My aperture pics got mixed around here, but you get the idea....

I have had major technical difficulties, but I wanted to make sure I had something for the homework assignment!


The two pictures below are some of the 50 pictures I took of Jack!

Macro

Macro

This was supposed to be for the first assignment. (Do I lose points for being late?)

The water ones did not turn out very good. I did not have enough light in the kitchen and Jack woke up to soon to try again:)

Shutter Speed

1/1000 Shutter Speed w/ ISO @ 1600
1/80 Shutter Speed w/ ISO @ 1600


This is as good as it is going to get from me. I definately don't have enough light in my kitchen and can't seem to remember to do this assignment in the middle of the day. So... before I check myself into the nut house I am just posting my latest attempt at our homework and moving on.

Experimenting with super macro

These are some flowers from my mom's garden that I shot in the super-macro setting. It was really cool to see everything so close, almost like a microscope. I'm going to blow some of them up and use them as art for my daughter's wall.

Homework

Here are some pictures Bethany, from Oregon, took while spending the day with her family. Way to go!

Way to Go!!

Okay, I'm loving your pictures everybody! Here's just another reminder. We will be meeting this Wednesday, April 29th at 8:30 pm. Same place. We'll be talking about aperture, shutter speed and ISO and how to put them all together. Also, we'll be working on white balance - and guess what!? We'll be doing our homework that night at my house! Easy peasy!

So, here's another reminder for your homework/challenges:

DO IT!

Just kidding (kind of). You have a few days left to do your homework and post it here for all to see. I'm excited to see all of your masterpieces!!

Don't forget to read your manual too. I can teach you the basic of photography, but there's no way I can know how to use all of your different cameras. I don't mind experimenting with all of you and trying to figure it out, but the more you know about your own personal camera, the better.

Also, bring any questions with you to our class. If I don't know the answer, I'll find it out for you. There's still so much I'm learning as well!

One more thing - I went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point this last week with my family and LOVED it!! I was thinking of planning a photowalk there one of these nights. I'll let you know more info when I get it, but I just wanted to give you a heads up. You can bring your families if you want. Since we have a membership to Thanksgiving Point, anyone who goes with us gets in for half price. Even if we don't go for the actual Tulip Festival, we can go anytime and it will be just as beautiful. More details later....

Extra Credit

I thought these two turned out kind of cool.

Shutter Speed Homework

Yeah, I'm a copycat but this was super fun to try out!

Practicing Getting Close

Next photo group meeting

Reminder...we're meeting next Wednesday night at 8:30pm. See you then.

An old one (2006) of J.K. that I love the catchlights in!

Shutter speed

Daniel had a soccer game yesterday, so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to test my fastest shutter speed (1000).

The lighting is a little off, but I like this one.

I didn't zoom in as far, but I love how I caught them all running full speed a head.

Going in for the kick. Look at his tongue!

A few of Katie showing "catchlights"

Here's one of Katie last summer with some decent catchlights.

Below are a few using Julie's suggestion of shooting with natural light near the window.

Mom Shots talks about "Catchlights"

One of my new year's resolutions was to learn something new everyday about photography. I find information everywhere! One of the blogs that I came across was Mom Shots. She teaches some basic ideas/rules about photography. She started out the same way - she just wanted to take better pictures of her kids and now it has evolved. Anyhoo.... she recently did an article on "catchlights". These are the little reflections in your eyes. You WANT catchlights - it helps bring your picture to life. I sent her a couple of pics of my handsome little guy and you can check it out here:

http://www.momshots.com/catchlights/


You can see them here too:

SO....here's an extra "challenge." Try to get pics of catchlights. You can read all about it in her article above. Here are some more examples: All of these pictures were taken with natural light. The kids have the window on one side of them. Have your child stand/sit in front of a big window (lots of light). Open up your aperture as far as it can go (the lowest number) in "A" mode, and shoot away.

Because you're shooting with the widest aperture, your camera will use the fastest shutter speed available. BUT... because you might be shooting some wiggle worms who don't hold still for longer than a second, you might still get some blurry pictures. BUMP up your ISO and then try again. Remember what we learned???? Good.

Aperture suggestion

Some of you have mentioned that you're having some problems seeing the difference with the different aperture settings. Here is my suggestion --- line something up. You need some Depth of Field (DOF). Having something leading away will help you some more difference.

Here's some pics of the fence. I focused on the "C" everytime and took 3 pictures.

f22

f8

f2.8

And, if you can't find anything, find some random oranges and line them up on your trampoline. If you can't find 3, then find an orange ball (I know, ghetto!) :)

I focused on the middle orange everytime.

f2.8

f8

f22