Sunrise

Here is another sunrise photo. It's kind of ordinary except for the little clouds that caught the sun.

Daniel in the Hood

Helen was messing around with the camera the other night taking photos of the kids. I love this one of Daniel. Proof that candids are better than posers.

Saturday Morning

Last Saturday morning I got out my camera and tried to work on some of the things I learned from the book on photographing family and kids that I just read (see last post). Mostly I was trying to simplify backgrounds, particularly by using the floor as the background and shooting from different angles. Here are the results:

Book on Digital Photography

I just finished reading a book on digital photography that I checked out from the library (add library to the litany of free photo resources recommended on this blog). The book is called Photographing Your Family (and All the Kids and Friends and Animals Who Wander Through Too), by Joel Sartore with John Healey. The book was actually published by National Geographic, and Joel is in fact a National Geographic photographer.

Anyway, as I read I took notes on two yellow post-it notes and the back of a receipt. I figure I have a better chance of keeping those notes to refer back to if I put them here. So here are my notes in no particular order:

• When starting a shoot think 360, bird's eye view, worm's eye view.
• Shoot straight down with the floor as a background to avoid clutter.
• Background is very important. Compose your shot from the back to the front.
• A great quote: "Shoot candidly. Nothing bores me more than seeing photos of people standing stiff and smiling just because the camera is on them. They all look like bowling pins."
• Something the best photographers always strive for is to shoot the unexpected.
• Slumbering kids, spouses, friends, pets -- all can make excellent pictures.
• Look for a place with natural light without too many distractions.
• Here is a very valuable insight I got from the book: before a photo shoot go through the following steps (1) adjust to the appropriate ISO as this will affect all other settings -- 100 for bright day, 200 for moderate light, 400-800 indoors or at night, (2) turn off flash, (3) select priority -- is depth of field important or is freezing or blurring action important (I would also add set white balance to proper setting)
• To minimize background, use a long lens and a small aperature.

All in all this was a pretty good book. There were lots of photos so it didn't take long to read. However, some parts seemed like space filler. For example there were entire sections devoted to photo ideas. Some of the ideas were pretty good, others were less ingenious such as take photos of your kids playing outside and take photos of your kids playing inside and take photos on the 4th of July.

My recommendation is check this book out if you find it in the library, buy it new if you already own Photoshop and all the camera equipment you'll ever want and still have plenty of money to spend.

Gimp Image Editing Software

So, I went out to lunch with my good friend Rick the other day, and I was telling him about my new hobby. I also happened to mention that I was using Picasa for my image editing software because I was too cheap to buy Photoshop. Rick suggested that I try Gimp. Gimp is image editing software that can be downloaded for free and is basically a poor man's Photoshop. It has many of the same features as Photoshop such as curves, cloning, layers, etc. I realize that those fortunate individuals out there who actually own Photoshop probably consider it blasphemy to even mention Gimp in the same post as Photoshop, and I'll admit that Gimp isn't perfect, but it gives you a lot of options at an unbeatable price. I actually read somewhere that Gimp is sort of a ghetto version of Photoshop Elements. I've never used Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, so I can't really give a fair comparison. All I can say is that of the free image editing software out there, Gimp is by far the best thing I have come across so far.

Before you go out and download Gimp, let me warn you -- it is not very user friendly. There are, however, lots of tutorials and help you can find online, but be forewarned it will take quite a bit of trial and error before you get the hang of how Gimp works and where everything is.

So, my first experiment with Gimp was to try and "save" a photo of a buffalo that I took when I went out to Antelope Island. The buffalo is great, but I must have been metering off of the dark buffalo fur because the snow all came out electric white. Here is the original photo that I took.

See what I mean by electric white snow in the foreground. So, I decided to try and use Gimp to get rid of that white and make it look more natural. I will spare you a full history of the trial and error it took cloning, copying, blurring, etc to try and turn the nuclear-fallout-looking snow into something else. I also realize that those who are proficient with Photoshop and other image editing software will make wicked and justified fun of my sophomoric attempt to rework this image, but below is the result of my first attempt at reclaiming a disappointing photo. At the end of the day, the lesson for me is, take a good photo initially. Trying to fix things takes a long time, generally doesn't turn out great, and isn't nearly as fun as stalking a half-ton horned beast with a camera.

ISO and White Balance

Long time no post. Sorry. I was busy all weekend playing in a soccer tournament. Lot's of fun, but I was too afraid to leave my camera on the sidelines while I was playing. Anyway. Ever since I got my camera I've had trouble shooting indoors at night, which is a particular problem for me since the only real free time I have to take photos (other than weekends) is indoors at night. Basically, I don't like using the flash and when I turn the flash off and adjust the aperture and shutter speed to compensate, all my photos come out with an eerie orange glow, like I am taking photos inside a pumpkin or something. So, being the resourceful guy that I am, I went to the library and checked out some books on digital photography. Sure enough, there was an answer out there, and here it is.

First, you have to change the ISO setting. I was pretty afraid of ISO when I first got my camera. Kind of like being afraid of the dark -- its not what we know that scares us, it's what we don't know. Anyway, here's the skinny on ISO: in the old days, ISO referred to how sensitive the camera film was to light. These days the film has been replaced with the camera's sensor, but same idea. In bright conditions you want use a lower ISO like 100. The quality of photographs is better with lower a ISO -- colors will be more saturated and details will be better preserved. However, if you are in lower light, like at night and indoors under electric lights, increasing the ISO to 400 or 800, will allow you to take photos without using the flash. Also, if you open the aperture wide (lowest f-stop your lens will allow), you can still have a reasonably fast shutter speed so all those cute photos of fast moving kids don't come out as a blur. The draw back to increasing the ISO is that it creates noise. Noise is camera-talk for a grainy texture. It's a trade off, but better than the washed out effect of using a flash, I think.

Second trick is adjusting the white balance. Again, initially I was very afraid of white balance settings. To understand white balance you need to convince yourself that light has color. Some light is warm and reddish, some is cool and bluish. Camera makers, being the smart guys that they are, figured this out and gave digital cameras an automatic white balance setting that causes the camera to take the color out of light. However, this is really bad if, for example, you are taking photos of sunsets or nature and you really want a warm glow in your photos. Additionally, the auto white balance setting is a fairly blunt instrument. So again, camera makers being smart guys, give you the option to adjust the white balance settings, basically letting the camera know what lighting conditions you are shooting in so it doesn't eliminate something you want or compensate for something in the wrong way. So, last night I set the white balance to incandescent lighting and presto, we no longer lived inside a pumpkin. When shooting nature, I set the white balance to sunlight or cloudy, depending on conditions. It's a cool little trick, worth messing around with. Of course if you're super savvy in photoshop, you can do white balance clean up on the back end as well. But nothing's better than getting it right the first time. Okay, enough talk. Here are some of my indoor photos from last night using my new found ISO and white balance knowledge.

The following photo is of post-family home evening treats. Using a low f-stop (large aperture), I get a shallower depth of field, so Hannah is in focus but Benjamin is a little blurry. I think that's kind of cool and artsy, especially since I know why it happened and actually meant to do it.


The following photo is a good one of Helen and Mary.


These last two photos were actually taken by my wife. I was in the car on my way home from work and this sunset exploded (this is the type of sunset I wanted on Antelope Island). I was wishing I had my camera. I called my wife on the phone and, in an amazing display of marital vulcan mind melding, she said, "I thought it might be you, I was just outside taking photos of the sunset with your camera." Thanks wife. You've got a great eye.

More Buffalo

Here's one more buffalo.

Great Salt Lake Photos

Here are some of the photos I took on Antelope Island of the disappointing sunset. This first one doesn't really have any sunset in it at all, but I like the blue colors.

Here is one as the sun began to sink more.




Last one I can post without embarrasement.




One last thing. I was reading a photography book recently and the "photography" advice was: when photographing in the cold, take a pair of fingerless gloves to keep your hands warm. When I read that I thought, come on, why is that in a book about photography. But when I was out in single digit temperatures last Saturday taking photos, I realized the value of such practical advice as my bare hands went from cold, to numb, to immobile.

Buffalo

Lately we have been having some amazing sunsets. So, last Saturday I decided to head out to Antelope Island (amazingly patient family in tow) to take some photos. My idea was to get an amazing sunset with awesome reflections in the shallow smooth water that surrounds the causeway leading to the island. Shortly after paying the $9 admission fee to the park, however, I discovered that the shallow smooth water was frozen over and covered with some very non-reflective snow. Strike one. Next it became apparent that instead of a spectacular explosion of a sunset, all I was going to get was a soft, glowing, fizzle of a sunset (I'll post some photos later anyway since I stood out in the freezing cold to take them). Strike Two. Then we came across two very large buffalo only feet from the road. Home run. I quickly switched to my 300mm lens, jumped out of the car, and started creeping towards them. No fences, just me and the half-ton, horned brutes. They were mostly just rummaging in the snow looking for things to eat. They did look up at me a few times however which made for some great shots. I'm not sure why the snow covered grass in the foreground came out neon white. That's not bad touch-up work. That's just the way the camera recorded it, and I'm not savvy enough and don't have good enough software to get rid of it. Anyway, it was a very fun unexpected surprise.

New Template

I've changed my template again. I really think the black background makes the photos look better. Oh, and I discovered that in my excitement to put larger photos on my blog, I was making some photo's so large that they didn't fit on some screens. So, I'll be toning down the size of future photo posts. I've also started adding labels to my posts as any easy way to categorize and search for things.

As I was categorizing, I realized that I don't have any photos of my oldest son, Matthew, up yet. Here is one of him as a sheep in the family Christmas nativity. I'm also putting up another one of Daniel. I've never seen a child as excited about a shepherd's crook as Daniel was.