Baby Photography, My Kids and the Ultimate Love

30 cents, $3000, Priceless

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 03:30:00 +0000

What happens when your daughter makes a veil at school, finds your wife's wedding dress and starts striking poses?

Anyway, it's been awhile, but thought folks might find this a nice mix of baby, wedding and really random photography. All I can say is that none of the boys in her class should get any ideas. She's off limits and the house will be patrolled by two Rottweilers. And on that fine note - good day :)

Baby Photography Notes: I can't really in good conscious recommend that you take out a multi-thousand dollar dress and use it as a prop. My memory actually eludes me as to the actual cost since it was some stratospheric number and the original dress went up flames in a fire (good story really). Anyway, my wife thought it was pretty funny and we figure it's actually good to still get some use out of it, but your mileage may vary.

Dancing, Princesses & Butterflies - Zoe dressed up in other fancy or fantastic garb.

Patience, Parenting and Butterflies

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 02:57:00 +0000

Parenting and patience are like two sides of a coin. Actually, that's probably not right since I've lost it more than a few times and that hasn't changed the fact that I'm a father of two. Anyway, I decided that it'd be good to teach the children the virtue of patience and waiting. So after noting that butterflies are attracted to the myriad of flowers in our backyard, I suggested we sit and wait and wait and wait... for butterflies to land on us and take some photographs.

After an hour or so of sitting, a Monarch like butterfly landed on Aidan's hand causing this heartfelt smile.

Zoe got tired of waiting and ended up resting on her back only to be surprised by this visitor.

Okay, anyone who has children who have a zen like peace sitting in a static state is entitled to a discount should you ever choose to utilize my photography services. My kids have difficulty sitting still while eating sushi yet alone outside amongst 101 possible things to do. As you may have guessed by now, we raised five caterpillars to butterflies using one of those ingenious butterfly kits. At one point we thought one of them drowned, but one bedtime prayer later and it was miraculously resurrected (or done drinking). It was at this point, that my sensibilities took hold and decided that we should let the butterflies go before forced into talking about butterfly heaven. The kids had a blast letting them go and I was smiling ear to ear seeing them enjoy God's creation.

Technical Baby Photography Notes: Both photos are taken with a 100mm Canon f2 with an extension tube to allow closer capture of the little critters (I'm referring to the butterflies, not my children). A 24" soft box is just outside the frame and supplies the additional light necessary for a smaller aperture and provides some directional light for what otherwise would have been a flat photo with Aidan's back to the sun.

Macro Baby Photography - Strangely enough, I have another post on macro photography, bugs and my kids.

The Green Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Wed, 11 May 2011 03:23:00 +0000

Today's post is going to be a fun one on so many levels featuring a hot car, a cute girl and gratuitous placement of photography equipment. Let's start with the car, my first new car ever and only my second car, has been a source of endless flak, I mean is the green really that bad?

Hmm... before you answer that consider this:

The children have no problem spotting me for pick-up at school
Since driving this car, I have zero instances of losing it in the parking lot
I suspect the car is less likely to be stolen and if it is, recovery should be a snap :)

Okay in hindsight I probably had more negotiating leverage with the dealer than I realized. Onto the cute girl (and um sorry this isn't that type of blog/website). The inside of the Fiesta is a little cramped since the overall car is shorter than a typical minivan by about a 4 year old (i.e. 40 inches). That being said, it's pretty easy to carry a conversation with the chatter boxes in the back. You can make the call whether that's a good thing or not.

Last but not least, the center divide has space to hold two consumer grade lenses and one professional L lenses. Better yet, the area has ambient lighting with the color of your choice (pink, red, green, blue, purple and white) so you can easily find your equipment while driving around texting and talking on the phone. It's amazing how many people still do that... when people should really be focusing on taking photos of the kids in the back.

BTW: If you're looking for a new car, I highly recommend the Ford Fiesta 2011. The trunk is big enough to fit a set of hockey gear, the car is fun to drive (a link showing how to smuggle teddy bears in your Fiesta), is green with respect to the environment (other colors are available), has the highest safety ratings (but doesn't protect you from your own children) and I think very photogenic (see above).

Phat Baby Technical Photography Tips: The most interesting photo is the one on the top. Taken at sunset, the camera settings are actually kind of interesting at 30 sec at f11, ISO 100, 24mm. I actually put an 0.6 ND gradient filter to make everything extra dark, dressed up in black and ran around like a ninja manually triggering a flash as I did circles around the Fiesta. Neighbors thought I was crazy and the kids who were trying to sleep in the bedroom, thought a UFO was landing outside their window. Using a tripod, made compositing three of the photos together a snap. I actually tried using onOne's Perfect Layer Lightroom Plug-in which allows the use of layers in Lightroom. Neat idea, but pitifully slow with three 12MB files on a 2.66 GHz MacPro with 12GB of RAM. The editing ended up being faster in Photoshop.

How an Expensive Sport is Priceless

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Tue, 03 May 2011 03:54:00 +0000

There are a number of reasons why parents should avoid ice hockey as an activity to keep their children busy:

The equipment is expensive
Unlike a soccer ball, baseball bat or even tennis racquet, children quickly outgrow the aforementioned expensive equipment
Coaches and lessons are expensive
The cost of the rink time dwarfs all of the above

With that being said, it's an absolute riot to watch a seven year old, decked out with a full compliment of padding, skate forwards, perform a series of cross-overs and (try to) hit a slap shot past a goalie twice his size. But the story wouldn't be complete if the events leading up to this epic event were left untold. Aidan's had a strange fascination for the ice and just about every (expensive) winter sport. We thought street hockey would tide him over, but he always found a way to get back on the ice and most recently, began a 3 month of practicing three times a week on the ice and several days off (i.e. roller blades). Heck, we even went to an adult skate and shoot where 40 hockey players were whacking pucks like they were at a driving range. I felt like I was in giant pin ball machine, but Aidan loved it. This Friday, we stumbled into try-outs and by Sunday I was watching my own version of the Stanley Cup Finals.

My hopes for Zoe are of the ice now, but knowing my luck, she'll raise the ante and pick up horseback riding. But that's the point isn't it? Spending time with kids and in between all the cheering, hugging and laughing - capturing the childhood memories in the most fantastic way possible.

Baby Photography Tips: 1/200 at f4, ISO 3200, 200mm. High ISO usually means a lot of noise/grain in the shots, but in this case it's better than a blurred shot. Also, Since I'm dealing with ice, the exposure compensation is likewise set to +2EV and with all that white, the noise frankly isn't that noticeable.

Take That Tahoe - On skiing and our love of all things winter.

Christmas Miracle Goggles - On using the exposure compensation to take photographs in the snow.

Newlyweds

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:43:00 +0000

It's our eleventh anniversary, well actually about a month ago. As any parent knows, it's common to put the litte tots before yourself and this was no exception since March was a busy Birthday month. Nonetheless, the wife and I made a trip into San Francisco, sans children. It's amazing how much we were able to do in so little time when the only people we had to dress and feed were ourselves.

We joked about getting upgraded at the Palace hotel and were pleasantly surprised to get the Presidential suite. A pang of guilt surged through us as thoughts of the children running circles in the living room, swimming in the whirlpool and vegging in front of one of two flat screen televisions crossed our minds.

My wife allowed part of the festivities to include a photo shoot of my favorite model. With few people around, we got a number of nice shots in a few minutes before bed.

Eleven years goes by fast and it's fun knowing that, assuming the children don't cause my early demise, we're still in the beginning of our marriage.

Happy Anniversary Honey!

(Babe) Photography Tips: Lately, I've shunned natural light to go with strobes. Particularly indoors when the room is lit with chandeliers (pretty common right?), the illumination is very even and therefore pretty flat. So a judicious use of a flash gave emphasis to the glowing face I wake up next to each morning. When doing flash photography indoors, always balance your flash (~5500K, or the equivalent of the noon sun) to the ambient (~2800K in this case which is warmer than a typical tungsten environment). If you don't know what that means, I'm just saying that light sources can be like your children - the same fundamental genes yet strikingly different.

The Certain Things in Life

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 04:20:00 +0000

My blogging is lagging like a parent without sleep. Still it’s amazing how much time shirking my writing frees up – more on that later.

April 18^th, also known as IRS dooms day is fast approaching. On a twist on Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote, only two things in life are certain: the baby pooping right after a diaper change and taxes. As much fun as it is to discuss poop, we’re going to talk about taxes or more specifically what it takes to run a photography business (which I happen to know because I just finished my taxes). In the process, we’ll debunk a few myths:

Shooting digital is free (and kids are cheap).
There’s no sales tax (and it’s actually much worse than that)
Photographer’s charge too much (and too little).

We'll have some fun along the way, but I'm also hoping this is instructive to the growing number of parents who have an interest in professional photography or even as a way of keeping accountable to my clients. The astute observer will note the business is run on a cash basis (kind of like the Mafia, only legit) which means there are some fluctuations for major capital investments that are not amortized across five years, but the effect tends to average out.

Digital is Free. Ironically my biggest expense is printing. Since my business is run on a cash basis, this does not include the $2000 9 color, wide-gamut printer purchased in 2009 used to produce magnificent art prints but does include the cost of ink that the printer drinks like a baby to formula.

Despite the name, Phat Baby Photography runs a pretty lean operation. My second Canon 5D is used (obtained at about half retail) and came in handy when the first broke during a shoot. My lenses are mostly professional grade, because they take nicer photos, work in low light, resist baby drool and just last longer (my only broken lens is a 35mm consumer lens). So about $1000 a year goes to upgrading or maintaining $10K+ worth of camera equipment. Put another way, it's like I'm replacing my set of equipment every 10 years which makes sense if you think about the shutter life of your average camera body. A small budget goes to renting equipment that I use infrequently (primarily for weddings or corporate work).

Computer equipment also needs to be updated, though thankfully less frequently. One annoying trend is the growing number of megapixels on camera which requires more hardware to process it all and more disk space to store it all. A good 12 MB camera (like my trusty 5D original) can be blown up to 20"x30" with good results so why Canon is going past the 20MB mark in more and more of its cameras is beyond me. My Mac Pro churns through my photo shoots quite effectively but I upgrade all my software licenses as needed. Photoshop CS3 is two generations old but does what I need, while a $100 Lightroom 3 upgrade was a no brainer even for a thick headed photographer like myself. My personal photos are archived on three drives (two in house and one in a bank vault) and I treat my client photos with the same care. That means purchasing an endless stream of hard drives to store everything as well as paying for offsite storage in the local Fort Knox and not disclosing the location to my children.

Sales Tax, Income Tax and Business Licenses Oh My! The cost of liability insurance required at venues, getting photography permits (yes, Stanford University, for example, requires permission), business licenses and paying, gulp, sales tax is a real cost. Sales tax is a negotiation point at more than one wedding and in some cases threats to go to another photographer ensue (heck, we did that with my wedding photographer). My blended federal tax rate is about 30%, California is almost 10% and ~10% goes to charity about half of every dollar in profit goes to someone else. Sales tax is collected as a percent of revenue, so account for that how you will but I think of it as a pass through expense (i.e. it passes through me like… oh I said I wouldn’t talk about poop). Fortunately I max out my self- employment taxes (Social Security, SDI and Medicare) from my day job otherwise that’d be another 15.30%. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but Caesar is taking just about everything except my first born.

Photographers Charge Too Much and Too Little. So how much did Phat Baby Photography make last year? $20K in gross receipts minus $10K in expenses means a take home of about $5000 after taxes and giving. On average I spend ~10 hours per week on photography and the business so net net, I'm making about $10 per hour - more than a burger flipper and about half what the Costco cashier and the latter has benefits. The actual amount is a little lower for a variety of reasons, but the thought is depressing so this mathematical exercise ends here.

But it's not about the money right? In an ideal world maybe, but the reality of raising children in California is fundamentally expensive. Aidan loves ice hockey and eats like a dinosaur which is about as bad as it can get. Well a friend told me about his daughter and her love of horses, so maybe it could get worse. Zoe has an eye for designer shoes and clothes. Truth be told, I worry for her future husband. So unless I’m the government, I can’t run endless deficits and print money (even with my expensive printer).

More importantly, since my weeks have few leisure hours and sleep is a scarce commodity, every hour of photography is an hour I'm not with my family. Other options of saving time are largely an act of diminishing returns: tying\untying my shoes in the car bought me a minute or two each day, eating at my desk saves some time (and money), cutting my hair at home saves a 20 minute round trip to the barber but I'm open to reader's suggestions.

So it's with great joy that I find myself slowly unwinding the business. I say joy because even though I'd love to spend more time photographing other children, I instead get more time to play with my own. I'm still open for business (especially for existing clients), but I think you'll find me blogging less, doing a little less marketing and otherwise enjoying life (like experiencing ice hockey with Aidan). Besides, I can’t shut down the business right away, otherwise I’d have to recapture (i.e. pay back to the IRS) my business deductions on my taxes :)

Baby Photography Notes: 1/200 at ISO 400... just kidding, I used Keynote for the graph.

Mini Mad Scientists

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:20:00 +0000

The San Francisco Bay Area is known for its fine weather, but when the weather turns South, I turn to its rich scientific heritage to draw inspiration for what to do while trapped indoors with the little ones. So if you're looking to create some bubbling fun that draws oohs and aahs from little observing eyes, all you need is:

One small, clear container (two if your kids don't share)
1/2 Tablespoon of baking soda
2-3 ounces of vinegar
Measuring spoons
A few drops of food coloring (it's completely inert but makes for nicer photos)
Safety goggles (just kidding)

Put the baking soda in your container and let the kids slowly add the vinegar to have it bubble over. Repeat until you have a huge mess or the children stop giggling.

Baby Photography Notes: A kitchen window to the left provides soft indirect lighting, while bright incandescent lights in the background blowout the backdrop drawing emphasizes the the children.

Babies, Spinning Blades and Deadly Balls - Other activities for rain or shine.

SF Moma - Another "educational" opportunity in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Slow Mo in the Bay Area

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:12:00 +0000

If you ever feel like life is speeding by you or your kids are growing too quickly, here's a photography trick for you, dragging the shutter (or the notion of using a longer exposure). The technique is useful for capturing motion (in sports or waterfalls) or to replicate the effects of age on your memories and results in blurred photos depicting motion. Put another way, it slows the camera down so it's like taking video except all the motion is burned onto a single frame.

If however, the children are driving you crazy, then this photography tip does nothing to speed their development. ... and however tempting it might be to throw yourself in the water, it's not deep enough - not that I tried.

I think God went out of His way to make children cute for the very reason that we have adorable faces to look at when we're on the edge. Cheerio.

Technical Photography Tips: 1/20 sec at f8, ISO 80. This is the lowest ISO and smallest aperture allowed on a Canon G9 point and shoot and with a 1/20 exposure permits reasonably sharp children (who were surprisingly still) and a nice blur of the waterfall. With a subtle fill flash (and a little Lightroom action), the children remain well lit relative to the sun reflecting off the waterfall.

Fast Moving Baby Photography - Holding on to dear life as the Caltrain speeds by.

Take That Tahoe

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 04:45:00 +0000

President's day weekend honors our great leaders of the past, but for parents, it's also synonymous for ski week. That's right, here in the San Francisco Bay Area the schools actually give anywhere from a couple of days to a week off for families to go skiing, sledding or frolicking in the snow. We may be unable to compete with other industrial nations on test scores, but there's no way we'll let any other country have more fun.

My last post on skiing with kids threw out the possibility of hitting a little known resort in Tahoe Donner. After spending the weekend there, I can say it's gotta be one of the best place to learn to ski with children:

The lifts go right by the children's learning area so you can see how your children are progressing. This is much better than getting a phone call while you're at the top of base camp (i.e. Squaw Valley) and taking 30-45 minutes to get back down.
They actually have transferable passes so one parent can ski in the morning and then hand over the pass to the other in the afternoon if you have a baby that needs tending.
The runs are wider than a fisheye lens so there's plenty of space to fall.
The prices are about 30-50% less than Squaw for most things and as we all know, kids already eat us out of house and home.

There are also fewer expert runs which is a good thing if your son, who can barely get off the lift, wants to ski off cliffs or dodge between trees, when he's clearly still learning. Fortunately, I had enough fear for the both of us.

The other beautiful thing about Tahoe Donner is the Snow Play area at the community recreation center. They had these long, well groomed tubing and sled runs. Super fun - Zoe and I got to spin in a tube together.

Baby Photography Notes - All photographs taken with a Canon G9 point and shoot. I'll stand by my previous comment that if you're learning to ski (i.e. falling all over the place), the last thing you want to be doing is shlepping thousands of dollars of gear with you. If you use the exposure compensation to get snow that looks more white than grey, then note the image on the back of your camera is typically a JPG file (or equivalent) even if you're recording RAW. For the techy types, that means the camera applies its own contrast curve and will show your highlights being clipped when in fact, the RAW file is fine. For everyone else, you can just pretend I took one too many snowballs to the head.

Finally, my posts are somewhat erratic in schedule because, well, child rearing is also erratic. Thanks for your patience.

The Christmas Miracle Goggles - A list of children ski tips and of course some winter photography tips.

Hanging By A Thread

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 04:01:00 +0000

Note: This post was written last year, never meant to see the light of day and then was accidentally posted due to a parental oversight :)

Today's blog post title could be in reference to any of the following:

A general comment about parenting
An especially difficult week
Aidan swinging from a zip-line at Junior Gym in San Mateo

It's Super Bowl Sunday, so it seemed appropriate to have an action shot. Every day the kids get bigger, stronger and faster making it increasingly difficult to keep up. A parent of a baby and toddler at the above Birthday party asked if it gets easier. I surprised myself by saying no, because the physical exhaustion exchanges itself for a mental one. Teaching the kids right from wrong, discipline, the finer points of Pokemon and the occasional photography tip can be overwhelming. Parenting, is like the Peace Corp, it's the toughest job you'll ever love.

Baby Photography Note: 1/13sec at f/4, ISO 400, 35mm. Dragging (i.e. slowing down) the shutter adds to the action by blurring the background, swinging limbs and the crazy antics of Aidan. Panning horizontally kept enough of his face in focus to recognize my outrageous offspring.

R and R

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 03:21:00 +0000

R&R could mean:

Rundown and ragged
Rest and relaxation
Reading and reclining

Or it's all of the above. I'm so fried it's not even funny. I haven't worked this hard since I had kids - oh wait! Anyway, the three day weekend is nearly here so I'm looking forward to closing the laptop, putting the camera away (gasp) and relaxing a bit with the family.

Which of course brings me to my little friends reading Harry Potter.

Baby Photography Notes: Sometimes natural light is all you need, especially when you have a big window. The light naturally falls off so as long as your subject (a.k.a not what I usually refer to kids but hey) are in the foreground, the light naturally highlights them. It also helps if they're wearing something brighter than the surrounding furniture and walls.

Happy Chinese New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:39:00 +0000

And nothing says Chinese New Year like a giant, Sponge Bob bouncy house:

I was thinking of getting a pinata for the kids as well which really drives home the theme. Anyway, it's a crazy week so more photography, fun and kids next week.

Reflections, Repetition and Rest

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:59:00 +0000

Reflections are a great tool in a photographer's bag. I use them in wedding photography to capture the bride getting ready while the groom patiently waits in the mirror. The reflection off a window offers a subtle perspective of what children peering out are curiously observing. And here, two well placed reflections against the piano (though difficult to see on a blog size photo) provide additional profiles of Aidan studying his music. Personally speaking, I also find my own reflection humbling and a good reminder of why I'm a photographer and not a model.

Reflections are key not just for the photo being taken, but also with light sources. My soft box is pretty much right on top of the camera, pointing down to bounce light off the white keys and back up to hide Zoe's double chin :) In all seriousness though, it takes the edge off of the shadows because well, what hard working parent doesn't have a few bags under their eyes.

Like learning the piano, photographing your kids takes practice for you and them. My recommendation is to crack out the camera once a week for a few minutes. Kids grow up so fast so there's always something new to capture. At the same time, give it a rest. Photographing children much more frequently will eventually lead them to hide your equipment (which of course is why I always carry a spare).

Baby Photography Tips: The key light has a 1/4 CTO to warm things up. A 4-star Lee Filter provides the starburst effect on my other speedlite for a bit of the concert look. My wife provides the very important source of giggles for Zoe which really makes the photo.

Morning Routine +1

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 23:39:00 +0000

Every family has a morning routine or in our case, aspires to one. Which one of the following do you find most intriguing in our half hour routine each morning to leave the house?

Doing Kumon (2 sets of math and reading worksheets with about 100 problems). We're Chinese so this is the bit of the Tiger Mom in us.
Yelling. Um, yeah, we're not proud of it.
Face painting (our newest addition) ...

That's right, every morning we do face painting. Hockey sticks, flowers, hearts, you name it. While we're virtually unyielding on the big things (like learning Chinese, math, being nice to your parents), we try to be pretty flexible on the little ones. So if face painting gets everyone moving and adds some giggles in the morning, so be it. Maybe I should write a book, "Why Silly Fathers are Superior?"

On a related note, if anyone wants their children's faces painted before a photo shoot, you know who to call. Pink butterflies and ferocious sharks are my specialty.

Technical Baby Photography Notes: The photograph makes use of a professional photography technique that I like to call "the gratuitous use of light" which is a close relative to the gratuitous use of expensive photography equipment. The natural window light behind Zoe is really nice, but the first head shot I took, while beautiful, looks similar to other portraits I have of her (big eyes, cute smile, soft lighting, and blurred background). So I take a few steps back (I use non-zoom prime lenses because I need the exercise) which serves the purpose of capturing more of the scene and telling the story. Second, I mount a Canon Speedlite (i.e. small flash) on the shelf behind Zoe to create some separation and contrast between her and the background. Unfortunately, even after putting it at 1/128 power (the lowest setting available) and adding Gaffer's tape to the flash, the photo still appears like God is watching her eat her Wheaties. Before I can correct the flash output, my stomach growls, which is my cue to get what I can before it's all gone.

Singing to a Different Tune and a Promotion

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 04:13:00 +0000

Parents skip to the bottom, photographers and people looking to license music read on.

So I had aspirations of finishing my new website in the first week of January and am now in the uncomfortable position of working on it on the side (which is like casually saying you're raising a child in your free time). Like many photography websites, mine was going to use music to compliment my photography (and there is a promotion coming) so I went about the arduous task of trying to license my favorite songs. In case anyone is interested, Boutell has a great write-up on how to do this but for the time pressed individual\parent here's the summary:

Go to ASCAP, BMI or SESAC (great acronyms huh?) to find your favorite artist. Most artists work with one of these organizations and each has different terms and fees for licensing their associated music.
It costs about $300 to license the music for commercial use (i.e. you'll financially profit from the use of the music either directly by including it in paid product, like slideshows, or via marketing, like a website).
If you happen to like Moby (and I do), he actually set up MobyGratis.com to facilitate the use of his music in non-commerical works. When I approached him about using his work for my website, he agreed in exchange for a reasonable fee that'd be donated to charity. Very awesome.
Finally, TripleScoopMusic has been a great resource for the music I use in client slideshows and is more reasonable at $60, if you can find what you're looking for.

After this hassle, I'm glad that I give my clients copyrights to their photos so they can choose to make prints themselves. This saves them the hassle of getting my permission, provides them real value and keeps me accountable to provide enlargement that are better than the local labs so they buy from me. Okay, now that I've got that self-serving marketing blurb out of the way...

I'm offering a discounted two hour photos shoot ($390) with all the usual bells and whistles (consultation, lighting, 4"x6" prints to keep, online gallery, loads of fun and of course high resolution downloads/copyrights). Fine Print: The only catch is that there are specific photos I need for my website and the shoot must be in January or February before the photography season picks up. If you're interested leave a comment or contact me at Phat Baby Photography. Anyone who follows me knows I don't offer promotions to avoid the sinking feeling of buying something only to find it on sale the week later. So act now, operators are standing by.

Update: Thank you for the many inquiries and bookings. I'm now booked through February, but given the response will see if there are other ways to accommodate those who want to help me with my creative projects.

The Best Photo I Never Took Part Deux

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:57:00 +0000

One rarely has an opportunity for a retake in children's photography (kind of like asking kids to go back for seconds after eating broccoli), so I felt no small amount of joy when a "second" opportunity to capture the sunset at a nearby park arose (I chose to play rather than photograph the first time around). Since I had to haul a scooter, extra shoes, water and jacket for the kids, adding my SLR and light stand seemed like a small price to pay.

The best part of the photo session was playing a game of shark where the kids had to climb up the jungle gym before I gobbled them up. The game must have instilled some amount of fear, because I've never seen them move so fast. Their speed of course limited the number of photos from our session, but more importantly, made it quite difficult for me to win.

Technical Baby Photography: 1/4000 sec at f2.8, ISO 50. A Canon Speedlite can't produce much light at that shutter speed (for technical reasons, it's forced to produce a series of light bursts instead of one big one). However, through some technical wizardry, the PocketWizard Flex TT5 helps optimize this and with the Speedlite positioned close and focused at 80mm, the little engine that could, did.

The Best Photo I Never Took - On the original quest for this photo

The Christmas Miracle Goggles

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 07:03:00 +0000

Children are expensive. Skiing is expensive. So humor me with a few minutes of your time to tell a providential story and we'll circle back on some tips to take the edge off of the double whammy expense of skiing and children (and yeah, we'll hit some photography tips to reward anyone who sticks it out for the entire post).

Most of our family was out of town during the Holidays so we figured we'd hit the slopes for a road trip to save on both the hassle and expense of flying. Who knew ski lessons could amount to a plane ticket or two? The expense of lodging, lift tickets, rentals, helmets, snow chains, all that cute puffy clothing that they'd out grow next season wore me and my wallet out. Then a friend pointed out that goggles were actually pretty important, but at that point it was too late to borrow or take advantage of any sales so I bit the bullet and bought the cheapest goggles I could find. Women goggles, however, were difficult to locate and being a photographer, the mental picture of my wife wearing the ginormous men ones was enough to make me fall over laughing. So with much disdain, I bought two goggles: a $50 pair and a $60 pair. My wife, with her good taste, took the $60 Bolle pair with a bold designer (and crazy) pink and yellow strap. For the women out there who think $60 is reasonable for designer glasses, mine were a third of the price. Yeah, I looked like a dork, but at least I had money left to eat (though not much apparently when it comes to Squaw Valley). Pretty hot snow bunny huh?

Fast forward to the day after Christmas where we were blessed with having private lessons (because no one else drove up on Christmas) with Jason "the Black Diamond ninja" ski instructor. Though his skills were mostly wasted on the likes of me, his way with kids came in handy when Zoe broke her instructors in the kids class (there goes another $150). Jason was so good that we requested him the next day and boldly proclaimed that we'd ski down a long green run (2000 ft elevation decent) on our own afterwards. A couple of wrong turns later and we found ourselves stranded on Mountain Run, a blue intermediate (but might as well have been a cliff) run. Those who ski know this was a disaster for a couple who barely mastered the wedge going straight and for those who don't, the difficulty was akin to having twins when you only expected one.

The funny (as in ha ha, you took all my money and didn't give me my money's worth) thing about Squaw Valley was that you had to pick up your kids from their half day lessons by 12:15. This deadline was ludicrous since the adult lessons finished at 12:30 on the top of base camp several miles away and 2000 feet up. So we skipped out an hour (and $100) early but as I alluded to, we were stuck on this blue run. By 12:15 it was clear that it'd take another hour (or three) for us to get down together so I broke the ski buddy rules and left my wife with a new friend (as in hi there, please take care of my wife) Heather. With mental images of my distraught kids below and pangs of guilt for my abandoned wife above, I blazed down the hill somewhat recklessly figuring if it's my time, then the sweet sleep of death and choir of angels would provide a welcome break from the exhausting duties of parenting.

Well by God's grace I made it down safely and collected the kids who were actually enjoying themselves. As for my wife, it turned out Jason spotted her goggles, the blessed, worth every single penny, goggles and gave her a hand and eventually a snowmobile ride down. While always a believer in the ultimate plan, it's comforting to see God take an active role in life's little details as well.

Some Children Ski Tips:

Assuming you've already had kids, there's not much to do but keep them. Here are some other ideas though that might help keep things within reason:

Goggles are worth buying (used ones can be pretty scratched up and/or the foam gets ripped) and have better coverage, tints (get filter 2 for the most flexibility which provide enough contrast on overcast day but are dark enough to prevent snow blindness on sunny ones) and anti-fogging than regular sunglasses. If the whole Christmas miracle story wasn't enough, note that if your spouse goes blind or falls off a cliff cause they can't see, all the child rearing goes to you.
Clothing, helmets and sleds are great things to borrow since they outgrow the former and the latter doesn't get that much wear and tear.
Whatever you do have to buy, buy early (Costco has sells a bunch of stuff in the fall), on Black Friday (if you like that sport) or later in the season for the best deals. Sorry, this advice is a little late in coming.
Rent the children's skis locally at Any Mountain. The kids will get used to them before their lessons (by skiing off your furniture), children boots/skis are small enough to transport easily and it ends up being cheaper (you pay one fee for the whole season) as you can trade up each season as part of the rental program.
Try skiing at Tahoe Donner. Any ski resort that has a picture of a kid playing in the snow (versus a couple of parents stuck doing wedges at 8200 feet) on their homepage is going to be kid friendly (and a whole lot cheaper).
These chemical hand warmers are nice when you want to keep your hands/feet warm, entertain the kids with magic tricks or need to keep you camera battery warm to fire off a few more photographs.
Audio books of say Harry Potter, are a great way to kill time in the car and kick off a conversation (read, stream of a thousand questions) from the back seat.

Baby Photography Tips: The thing about snow is it's white. Earth shattering I know, and you're probably thinking that oxygen deprivation at altitude killed off a couple of my brain cells. The problem is that your camera doesn't know the difference so it'll underexpose the snow and just about everything else and you'll get something like this:

Sure grey snow isn't as bad as yellow snow, but if you want better results try this (in increasing level of difficulty):

Set your exposure compensation to +1. The right value could be more or less depending on what else is in your background but this is pretty safe setting and you do want to err on the safe side so you don't clip the whites.
You may want to go black and white on the image since there isn't much color information on a snowy photograph unless of course your subject is wearing a neon yellow and pink set of goggles.
Increase your local contrast (up the clarity setting in Lightroom) and do crazy stuff with your tonal curve (in Lightroom or Photoshop). This isn't for the casual baby photographer, but it really makes a big difference, especially if the day is overcast making everything rather flat. Remember how you thought I was brain dead and said snow is white. Well if you do "over expose" your photos, they can end up looking like you were standing in a white photography studio in ski gear (i.e. you won't see any texture from the snow). So you want a curve something like this:

It's a double S curve that gives you nice contrast in the snow as well as in the subject if everything is exposed correctly (and makes a bloody mess if it isn't). Alas, I fear I've said too much and an angel has lost its wings.

San Francisco Airport - Every Boy's (and Girl's) Dream - A cheaper weekend activity.

Bright Smiles and Lights Out - Using exposure compensation to deal with bright lights.

Parental Field Trip - Using exposure compensation for backlit subjects.

Camara Action Boo - Look, even a two year old can use the exposure compensation!

Where is my good side?

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 04:56:00 +0000

Phat Baby Photography (i.e. me) is frantically updating its photography website. In the process of fixing up the "About Me" page, I discovered, in some weird twist of irony, that the most recent portrait of myself is either from my drivers license, passport photo or security badge for Zoe's daycare. Do you see a theme here?

So while the kids were at school, and the wife was at work, this mouse decided to play. The experience reminded me of quite a few pearls of photography wisdom which I'll gladly pass along to my somewhat captive audience:

Black really is more flattering. My other sweater made me look fat.
I don't have a good side, but looking head on I realize just how large my ears are.
The 3rd photo below made me realize why kids so readily laugh for me and my camera.
Details matter. Subtle shifts of the chin, a tilt of the head, positions of my hands which aren't even in most of the pictures changes the entire composition.
While I tend to move my clients to different backdrops every 15-20 minutes, it's actually quite easy to crank out 100+ poses in the same time with one backdrop and get a nice variety of expressions, moods and compositions.

The overall experience was a nice reminder for me of what my clients must feel when in front of the camera. There was no one around and I felt pretty silly and nervous (more on that below). Special thanks this week for my Facebook followers who chimed in on what portrait they liked best. If you'd like to play along feel free to comment below on which you like or follow this link to my Facebook page and then tune in the new year as I post your recommendations here and on the new website.

BTW: By the time you're reading this, we'll be driving back from Tahoe so wish us luck.

Technical Baby Photography Tips: All the photographs were taken at 1/160, f2.8, ISO 100 using a 100mm prime. The 100mm Canon f2 is one of my favorite lenses and frequently overshadowed by either of the 85mms Canon offers. It's a tad longer which I find ideal for baby photography.

These photos are the result of a two light setup which you can see below. The key light is 24" softbox (my favorite lighting modifier) set really high up so that there is a subtle fall off of light towards my chest. The reflector was used to bounce some light back into the shadows and under my chin. Half the time my smiles in the photos are because I'm triggering the remote with my right hand while holding the reflector in my left. That is except for a few shots where both hands were in the photo and my big toe triggered my PocketWizards (they really should make the button bigger). The last speed light is on the background with a neutral density gel to give me that nice halo effect making me look like some type of angel or something.

For the detail oriented, my light meter reading was taken near the top of my head. Given the light fall off, I actually should have done it a bit closer to my chin since overexposing my black hair isn't so bad, but having a face underexposed by 1/3 stop isn't quite as nice. The oversight is easily correctable in post-processing but figure someone out there will benefit from the nuances.

Bright Smiles and Lights Out

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 03:48:00 +0000

Every year, we have the "tradition" of opening up a present a week before Christmas for the following reasons:

The kids get a lot of gifts and when they open it all on one day, many great toys get pushed aside or forgotten since they can only play with one thing at a time. Spreading out the gifts gets more entertainment mileage from everyone's generosity.
It allows a bit more focus on the story of Christmas on the 25th
It allows me to play with my new iPad guilt free. Thanks wifey.

So bright smiles abound to Aidan and Zoe. Aidan was preoccupied building a 1000 piece Lego Star Wars gunship but my other lovely model was able and willing.

Special thanks this week to Arkadiy for helping me get past my photographer's blogging block over on my Facebook page and suggesting this week's post. So tonight we're going to talk about taking photos of the Christmas lights in your home or neighborhood. Unfortunately, I got sick (thus the Lights Out title) so all the photographs will be indoor examples.

Fortunately, my model was in betterspirits than I was and provided a variety of unsolicited poses with her unicorn (her Christmas gift from her brother who painstakingly saved for it). With Christmas lights or evening photos of city lights, you typically want to dial down the exposure compensation (basically the knob that tells your camera you want everything darker) by 1-2 stops or use the night setting (usually a moon and/or star icon) on your point and shoot. This sets the mood (that's its dark and not broad daylight) and prevents the lights from appearing washed out.

If we stopped there than my girl would be in the dark so my little sweetheart is illuminated with a 24" softbox, camera high, from six feet up pointing down so it didn't cast an awkward shadow on the tree in the back. You of course don't need your child in the photo which greatly simplifies things (just like not having kids simplifies a lot of things) but what's Christmas without your kids smiling back at you.

Technical Baby Photography Tips: What you want more? Okay, the softbox light is gelled with a 1/2 CTO so the light coming out of it is about half as warm as the tungsten lights on the tree. Actually I have no idea if all the lights are tungsten but lets just pretend I know what I'm talking about. Generally I do the opposite and have the subject warmer than the background but that's the beauty of photography - there's always opportunities to mix things up or pretend that something that happened to work was intentional. The camera settings were set to Av Mode so the camera would meter for the ambient light (minus a stop and a half or so) at ISO 400 and f2. Oh, the most important tip: have fun and enjoy your family, friends and the iPad, I mean loved ones.

Our Christmas Card - In case you'd like to see more photos of our Christmas tree (and our smiling faces).

Last Christmas - Wow! The kids have really grown up and so has my photography of them.

Other Ideas - My contact info if you have other ideas feel free to email me or find me on my photography FaceBook page.

Christmas with Grace

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 22:41:00 +0000

Christmas with Grace means which of the following:

Being thankful for a gift you didn't necessarily want
Christmas at Grace Presbyterian Church of Silicon Valley
Knowing that God gave us the ultimate gift even though we didn't deserve it

Well, all of the above I hope, but I'd like to share the second and in doing so you get the third one for free. And if you don't care for the third point, then I'll refer you back to bullet point #1 :)

Anyway, every year Grace has a Christmas service and a little party/lunch afterwards to break bread together, chat and play the Wii. This year is no different except maybe that our church is a little bigger, a little happier and always blessed. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

Baby Photography Tip: Hmm... all natural light all the time with a bunch of Love (Lightroom preset that is) and warmth added in the post processing to make it feel more Christmasy (is that a real word?).

The Best Free Gifts for the Photographer in Your Life

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:35:00 +0000

It's that time of year, endless promotions, endless lines and endless line items on the credit card statement. With the constant reminders to consume, it's easy to lose sight of the reason for the season. Buying gifts for a photographer can be a blessing or a curse. Many photographers, like myself, have very specific demands of our equipment and with all the random professional photographers and companies hocking their wares, it's easy to buy something pretty useless (and expensive) for us. I'll refrain from naming specifics since one man's garbage is another one's treasure. The blessing is that our very craft lends itself to some simple, inexpensive but valuable gifts:

Provide the photographer in your life an hour of your time to model. We have tons of projects in our heads but between watching kids and paying the bills, it can be difficult to find creative time.
Watch the kids for an hour so they can go out and photograph the sunset, the sunrise or the diaper pale (hey one man's trash is another man's "art"). This is one can either be called a gift or a sacrifice depending on your perspective.
Shoot your photographer. Um, let me clarify that. Don't kill them, just take some pictures of them. Funny thing about photographers is we hardly have any photos of ourselves and they actually can be quite handy should we ever forget what we look like.

If you want to go on a spending splurge you can always create a coupon book for your photographer with all of the above and more. The funny thing of course is that Christmas is all about the ultimate free gift that everyone gets and no one has to do anything for. Blessings and Holiday cheer to all!

Baby Photography Tip: I've found myself horsing around a lot with Photoshop recently as part of a concerted effort to understand all the ins and outs of this most obtuse software package. While capturing memories on my camera is the utmost priority, the fact is that Photoshop, done well, makes for really dramatic images. It is also a lot like raising children where the basics of eating, feeding and sleeping are well understood but peel back the onion and you want to cry. Nonetheless, there are a bunch of actions and effects I'm standardizing on as part of a makeover going into the new year of which this photo demonstrates an extensive use of layers, curves and automation via actions/scripts. Believe it or not, I used to write software so it's fun to tinker with the latter and it helps keep labor costs and therefore prices reasonable for my clients.

Christmas Already?

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 05:35:00 +0000

So while you may be recovering from some combination of Thanksgiving food coma, Black Friday and being patted down by the TSA, we're doing our best to get into the Christmas spirit. So which of the following does that mean?

Bringing down the Christmas tree?
Making the most complicated Christmas photo ever?
Getting ready for the ultimate love story?

Since we had four days together as a family, all of the above.

Bringing down the Christmas Tree. Every year we cut down a tree at Santa's Tree Farm in Half Moon Bay. If you ever go that route, I highly recommend bringing your own saw and if you want to be very manly, bring an electric chain saw as part of a shock and awe campaign. Anyway, I thought it'd be fun to photograph Aidan jokingly pulling our tree down. He's a sweet boy, but he's got a bit of fire (or Spirit) and so it's not too far off from reality.

Making the most complicated Christmas photo ever. Three flashes, four separate photos composited together and five hours later (though only five minutes of photography) we have all the makings of this year's Christmas card photo. I really wanted something that captured the year. Zoe has been every part the lion (her costume) figuratively and literally this year. My lovely wife is always running around carrying at least one of the kids (figuratively and literally) and today did a magnificent job rallying the troops for the photos. ... as for me, the tree is falling on me... need I say more?

Getting ready for the ultimate love story. At the end of the day though, it's all about the most amazing love story ever. We received The Jesus Storybook Bible as a gift and have to say it's absolutely fabulous in its story telling - captivating for children but sophisticated beyond the dumb down Biblical stories so frequently available. I found myself viewing scripture in a whole new light and love how this Bible underscores in every chapter, that despite being 66 books with slightly fewer authors, the Bible is a singular love story. And so every night, we read a bit and with any luck, we'll get to Jesus birth in a bit under a month. Merry Christmas!

Technical Photography Tips: I've found some wonderful new uses for Photoshop which will be showcased in my new Phat Baby Photography themes next year. The Christmas photo is a sneak peek at Animaniacs, a favorite cartoon of mine. Like the cartoon, it's a bit punchy on the contrast with lots of smooth tones (ever see a cartoon with wrinkles) and selective desaturation. Enjoy.

Reading, Routine and RR

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 04:40:00 +0000

Something clicked (and for once it's not my camera shutter) and Aidan is suddenly reading 200+ page Diaries of the Wimpy kid books during quiet time. This has a number of implications which include:

The ability to self-entertain for long stretches of time (read, nap time for yours truly in the afternoon)
The ability to read to his sister (read, regaining some sanity during the toughest part of the day, bedtime with potentially cranky children)
The ability to learn and ask even more questions (read, back to square one)

The first two of course are welcome changes after six years. The thought that things actually get easier in parenting is always significant comfort. But lest anyone think there is any free time, any benefits are quickly subsumed by the barrage of associated questions. Questions relating to whether it's okay to torture his younger (Greg, the star of the book, does), why he doesn't get more money for peeing in the toilet (Manny, Greg's little brother does) and so on. Alas, it's great to experience Aidan's new found abilities.

Baby Photography Note: To the untrained eye, one might overlook that the photo was edited using a new Bamboo Fun Touch tablet. Think of it as a digital drawing pad for photo editing. It's a little disappointing though since half its functionality doesn't work in Adobe Lightroom. It's akin to discovering after a week that newborns don't actually sleep when you want them to.

Who's Working and Who's Playing

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:18:00 +0000

For once, while Aidan was working I was playing. Actually every morning, Aidan comes into our bedroom, says good morning and then goes off to do his Kumon (Japanese math and reading exercises). This past week, I dragged my tired bootie out of bed and snuck a shot or two from across our dining room into the kitchen where my studious friend was cranking away.

If this post seems short, it's because I have a ton of work to wrap up for clients and am entertaining doing another short film during the holidays (turns out I'll have some extra PTO time).

Baby Photography Note: 1/13 sec at f4, ISO 400 at 140mm. Who says you need image stabilization to get a nice telephoto shot. My 70-200mm f4 lens was braced against a chair and a strobe light shot through a 43" umbrella gave a bit more light and latitude.

Retreat!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Baby Photographer) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 04:00:00 +0000

"Retreat" can mean at least three things:

Something parents say after having their first
Something I say when Aidan and Zoe are chasing me with their Nerf guns
A place of withdrawal for prayer, worship and community

While, I usually "retreat" in the context of the first two, last weekend we were blessed with the third. I mean, how often is a sermon structured around the old Batman television series or a near endless supply of childcare provided or for there to be an opportunity to actually have more than a two minute conversation before having a kid pull on my sleeve, a text message come in on my phone or something come up with work. See our old pastor who married us oh so many years ago was the icing on the cake.

The downside of course was the sporadically torrential rains. We actually had to cancel the first group photo on Saturday and pray for better weather on Sunday. Despite the weather, I couldn't help but feel a refreshed, supported and loved... at least until that Monday morning.

Baby Photography Notes: For the first, tripods are your friend. While kind of a pain, like children they can actually be quite liberating as well. In this instance, I could run into the picture and trigger the camera remotely. Unfortunately for group shots this large there's a bit of a herd mentality and rather then having fifty people move, I just made do with the composition. As for shooting in the rain, I quickly learned that manual focus is your friend. Unless of course you like to have every picture focus on the raindrops closest to you (what the camera tries to do), you are best off taking a chance with the focus ring.