Here in the mountains, we live next to a huge gambling area, a mini Las Vegas if you will - Black Hawk. They try to hold the biggest fireworks in Colorado.
This year we drove up to eye level to the fireworks! What a view!
The very first year I knew what I was doing with photography, but I forgot to research the best "settings" to take fireworks! At least I remembered my tripod. So the 30 minutes was mostly trial and error. :)
Check out my photo gallery to download this photo to see Satori's faces in all their glory. She had a dozen other expressions too! I decided to put them all together very quickly. :)
So I'm taking 2 online classes right now. My first week's critiques of my children's photography class were a bit discouraging. Although she said I should be encouraged, and have lots of potential, there is SO MUCH to learn and keep in mind! I know I just need months and months of practice. I got exposure down pretty good, but dealing with the unexpectedness of children and getting them to cooperate is the challenge.
Here's what messed me up this week:
- Forgetting my ISO was set at 400 when it didn't need to be. Result - noisy photos.
- Forgetting to bring a brush and hairspray so my first real photo shoot last week had Satori's hair flying everywhere! Of course the instructor noticed this, but that was a lesson I learned before she had to say anything. :)
- Bad weather cooperation - alot of my shots were supposed to use natural lighting, and it snowed and was cloudy so much this past few weeks. Summer, get here already!
- A toddler that is NOT cooperative makes you think you are not cut out for all this. On the plus side, I love watching Satori's various expressions and body language after the shoot, she sure is a riot!
- Trying to remember numerous things at once. I'm usually great at multi-tasking, but all of this photography stuff is so new to me, it's hard to get *everything* just perfect. Hair in place? Bandaids not showing? Shutter speed perfect for studio lighting? ISO set to 100? Lighting angles right? Need tripod?
- David is my photography assistant, I love to yell at him to put the fairy wings on Satori - Hold that reflector the right away - Give her some candy - Turn down the lights - Get me a light meter reading... Lol! He needs to jump to it faster! I think I might need a few assistants?
- FORGET trying to learn studio lighting, right now I'm just trying to get some photos that are turn out sharp and perfectly exposed. Butterfly, Loop, Rembrandt? Tammi, I think I'll need a few more months to start practicing that, lol. I get the idea, but I think I'll need MUCH more practice with Judy my trusty mannequin.
Anyway, here's the results of my photo shoot tonight. I need practice getting that background pure white. My exposure class assignment this past week was to do a shot with everything white and expose it so things are truly white. (Don't tell Bryan I used my light meter, and not "brother blue sky" for this one!)
I also had to get a shot with backlit lighting and a reflector. I used a cheapo light for this and gave Satori one of those flowers you see above. She was totally not cooperating, and then she touched the bulb with her flower, resulting in one of the biggest explosions! That Bulb shattered and shot halfway across our 2400 sf warehouse! It is a MIRACLE Satori wasn't hurt. The bulb glass got into her tutu, went right through it, and melted in the middle of the tulle. I will not be using cheap lights like that again, and will be much careful next time. Thank goodness no one was hurt and it was only my family.
Last week we were to take photos at the photographer's "Golden hours", the time right before and after sunrise and sunset. I'm a total night owl, so sunrise photos are a struggle, but this year I've met the sunrise a handful of times so far and hope to do so more.
Here's a sunset photo taken at Gold Lake Spa Resort.
See original on my Zenfolio gallery:
http://www.angelamccormick.com/img/v1/p2259199.jpg
Believe it or not, tonight was the very first time we shot our daughter Satori in our studio! I hope to just get better and better, adding backgrounds/props.
We had our heater on full blast, you can see her goosebumps. So her hair was flying all over the place, and I quickly edited it out, could've done a better job on that, oops.
For our first week's assignment, we needed to get a literal portrait at a large aperture.
I lucked out in finding this Corvette speeding past this pond and snow-capped mountain background!
This week I have a tough assignment. Flowers backlit in the rain, or using a Bogen Super Clamp on my bike to get a motion-based shot.
Tammi blogged a bit about her class - butterfly, Rembrandt, etc... lighting for portrait photographers, and I had no clue. My husband kept pushing this book at me, so finally last night I started reading it.
I can tell that I will be referring to this book hundreds of times as I setup my portrait studio. While all the lighting setups were explained in depth, and I no longer am as clueless, at least I kinda know the "lingo" know.
HOWEVER, the book was overwhelming at first crack, I read half of it and skimmed the rest. It made me tired just knowing that I have sooo much to learn!
Right now I have 2 strobe Lights with stands and umbrellas, a few other lights that came with my light tent (which I never use), the background, and light meter, which is a good start to my studio. I would like to get a few soft boxes next. I have a realistic mannequin with realistic hair to "practice" on until I understand the basics of lighting. I'm sure as I study I'll learn all these other things that I will "need".
Hopefully I'll post more photos soon, but the goal was to get panning pics for my assignment this week. (You may see more of those as well!)
I shot at a slow shutter speed (1/30s) and panned along every single time she flew by, and this one turned out the best.
Shooting tethered has many advantages. Instead of viewing your photos on your camera's tiny LCD screen, only to find out later they were blurry (well that still happens to me sometimes), you can view your photo large as life on your monitor!
Here I have a 24" monitor and I downloaded a free 30 day trial software called Camera Control Pro. A quick google about "tethering" brought up Scott Kelby's blog. Doh, should've known he's got a blog! Followed his instructions, and here you have it!
Camera Control Pro let me set my camera's setting from the computer, and with the click of a button it would Focus and Shoot!
Coincidentally, my first try, my camera was pointed at a stack of photography exposure books. :)
When I setup my photography studio, I will definitely be "shooting tethered" for portraits!
Below is one of my shots that I did a screen capture so you can see the setup. To view the original large file, head to my photo gallery and "Download" the photo!
http://www.dslrcommunity.com/media/p/1553.aspx
After confirming my fears that my new hobby will prove to be very expensive for me, I figured eventually I'll have to earn some money to have it pay for itself! Since we already have a photography studio that I've been seriously underusing, and it has everything we need, I figured by next year I should be capable of taking portraits.
So I ordered a ton of portraiture books. I hope to review them by next month.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/ays?view=ut;portraiture&viewType=coverlist&asin=&viewShared=0&targetCustomerId=AR206PEX8SJFX&searchTerms=&sortCol=dateAcquired&sortDir=desc
Hopefully you all know that I will be awarding a 4 week photography class (valued at $195) at The Perfect Picture School of Photography! There are some great instructors in this class, including Bryan Peterson of "Understanding Exposure"!
How to win - it's going to be half based on your participation, half based on subjectivity (who needs it, who will get most use out of it)...
Of course you will have to be an active DSC member, share some of your photos (you don't necessarily need to use your photo gallery), post on your DSC blog (looking for at least 1 blog post), active in forums...
Check out the wonderful courses:
http://www.ppsop.com/courses.aspx
I woke up at 6am to take this shot.
Back in the valley behind our house is Rollins' Pass, and on the other side lies Winter Park ski area. But it was snowy and cold in this valley, and as the sun peeked over the horizon, it warmed up this yellow building and made it glow out of the darkness...
A DSC member posted this in our forums, thought I would share!
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/blog-power-why-you-should-consider-setting-up-a-photoblog/
Here at Digital SLR Community (DSC), you can have your very own free blog!
Blogging on a regular basis is a tool that will help your photography skills grow, and you can see your progress. Others can subscribe to your blog and make suggestions to improve as well as boost your confidence and motivation!
Here's a few blogs on our site, which is only a little over a week old, we hope to get more photo bloggers soon!
Angela's Photo Blog: http://www.dslrcommunity.com/blogs/angela/
Tammi's Photo Blog: http://www.dslrcommunity.com/blogs/tammi/
Heather's Photo Blog: http://www.dslrcommunity.com/blogs/heathergw/
See how you can easily change the look by choosing different "themes". There are many blog themes to choose from, you can customize the theme yourself, and I will add more this spring!
Panning is the capturing of motion while following the moving object so that the background is blurry, but you can see the moving object.
Shutter speed is crucial here. Here on this bright sunny day, I was able to use ISO 100, and after experimenting, I found a shutter speed of about a half a second to be the sweet spot! With those two down (shutter speed and ISO), I used my light meter to come up with f/29.
We love to run around on this Boulder field in Nederland. Our Golden Retriever runs, Satori runs, and my DH I try to get to run.
Going to try to post one photo a day...
Also, for my online photography class we had to shoot a silhouette. Light meter for the sky, so the foreground turns black.
I had a hard time as it was snowy and cloudy here in the mountains all week, but the thing about the mountains, is a short drive and you can find almost any kind of weather! Here's a peek through the clouds at a look out east with a tree in the foreground.
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