My Week of Photos - Back at it

April 20, 2016

My DSLR and I had a little bit of a break. So this week, we are back at it, capturing daily photos using the Capture Your 365 daily prompts for this month.

Exposure: My husband and I went to a local nursery and bought some California native plants for our backyard. When I saw the prompt for this day, I wasn't really sure what to capture. So after we got the plants in the ground, I grabbed my camera and decided to focus in on these plants, all while trying to get the best exposure of the overall setting as I could. I took this photo late in the afternoon. The lighting was really great. I wish I could show you the histogram of this capture! I know this is not the most exciting photo, but the histogram is just about a perfect bell curve! And if you have ever really looked at the histogram of any of your photos, you know a bell curve histogram is a pretty exciting thing!

Go Wide: The widest angle I can go with my current lenses is 18mm. Now, I could have jumped in my car and driven down the road a bit to capture maybe the valley or the mountains, but I decided to see what I could capture right in my own backyard. Since the sun had just set, I slowed down the shutter speed for this one. Loving the new solar lights along the fence!

F/1.4: Couldn't go as wide as the prompt on this one, since my 50mm lens is an f/1.8, so I made do with what I have. Picked up these roses are the grocery store for $2.99 the other day. Took them outside and up against the blue of my daughter's playhouse. Blue and yellow are my two favorite colors.

Simple: This little frame sits on my desk. A simple little frame with one simple word that makes me happy just thinking about the beach. Maybe I need to go on a day trip to the beach soon...

This wraps up my week of photos! What photo challenges are you currently following?

My Week of Photos - Favorite Portraits

April 13, 2016

Confession time here...I have not picked up my DSLR this week! I know, I really should be using it every day if I want to continue to learn to take great photos. But sometimes, life just gets really busy and there are times when I am just not feeling inspired to take photos with my DSLR. And I believe it is perfectly fine to take a break from something you love, even if it is baking, reading, or taking photos.

So, for this week's post of My Week of Photos, I want to share with you some of my favorite portraits I have captured. Ever since my kids were babies, I have loved capturing moments of their lives. Before digital came along, I would get my double prints and spend hours creating scrapbook pages to fill albums of our family memories.

Then digital came along...at first, I had no desire to get a digital camera. And now? My iPhone takes better photos than my first digital camera. But at the time, those old digital cameras were better than not capturing any memories at all.

Last night, I spent hours looking at old photos on my computer...reminiscing and laughing until I had tears running down my cheeks at some of the expressions on my kid's faces in different photos. It really makes me realize that I need to make some time to go through and dump the photos I don't want to keep and print out some that I want to put into albums or hang on my wall.

Today, I am going to share with you some of my favorite photos of my kids and some favorites I have taken of other people. As I am getting closer to wanting to possibly start my own photography business, I have struggled with how to explain the type of photography that I love. Talking this over with someone recently, the perfect category for me: lifestyle.

I love to capture moments, not always posed. Real life that doesn't need to be photoshopped and lightroomed to death. Moments that people will look back on that bring smiles and laughter. Moments that warm your heart.

Here are a few of my favorite portraits:

This photo was taken with a Kodak EasyShare digital camera. At this point, I had never taken a photography class and didn't know anything about looking for the right lighting, composition, or anything really. But I entered this photo in our little community art contest and won Best of Show! Wow, I was so surprised!

Here is one with both of my kiddos, again with the Kodak EasyShare. This is in the days way before I even knew about editing photos. Looking back now, I can see that this photo could use a little bit of an edit. But the thing I love about this photo are the people in the photo and their obvious love for each other. Their really great relationship continues even today.

Once I did start to learn about a little bit of photo editing, every now and then, I would change the tone of the photo. I think changing this photo to sepia really works so that my daughter's shirt pattern doesn't compete with my son's shirt pattern. But again, this photo captures the sweet relationship these two had and continue to have.

Once I finally got my first DSLR, a friend told me to turn the dial to aperture priority. And I sure had fun with that for a while! Our family used to do a lot of Civil War reenacting and this is one of my favorites I captured of my daughter in our camp one weekend.

Then I had a chance to take an actual photography class! I learned about shooting in manual mode and lighting and so much more! This was one of the first photos I shot of my son using natural light from a window in our home. And I learned a bit about Lightroom so I could fine tune photos a bit.

During the photography class, we had a chance to go out one day to do senior portraits for one young man. This was my first time really photographing someone who was actually posing for photos! The group of us were able to suggest different poses. It was a great experience, especially using my new found skill of shooting in manual mode!

With my DSLR and my new knowledge of how to use my camera, I started feeling more confident in what I was capturing. And I had plenty of opportunities to try out what I was learning at different events.

It is moments like this that I still love to capture, ones you really can't plan for.

I have been second shooter at one wedding so far. This shot was completely unplanned. But when I saw where she was standing, I knew I wanted to try to capture this moment before she walked down the aisle.

Here is another one of those unplanned shots. I was with some friends at a beach in Southern California when I saw this little girl at sunset. I took a few photos of her and loved what I saw in camera.

Then, a friend asked me to take their engagement photos...in Yosemite...and they were going to pay me to do it!! Win-win-win!! We spent the whole day wandering around Yosemite and I had the fun of capturing them together. This one was one of my favorites from that day!

But there is one thing I have been able to do that is even more amazing than being paid for my photography...having the chance to travel on two Compassion trips now and capturing moments like this one. In January 2014, my son and I traveled to Mexico where we had the opportunity to meet one of our sponsored children. There were a few people behind and around me when I captured this one, but I love how Felix is looking right at me. His smiling face is one I always remember from this trip.

You would never know by this photo that these kids were a bit skeptical of us when we first arrived. It is still one of my favorite photos from this trip!

In February 2015 I had the opportunity to go on another Compassion trip, this time to Colombia! This little girl was at the last center we visited. This photo reminds me of a quote I just read in a new book, Small Matters, by Greg Nettle and Jimmy Mellado: "Jesus is the One who invites you and me to join him in reaching out to children the world has given up on, to take them by the hand, to rejoice for this one others considered lost who has found the way home."

Photography is something I love to do, capturing moments that people will love to remember.

My Week of Photos - Texture

April 6, 2016

Last week, Nat over at Easy Camera Lessons shared about Understanding Texture on their YouTube channel. So this week, I put my 18-55mm lens on my DSLR and used some of the screw on macro lenses my daughter got me for Christmas and went on a hunt for things I could photograph that showed different textures. Here is what I found:

We took down a couple of trees in our backyard, so we have some big logs hanging out. I love how rough this looks.

For a shot like this one, this is when I wish I had a true macro lens! How I wish I could zoom in really close on the center of this flower to see so much more of the details.

Since cooking and/or baking is going on around here at least 5 days a week, I had to throw in a few food photos for this week. We had sausage gravy and biscuits one night, so I thought...why not show the texture of one of the biscuits. Just add butter, right?

I cannot resist fresh asparagus this time of year! Right now, it has been $1.88 a pound. I love to just drizzle them with a bit of olive oil, then salt and pepper them. My husband will usually pop them on the BBQ for a bit. Yum!

Now that our weather has warmed up a bit here in central California, my lavender bushes are starting to bloom. With the macro lens attached, you can actually see how fuzzy these blooms are. Can't wait until enough of them have bloomed to start cutting some to have in the house.

Any guesses on what this is?

It is grated cheese on a homemade pizza! We usually have homemade pizza around here at least once a week. Mozzarella, parmesan, and a bit of pizza seasoning. We tend to keep our pizza pretty simple.

So this week stretched me a bit, trying to get creative with what I could photograph that would show different textures. Which one is your favorite?

My Week of Photos - Red on White

March 30, 2016

For this week of photos with my DSLR, I actually combined two photo challenges. On Easy Camera Lessons, they were focusing on photographing items on a white backdrop. But then I ran across another weekly photography challenge from Dogwood Photography. I chose to concentrate on the week three challenge of photographing red items. So this week's photos are all red items on a white backdrop:

ISO 1600, f/2.8, 1/250 sec with 50mm lens

First up, a red book that I have read (I know, funny play on words there!). For this one, I basically draped some white muslin across the floor and up onto an ottoman, placed a book under the muslin on the floor to raise up the red book a bit off the floor, then placed the book away from the back of the fabric to eliminate as much shadow as possible.

ISO 1600, f/2.8, 1/500 sec with 50mm lens

I did a bit of baking over the weekend and thought the board with flour made a great white backdrop. So I pulled out my box of cookie cutters and found this red heart.

ISO 1600, f/2.8, 1/100 sec with 50mm lens

We had strawberries with our waffles on Sunday morning. But before I started slicing them up, I pulled out a couple sheets of white paper towels to work as my backdrop for this set up. I just draped the paper towels up and over a cup, then set the strawberries away from the backdrop.

For this shot, I placed a white piece of paper on the ground outside, filled the white bowl with red jelly beans, then shot this one from above. I closed down the aperture so you can see the details of the bowl.

ISO 1600, f/4.0, 1/50 sec with 50mm lens

Red thread and white fabric, almost makes me want to do some redwork embroidery.

ISO 1600, f/3.5, 1/60 sec with 50mm lens

I have been knitting more dishcloths to sell and to have on hand for bridal shower gifts. My red row counter and white yarn made a perfect capture for this last shot of the week.

That wraps up my week of red on white photos. Which one is your favorite?

Have you ever combined two photo challenges in one week?

My Week of Photos - Long Lens

March 23, 2016

Most of the time, my 50mm lens is on my DSLR. It is my favorite lens to use in most cases. And because it is so light, it makes the whole camera easy to pop into my bag and take along with me should I feel the urge to bring it along.

But this week, I kept my longest lens on my camera, which is my 55-200mm lens. My favorite time to use this lens is for taking candid shots of people at gatherings. Well, I didn't really have any gatherings on my schedule, so I had to get a little bit creative for this week of photos.

The tulips have bloomed in my backyard and I just love the color of these! I had taken a photo of them earlier in the day, but the sun wasn't shinning on them yet. So I wanted until a bit later to capture this one. I could have dropped my ISO down to 100 since I had plenty of sunlight. But I love how the front tulip is in focus and the one behind it is slightly out of focus.

On warm afternoons, I love to sit in our backyard with a book and read. It is my way of taking a break in the middle of the day. While I was sitting out there one day, I brought my camera out to see what I could capture with my long lens. These window frames are across the patio from my chair. I focused on the front one and love the bokeh that was created with the sunlight back toward the fence.

Over the weekend, I was able to stop by and visit with some friends at our local Civil War Reenactment. While I was there, I couldn't help but quickly capture a candid shot or two of 'soldiers' outside their tents in the camps. I had to crop this one in a bit because a young lady in wearing modern clothing had just walked into the photo. Then I converted the photo to black and white to make it look a little more 'authentic' to the period.

While at the event, I walked down toward the river and saw that all the lupine was in bloom. Makes me wonder how much longer until the Dogwood trees will be in bloom in Yosemite?

When I stopped alongside this orchard to capture a few photos, I wasn't really sure what I should photograph using the long lens. That is until I saw the bees...do you see him in the middle of the photo? Sure am glad I had my long lens to capture him up in that tree!

One last photo for this week...the front set of hills are about a mile from where I was standing. I even captured a bird over on the right side of the photo above the hills! With all the rain we have been receiving, the hills to the west of us are still so green for this time of the year.

That wraps up this week of photos using my longest lens! What did you capture with your camera this week?