Happy Father’s Day to the best Daddy.  The Daddy who will do anything to get a laugh out of his kids.  The Daddy who is patient and kind and knows the answers to all of their endless questions.  The Daddy who works to hard to provide a great life for us.  The Daddy who will always take the back road so we can have crazy adventures.  The Daddy who is the best Lego builder and wrestler.  The Daddy who is a great teacher.  The Daddy who is ours and we love him more than all the starfish in the sky.

Last night my baby graduated from pre kindergarten.  I kind of thought the whole thing was a little silly.  Until I saw my baby boy walking down the aisle to pomp and circumstance in a cap and gown.  And that is when I lost it.  He was so confident and excited.  He had the biggest smile on his face as he spotted us in the crowd and waved.  And I know he was looking to see if I was crying because he’s been telling me that I would need tissue ever since they began graduation practice.

His graduation was in his school’s chapel.  There is bad fluorescent lighting and the only natural light comes from a stained glass window.  I opted not to bring my flash because it just would have been obnoxious and we were all sitting so close together I didn’t want to blind someone.  So yucky fluorescent / stained glass light it was.  In situations like that I am so thankful to be able to shoot in RAW.

With your DSLR camera you have the option to shoot in JPEG or RAW (or you can shoot in both with some cameras).  A JPEG is an image straight out of camera.  You don’t have to do anything further to process it if you don’t want to.  A RAW file is not an image… yet.  You computer, rather than your camera, will have to process it to become an image.  The downside to shooting RAW is that the files are much bigger (on your card and your computer) and that you do actually have to do some sort of processing to it (although the processing can be very minimal).  The upside is that you will have SO much more control over how your final image looks.  Over and underexposing your images can easily be fixed as well as white balance.  Yes, you can do these things with a JPEG, but because RAW files are so much larger there is more data that can be processed and “fixed”.

This is what the image looked like straight out of camera.  Yuck.  I shot this image with my 5D Mark II and my 70-200 lens from the second row.

F 2.8, 1/125, ISO 1600

I opened the image up in Camera RAW in Photoshop (you can do this in Lightroom too, I just prefer Photoshop).  All that I did was change the white balance to “auto” and all of the other settings to “auto” as well.

You can see when I do this it overexposes the image too much.  So, I simple moved the exposure slider to the left a bit to bring down the exposure.

Pretty good, right?  At least much better than what I started out with.

With another simple color balance adjustment in Photoshop and running one of my own actions to make it pop a bit, here is my final result.

I like enjoying these moments and not worrying about getting the “perfect” shot.  I’m glad I have these pictures, but my memory of this day will always be better than these shots.  At all of his other graduations I will always think back to this one.  His very first graudation.  And I will remember the tastle in front of his face that he wouldn’t move because his teachers told the kids not to play with them.  I will remember how well he said his bible verse and how excited he was to perform.  I will remember the smile on his face when he saw us in the audience.  And I will remember how when I tucked him into bed that night he said to me, “Mom, things are going to change.  I’m a kindergartner now”.

I’ve had the opportunity to guest blog over at the NYIP blog.  Below is an excerpt of my first article.  To read the article in it’s entirety please click here. 

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you are not close enough.”  Robert Capa

When I first became a photographer, I realized that many of my photographs were wider shots. I liked adding elements of the environment to tell the story, but I was lacking a sense of intimacy in my images. My subjects were getting lost. I then discovered my love for prime lenses. Prime lenses have a fixed focal length and do not zoom in or out. You become the zoom. If you want to get closer to your subjects, you are forced to step closer — and, in turn, interact with them. When you interact with your subjects, you can capture more emotions.

Whenever possible, I always zoom with my feet rather than my lens. My favorite prime lens is the 50mm 1.2. With this lens, I am able to get close to my subjects without getting any distortion from a wider lens, such as the 28mm. Shooting close also eliminates distractions from your image. Sometimes adding in natural elements to the image can be a good thing, but there are times when you want to focus solely on your subject. Filling the frame with your subject lets new details come into play, and it leaves no doubt about the intended subject of the photograph.

To continue reading this article please click here.

I was browsing through Brayden’s pictures.  Looking at pictures from when he was about Kennedy’s age.  I see more similarities in their appearance now.  I see similar looks and smiles.  But, at 20ish months I thought Brayden was so old.   He did so much more than Kennedy.  He was so much more independent and focused.  I let him finger paint.  I let him take my point and shoot into the backyard to take pictures.  I let him help me bake.  These are things that I haven’t even thought to let Kennedy do.  Because she’s the BABY.  She’s too young to do those things.  She’s not old enough.

She is going to be two in just two months.  Maybe it’s time to bring the finger paints out.  And realize that she’s not such a baby anymore.

Love this shot of Brayden.  It reminds me so much of a face Kennedy would make.

Canon 5D, 50 1.2

F 2.0, 1/1250, ISO 125

Brayden attended a birthday party a month ago and received a thank you card with a picture of all the kids that attended the party.  He was so excited about that picture.  He held onto it so tight and said, “Wow, my very own picture!”.  I was so confused.  There are pictures of him all over the entire house.  Big pictures of him on every wall.  When I asked him about it he said he’s never had his own picture before.  That made me sad.  I have hundreds of pictures, but he never sees them because they are boxed up and out of reach from grabby baby hands.

I made Brayden (and Kennedy too) a keepsake box from Mpix last year.   I put ticket stubs, pictures, and little trinkets in it.  I pulled it down from Brayden’s shelf so he can now reach it and look at it whenever he wants.  It’s his own little treasure box.  You can of course use a shoe box as well, but the Mpix boxes are way cuter.

By having his own little box of pictures he feels like the memories are his too.  I love that.  Because that is why I do what I do.  That is why I document their lives.  For me and for them.

Dude.  I slacked in May.  Big time.  I missed 8 days.

I remember feeling burnt out with Kennedy’s 366 day project right around this time too.  It’s almost the  middle of the year and sometimes I just get tired of taking pictures and trying to be creative.  But, this is the time when you need to hang on and remember that at the end of 365 days it’s so worth it.  And if you miss a day here or there it’s no big deal in the big scheme of things.

So don’t get discouraged and keep shooting!

*** Tutorial for the collage can be found here.

When our trip to Oklahoma got cancelled we decided to road trip up north to the Central Coast.  I heard a rumor that you could find sand dollars on this particular beach.  I’ve lived in California my entire life and you are lucky if you can find seashells that are intact on our beaches.   I was so giddy when we found real sand dollars on the beach.  Brayden wasn’t as impressed.  He wanted to know what he could buy with his sand dollar.  Once he realized it wouldn’t buy him a toy he lost interest very fast.

Canon 5D Mark II, 50 1.2

F 2.8, 1/1000, ISO 125

What: Camp Mom*tog with DrewB and Julie Carson from Joy’s Hope

When:  August 24 noon – whenever we are done

Where:  Yorba Linda, CA

Cost:  $375

There were two things we learned from the first Camp Mom*tog.  1)  Take a group picture.  How did we forget to take a group picture?  And 2)  We needed more time.  6 hours just wasn’t enough.

For this Camp Mom*tog we are going to go from 12 to whenever we are done.  For those that have to leave because of nursing babies and prior obligations, we will be done with the crafting / photography around 7.  But, for those that can stay we will be serving dinner and we will just have more time to chat and get to know each other.  Because no one wanted that first Camp Mom*tog to end.

Please remember, this is a basic photography workshop with two awesome photography related crafts.  If you are already shooting on manual this is not the workshop for you.  If you are a professional photographer this is not the workshop for you.  We will not be discussing any business related topics.  What we will be discussing on the photographer side:

-  The settings on your camera that you can set and forget.

-  Aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and how they relate to one another.

-  How to find the light.

-  Shooting with good and bad light.

-  How to tell a story with your images.

-  And we will be putting all of the things we learn into practice with our real kid models.  I show you both bad and good light and how I work with light to get my images to look the way they do.

In addition, you get access to both Julie and I in our private Facebook page.  The Facebook page has been great for any questions that come up after you come home and start putting everything you learned into practice.  And it helps us all just stay in touch

To read reviews from past Camp Mom*tog attendees and to sign up click here!  We would love to have you!

A question that camp up on our private Camp Mom*tog Facebook page is “What’s a filter and why the heck do I need one?”.

If you bought a kit with your camera you may have received a few filters to go on your lens.  A filter simply screws onto the front of your lens.

Some filters (like polarizing filters) will increase saturation making your blue skies really blue and your green grass really green.   Warming and cooling filters will add yellow (warm) or blue (cool) to your images.  I don’t use any of these filters so I can not share my experience with you.  If you’d like to see examples of why you would use these filters and how they work this article explains it very well!

There are many different filters for different situations.  But, the only filters I use on my lenses are UV filters.  UV filters are supposed to block UV light.  If you have too much UV light you could get a blue color cast on your image.  However, with auto white balance that’s probably not too much of a problem with your DSLR.

I exclusively use UV filters to protect my lens.  If you are like me you lost your lens cap long ago.  With a UV filter on my lens my glass is always protected.  Protected from scratches, protected from kids grimy hands, and protected if I were to drop it (at least the glass would be protected if I drop it).

When buying lens filters try to buy the best lens filter you can afford.  You don’t want to put a $15 piece of glass over a lens that you paid much more for!  My favorite brand is Hoya and I typically spend between $50 – $75 for my lens filters.

Filters come in all different sizes to fit your specific lens.  It can be confusing to figure out which filter you need.  What I do is go to B&H Photo and search the lens that I need a lens filter for.  The UV filter will come up on the side under “filter”.

So I know for my 50 1.2 lens I need a 72mm filter.  Now, that filter that they suggest isn’t necessarily what I want to buy.  I then search “72mm Hoya UV filter” to figure out which one I want to purchase.  Make sure it is a clear filter with no color or tint.

Happy shooting!

I was so nervous for Camp Mom*tog.  Julie and I spent the better part of last week preparing, hauling tons of stuff up 3 flights of stairs, and agonizing over each and every detail.  I just wanted everyone to have fun AND I wanted them to walk away feeling confident enough to use their cameras on manual.  I wanted everyone to walk away being able to capture great images of their kids straight out of camera.

I wasn’t the only one who was nervous.  The other ladies were nervous as well.  It was like first day of school jitters.  We came together for the most part 13 strangers, but left as 13 friends.  We are already planning a reunion.  We had the best group of ladies.  I couldn’t have asked for a better group.  They crafted.  They used power tools.  They learned their cameras.  We took pictures.  We laughed.  We took photo booth shots with a stuffed bobcat (for the record that was Julie’s idea, not mine).  I wish every Saturday was a Camp Mom*tog Saturday.

I barely had time to take pictures.  We were so busy the entire time.  I was able to grab a few quick detail shots before the ladies arrived.  The cake pops from Beverly’s Best were a huge hit!

Luckily we have a little video that shows more of our day.

If you are using Safari and can’t see the video you will need to switch to Firefox.

We had so much fun that we decided on our next Camp Mom*tog date.  Drum roll please…

Saturday, August 24!  Registration will start one week from today!  More details to follow!