Say Cheese!

You know that thing about how parents take a zillion pictures of their first kid and then less and less the more kids they have?

Yeah...I don't have that problem.

Huh?

When you're talking to your kids, do you ever just think "where did that come from???"

Just last night, for example.

Me: Gabe, time to brush your teeth!
Gabe: What's in it for me?
Me: (baffled)...um...clean teeth?

Watch out

Karate is turning Nathan lethal. (The music choice is me amusing myself)

Recent Aria-isms

Aria: Mom has Clara had lunch yet?
Me: Not yet.
Aria: Well, slam her on your boob and give her lunch!

-----------------------------------------

Me: Aria, please don't squish Clara's cheeks so hard.
Aria: But they're just so mushy!

Photo Talk - Lesson 3 - ISO

Alrighty...we're back! Now that we've covered the basics of composition, we're getting into the mechanics. I'm a firm believer that until you can shoot comfortably in fully manual mode, you're not a true photographer. You must know how your camera works and be able to manipulate the settings for the light that you're in.

Don't worry, we'll be going really slow for a while.

ISO denotes "film" speed. Remember when you bought film way back in the old days? They had numbers on them. 100, 200, 400, and 800 were the standards for the average picture taker. 25, 50, 1600 and 3200 were (are) also available if you knew where go.

Now stay with me, this is good to know. Film is coated in grains of silver. The silver absorbs the light entering the camera, which creates the image. (This has been replaced with a digital plate in digital cameras.) Film with a low ISO (25, 50, 100) has super fine grain and it is slower to absorb, so it needs more light. That's why those film boxes would say to only use ISO 100 in bright sunlight. The upside is the picture turns out very clear and crisp even when enlarged.

Most point and shoot cameras have a low ISO setting as the auto setting.

Film with a high ISO (800, 1600) has large, course grain and absorbs the light faster so it's great for low light situations like night time or times when you don't want to use a flash (like concerts or recitals). However, your image will have "grain" or "noise" (the digital word). It won't have that super clear, crisp look of a low ISO. You have to decide if the trade off is worth it.

Okay. Go get your manuals and see if you can change your ISO on your camera. If you can I want you to practice shooting with it low and high in different lighting situations.

If you have a "P" function on your camera (many have P, Av or A, Tv or S, and M as settings). So if you have a P, set your camera there. Then change your ISO, then shoot. The camera will set the other important settings (shutter speed and f/stop) for you as long as it's in P. But you will be able to change your ISO.

Remember low ISO needs lots of light and will be clear. High ISO requires less light and will be grainy.

A couple examples.

Low ISO...bright sunshine, nice and clear.



High ISO...the only source of light in this picture was the fireworks off in the distance. The grain isn't bad because the good digital SLR's tend to have very little noise/grain even in the higher ISO.



Here's another because I want you to see a more realistic grain. This was in the old days. It was taken with 3200 ISO film. No flash, on a football field at night.



Now for what digital grain on a point and shoot is likely to look like. 1600, no flash in a karate studio.



Remember to ask questions! And add your link below!

For Michael

He keeps asking me if I'm done with these yet. So here you go, Bud. Hope you both like them!

I'll post a couple here, too. :)

Finally done!

I've said this sentence entirely too many times in the last several months. "I really need to update my website." Well, it's finally finished! It has a pretty new home page and all the galleries have been updated. Go check it out!

I forgot to mention...my prices have changed but if you already had a shoot scheduled with me, then you still pay the old prices.

My bff

My bff is having a baby! And she let me take her downtown for some urban maternity pictures. It was fun!

My favorites...

Presenting....

Gabe. He's going to sing you a song. Ignore Nathan and Aria babbling in the background. We tried to tell them to be quiet, but they didn't understand why...



lyrics...

You're my honeybunch, sugarplum, pummy-ummy-umpkin, you're my sweetie pie.
You're my cuppycake, gumdrop, schnikum-schnukum-pure, the apple of my eye.
And I love you so, and I want you to know that I'll always be right here.
And I love to sing this song to you, because you are so dear!

Chunk-a-lunk

My little Clarabella is 6 weeks old. We had our 6 week midwife appt yesterday and she is now 11 lbs 13 ozs.

exhibit A:


exhibit B:


and the whole crew...

And now....the rest of the story.

Alice Cullen: "Havn't you noticed yet, Bella, that Edward is just the teeniest bit prone to overreaction?"

My sister just blogged. She weaved (wove?) a lovely (and amusing) story of her tendency to overreact and attempted to put the overreacting blame onto myself. So now, dear reader, I will be clarifying her extremely down played story.

April wrote "I scream..." Um...it was much more dramatic than that. It was like horror movie screaming at the top of her lungs, repeatedly, for at least a minute, (any sane person would think the screamer was getting attacked) after which I hear "Jovie, I'm so sorry baby! I'm so sorry!" so I know she wasn't stolen/attacked but now I'm thinking she dropped Jov or something and when she finally got back on the phone she's all out of breath and frantic. I ask what happened and she's all "There was a bug on me!" Talk about anti-climatic. Geez. A bug.

Honestly, who is overreacting here? Not I.

If I ever needed a camera...

It was last night. I stood at the window and watched ice cube size hail falling from the sky. Off to my right the sun was shining. Off to my left lightning was flashing repeatedly. Directly in front of me was a rainbow. It was AMAZING. You'll just have to imagine it.

Then, of course, today my camera came back! So YAY for that!

It was just a bad morning all around...

So there's nothing like waking up to a blood curdling scream from your 2 year old.

I mentioned before that we went to a cabin in the Blue Mountains for the weekend. (Here's the cabin...nice, huh? 6 bedrooms, 14 beds...it seriously rocked)



Anyway, we got in rather late and I just transferred the kids from the car to their beds. Gabe woke up early and went exploring. I was half awake, just listening for him while I nursed Clara when I heard him SCREAM and start sobbing. So I jumped and ran and he was just standing there crying. No blood, no scrapes, I wasn't sure what had happened. I asked him and managed to decipher his 2 year old explanation and figure out what had happened. He had walked up the stairs to the third level. There's a railing going around a landing up there and looking through the railing, right at his eye level, he saw this.



I think I might have screamed, too.

It was only a few hours later when he was playing with the shuffleboard table in the game room (super fun, by the way...we had a whole tournament) and he turned around and started to run only to get clotheslined right in the mouth by one of the bars sticking out of the foosball table. It split his lip in a couple places and knocked him backwards to the floor.

A little love and a cold washrag with ice and he was back to his old self.



Except for that fat lip...

Dang, I love learning new Photoshop stuff

I learned a new photoshop technique. It's fake TTV shooting (Through The Viewfinder...real TTV is shooting through the viewfinder of another camera). Anyway, check it out.



That's my little brother and his girlfriend, by the way.

Mi Familia

My family had a get together this last weekend. My brother graduated, then we all went up to this awesome cabin in the Blue Mountains. (pictures from that to come). We needed an updated family picture though, so I borrowed my sister's Mother-in-laws camera for the big event. We were planning 5 o'clock, but of course everything went wrong. It was 5:30 before everyone was there and about 6 when everyone was ready, then my graduating brother says he has to leave for the graduation because if he's late he can't walk. Then it started raining. So we grabbed some umbrellas, clumped, I set up the camera and my brother's girlfriend pushed the shutter release. 5 minutes later, Michael dashed off to graduation and this is what we got. Not too shabby.

A sad day at my house

My camera is gone.

It broke. Yesterday. Luckily I got pictures of Clara with everyone after her blessing before it stopped working.

My extended warranty was still good so I took it in today and they told me it could take up to 30 days. That's a WHOLE MONTH.

Cry with me.

(by the way, if you're a client of mine and have a shoot scheduled this month and I havn't called you yet...be expecting a call)