My first official photo shoot...

My friend Kathy was kind enough to let me take pictures of her and her little girl this week. They turned out excellent and I learned many, many things from taking their pictures.



It's amazing how all of Hope's lessons come flooding back when you start actually taking pictures of people and realize what you're doing wrong! hehehe... It was a great day though and I'm glad they let me get some experience with them. Take a look and tell me what you think!

Our first field trip - the Muttart Conservatory

Well, we had our first field trip today and it went pretty good. The Muttart was excellent for taking pictures in and I got some great shots so I thought I should post a few here... so here goes...


I think this next one could have used a larger depth of field so I could've gotten Marrah's cousin, Mackenzie more in focus but nothing I can do about it now... it's still one of my favourite shots though...


For some reason, I'm not able to post more pictures... I will have to investigate to find out why and then I'll get around to posting some more...

Update: Here's a link to my shots from today... still not sure why I can't add more pics but I uploaded most of them so take a peek... (Can you guess who my favourite subject is??)

Task 2

This one turned out pretty good... interesting to look at anyways... I didn't get a chance to do the Bokeh twist but maybe next time I'm out for a walk with a napping baby...

Disable your flash, set your camera to MF, AV f3.5, ISO200. Find a long edge - your table, a countertop, the fence in your backyard, a bannister, a windowsill. Standing in the same spot at one end, manually focus so that you have 3 images with distinctly different focal points along that straight edge. If you're feeling adventurous and want to take your shooting to the street, this would be a really fun one to do in a grocery store in the soup aisle or in the library along the bookshelves! If you really want to challenge yourself, find a table or countertop that has a distinct end - something about 6-8 feet long. Try adjusting your aperture so that the entire length of the edge is in focus, but drops off suddenly at the end so everything beyond he table fades off into Bokeh oblivion...

Task 1

Okay, here we go... baby is sleeping (yay!) so Mom has time to post her results from her DLS Exercises:

For task 1: I used baby toys in my kitchen simply because that was the most readily available item and a tidy enough area to set them up in - not necessarily pleasing to the eye but it works... Had to use a tripod to deal with camera shake but it seemed to help and I didn't have to up my ISO. The pictures aren't perfect but they are done...

TASK 1

Find a nice bright spot to take a picture - a kitchen, bedroom, or living room floor with lots of natural light would be ideal, or this could be done outside. Set up a series of 7 similar or identical items in a row, each about 12 - 18" apart from each other. Be as creative as you like - they could be anything from beer bottles to baby bottles, Hotwheels, Barbie shoes. You could make a train of some sort with your kids. You could put pinecones on the snow. You could ask 7 friends to stand in a row. Really, the sky is the limit...

Disable your flash, set your camera to MF, AV f3.5, ISO 200. (Remember, your zoom may need to be at the widest angle to get to f3.5!) Standing at one end of the row, focus on the object closest to you. Take one picture. Note how many of the objects are in focus at f3.5, and adjust your aperture one f-stop at a time until ALL the objects are in focus, WITHOUT readjusting your focus. How many f-stops did it take you? Note the light and what the camera set your shutter speeds at - did you have to deal with camera shake at all? If you had trouble getting pictures with higher f-stops, what would your options be for increasing the shutter speed without altering the depth of field? Hint - law of reciprocity only has 3 parts: light intensity (aperture) sensitivity (film speed) and duration (shutter speed).

My first post...

Hello all,

Well here is my first official post. I am taking photography courses and our instructor encouraged us to start a blog to showcase our pictures and how things are going so i thought "why not?" and here it is.

Feel free to take a look at my pictures and critique them. I'm still learning so they are not going to be perfect but I can always use some constructive criticism. I've added a couple pics that I have taken of my DD and DH that I like... DD is getting tired of me taking pictures of her but now that I've turned off the AF flash, she's a little happier! (Thanks Hope!)