Studio{us} Mommy

Hello everyone!

I recently came upon the coolest blog. Ok now I have to say that for college I am not allowed to alter my photographs beyond minimal lightroom adjustments. Very minimal. But for home use I can do whatever I want and I like to get creative. I found an amazing blog of a great photographer that offers many photoshop and pse brushes, actions, templates and lots of other stuff! I need to get the portrait ones working for my as soon as I can get one of my kids to sit still and take a picture but she has examples on her site anyway for your viewing pleasure. She also has instructions on how to use them, all very detailed!

And now since its been a while, here are a few photos!

I’ve only been using a dSLR for 3 years but before that I used point and shoot cameras. For a while I borrowed my father-in-law’s Sony super zoom. It worked pretty great for a while. Point and shoot cameras these days are faster, have more megapixels and nearly all of them have video functions. I guess that’s why SO many people are on YouTube huh?

Now I am a Nikon girl myself and I have the d90 dSLR which I am loving already. But there are times when I really wish I had a small camera to pack in my purse or diaper bag. I was hoping to review a Nikon for you but that isn’t happening. However, Casio has extended an invitation for me to try one of their Exilim cameras so look forward to that! I am excited to try a point and shoot again!

I hope to have a few point and shoot camera’s to compare. I know most moms have smaller cameras. I’ve taken great photos with point and shoots in the past and I can share what I know/learn with those of you who aren’t ready for dSLR territory

Ok so in class last Thursday we went over our labs (I got all 5 points woo!) and then got one on one time with our instructor. I showed him the 6 finalists I had in mind for the perspective assignment. Clearly I was going for the wow but always thought this picture would somehow make it to the top. I just don’t know what it is. Even he said its so simple but its so perfect. There is strong lines and texture in the snow so he said hands down I should turn this one in so I did- (The version I turned in was edited better than this but hey)

Swing

Next assignment is Depth of Field. This is MY FAVORITE. I love shooting DOF pictures!

Edited 2-15: Just got my grades back and I got 9.5 out of 10 points on this one! Woohoo!

Ok before I get started I want to clarify that I have a Nikon and only ever shot SLR with Nikons so what I show you may not look exactly the same on your camera! Ok now that we have that straight lets get started.

Flip your camera dial to M and grab your camera instruction book. You will need to know how to adjust your shutter speed and f/stop. As a refresher, your f/stop is the opening of your lens. The lower numbers mean your lens opens MORE. The higher numbers means your lens opening is smaller, letting in less light. Outdoor you shouldn’t need to go below f /5.6 and 400 in the shade or overcast days.

But in the event you need to take a reading to adjust your camera, this is what I did and since I learned, I haven’t went back to auto. Now turn on your camera and point it at what you want and click the shutter half way while you look through the viewfinder. You should see something that looks like this:

When your shutter is pressed halfway it takes a light reading and those numbers from -2 up to 2 are your meter readouts. A dot will show when you press the shutter and your objective is to get that dot under the zero to indicate correct exposure.

How do you do that? Well if your reading is showing your dot to the left of the zero, your photo is going to be under exposed. And to the right of the zero, it will be over exposed. You can increase your shutter speed OR your f/stop to make that dot move back under the zero. You need to look in your manuals. Usually its a button push and a turn of the dial. When you are making those adjustments keep your eye on the viewfinder and you can see the dot move.

When your dot is under that zero, take your shot! In most cases it should be properly exposed.

Next lesson will be how to use the Histogram! I will make sure I use normal person speak and not geeky speak so everyone understands

For my very first photo assignment for class I had to take a picture from a different perspective. Either take it low and aiming up high or vice versa. I took a few shots on this extremely cold day here in Michigan to see if I could get it. In this assignment I am not allowed to clip at all (this happens when you blow out the highlights , overexpose, or lowlights). I had to reshoot all of my first photos because the Histogram in my Adobe Lightroom showed clipping on all of them.

Ok so back to the photos. I asked hubby what he thought made the best shot for perspective. Here are the three I asked him to pick from:

Swing

Ladder

Tree

The one I turn in is going unedited so no watermarks or vignettes. My choice? I chose the second one. If you go to the flickr page for my photos and see the photo larger I think the ladder one is COOL. What do you think?

And here are some more from the shoot:

barn1 by SerendipityMom

sun by SerendipityMom

bwgreg by SerendipityMom

wheels by SerendipityMom

bwclouds by SerendipityMom

mms by SerendipityMom

lyssphotog by SerendipityMom

log by SerendipityMom

barn4 by SerendipityMom

This was my favorite overall shot for perspective but I blew the clouds