I apologize for lack of content! College was a bit crazy the last couple weeks and I just made myself busy I got a little sick. I have Spring Break this week and will be catching up on a lot of blogging both on here and on my other blog. This week I am putting up a review of the Casio Exilim point and shoot camera. I am also going to talk about some assignments I have coming that are interesting and some past photos that are good examples. I have to shoot all new stuff for class of course but I do love showing my old favorites.

I think what I would like is to hear from you, the readers, about what you would like to know more about. I am not a professional but I am a mom, or the hybrid, momtographer. I don’t have a studio. I still take decent photos. I can share with you any pointers as well as answer questions you may have about cameras. I know this blog is just starting out but I do think its got potential to be one of the hot spots for non professionals, and moms like me, to come for information that is easy to understand, so that we all can get amazing photographs

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

The people at Seagate wanted me to give away another hard drive. But this time they want to give more! This time they are giving away the 500gb FreeAgent Go AND the Dockstar!! The value of this giveaway is over $200!! Read more about the drive and Dockstar in my review HERE

♥ SHARE THE LOVE ♥

Hardware problems again so back to TELL ME YOUR FAVORITE COLOR for the Seagate! Sorry about the problems, our LAN cable is acting up! My Dockstar is OFFLINE so no more photo entries!

To see the album, click here! —>Share The Love

This contest has ended and the winner is comment number 448, Andrew! CONGRATS!

I can’t believe it, I have used the camera’s meter for the very first time! Today in class we used Gray Cards to test the accuracy of the meters inside our cameras. Not only did I shoot on manual but I also got the correct exposure! I felt liberated! I am very excited about next week’s class where we will be shooting more and looking at Adobe Lightroom!

Stay tuned folks and get your photos ready, Seagate is having ANOTHER giveaway on my blog and this one is even bigger, this one is for the Dockstar AND FreeAgent Go drive!! This one is different, it will be a photo contest entry but I am still drawing a random number. Basically you will be uploading a picture of your loved one (dog, spouse, kid, etc.) to my Dockstar site so I can show you how easy it is to share online photos!

Greg and I are thinking about starting a web show for Alyssa. She is adorable in front of the camera and is not shy. She loves explaining her toys and her world.

I took this video a couple nights ago and posted it on my mommy blog but since I used the d90 to take it I thought it would be good to post here too. Its 5 minutes long but if you wait long enough you can see a completely un-staged appearance by Aiden that is nauseatingly adorable.

I just subscribed!! I almost got the digital version of the magazine but hubby got upset at me saying he wanted to read it too so I went ahead and got the print version since it was just 14 dollars!

I chose this magazine because it has a great mix of what is hot and what to buy along with great How-To’s and even some Photoshop lessons. I have a read a couple issues that were older and just loved it. Definitely a must have for photographers!

Get it at amazon! –> Popular Photography & Imaging