting pics of kids. they can keep them occupied and relaxed. they also can be overdone or seemed too posed, so try a few until you find something that works. for us, a small garden shovel made her light up. she got to dig in some mulch like she has been seeing us do for weeks. i was able to get several shots that i had envisioned before she was over playing "gardener". hence the "don't hold your theme too close to your heart". maybe that wasn't exactly a quote. i guess i could have just scrolled up to see what i had said. hang on. oh wait. it was pretty much my phrasing. ah. to know thy self. back to the point..... so when your subject jumps up and takes off. don't keep trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, so to speak. just follow and see what you can get. you want to capture your subject and tell their story and there is no better way to do this than to allow them to be as natural as they can be. evie wandered off to our little neighborhood island complete with gazebos. with it being close to midday the light was very harsh and overhead. it posed a bit of a challenge with minimal shading around. i got some good pics of her running on the bridge back and forth, something she loves to do anyway.

here's a challenge to try and replicate a shoot with either your own little one or you can borrow someone else's. feel free to go into detail about how you chose everything from outfit to location.

as always make sure you are following copyright law.

if blogger doesn't allow you to post picture directly to the blog comment, just post a link to a photo via a photosharing site.

a very important post on copyright

so my husband wanted me to check into copyrighting before plastering my photos all over blogger. i am pleased to find that they in no way own my content because i publish it on their site (you may be surprised to know that some other rather popular sites have fine print allowing them access to your pictures and information).

i decided that for a photography blog this IS important enough i wanted to post to make sure anyone reading and participating in my blog is well aware of copyright laws and infringement. i looked into bloggers policies and decided to re-post this important piece of information.

BLOGGER COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

again. as i stated before, make sure you only post pictures that comply with copyright laws. if you do not mark copyright or give proper credit i may remove your pictures. thanks so much!

happy shooting!