can't get close enough | nappanee photographer

one of my favorite quotes regarding photography is:

if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.
-robert capa

so it makes it very convenient that i love a good close-up! i actually have to think outside my own little personal "box" to back up and take something other than a close-up.

i generally shoot with a prime lens, so there's no zooming for me.


at first it might seem weird getting so close, but soon it becomes second nature. i've always got about 3 feet to work with, so i'm not exactly on top of my subject.... but i am pretty snug...


(yes, there was a moment i thought this one might take a bite out of my camera...)


i nearly always frame my shots in camera. i rarely plan to "crop creatively" in post processing. so if this is what i want, i get in there....


i've just come to love getting really close. there's something about framing a face & gobbling up those eyes...


and that nose and those lips...


so if you want your photos to capture the heart & soul of your subject, get in there! get close, forget about those background distractions and fill up your frame with those wonderful faces!

silhouettes | nappanee portrait photographer

do you like silhouettes?

silhouettes are kind of new to me, i have never really gotten hung up on this type of photo. i am now trying to pay more attention to sunsets & silhouettes. i made the huge mistake of taking a whopping 1 good sunset photo the last time we were in florida & that was with my camera phone to send to a friend. brilliant...i know.☺

there are lots of great applications for shots like this. capturing your children, especially in profile, a beautiful landscape & sunset, a romantic pose... these are just a few good reasons for a silhouette.

and really, they are very simple to capture. you meter for the sky rather than your subject which should give you nice colors in your skies & a darkened subject.

sometimes, your subject will not come out quite as dark as you'd like, but that can be altered in photoshop if necessary.

*this one turned out pretty well, he's completely profiled all the way around, directly against the sun

*this shot below could have been much better if i had gotten down lower & shot so that his entire body would have been visible above the horizon

a few tips to make your silhouette the best it can be:

• meter for the sky, not the subject
• get down lower, placing as much of your subject above the horizon as possible
• when posing your subject, try to get as much of their profile in the photo as possible; watch your angle of the subject to the sky,
• try for a smaller aperture for more depth of field, sharper subject & background; more possibility for sunburst/flare affect
• place the subject right in front of the sun for a glow or sunburst around them

there are lots of good possibilities and great surprises that can come from these types of photos. get on out there & take advantage of these great fall sunsets & try your hand at a silhouette.

friday favorite & photography tip : nappanee children's photographer

this is my pick today because:

• it's any oldie but goodie, this photo's about a year old exactly. i like it - my son looking sweet & calm....who knew it was possible?☺
• i love the black & white, it's smooth & creamy
• the french door catch lights in his eyes
• his haircut...such a handsome boy...

*this image was shot @ f2.8, 1/200, iso 200 with a 50mm 1.4 lens.

do you like this type of image? this is how i set it up:

1. find some nice northern window light, this image was shot indoors
2. try to keep your background as clutter free as possible or a wall that's free of clutter, or hang a sheet over a piece of furniture behind your subject
3. position your subject next to that north facing window or door (in this photo, the french door is on his left, he's sitting within a couple feet of the door)
4. position yourself pretty much directly across from your subject or place yourself even a little closer to the light source so that your subject is looking a bit more full on to the light & have them turned to face you (this will depend on how much "feathering" or shadowing that you want to see on the opposite side of the subject's face)
5. look to see the catch lights in their eyes, if you see them, that's good!
6. go for it, start snapping away!

technological madness : computer viruses & digital photography blues

part 1 : computer viruses 101 ie: for the newbies like me

in 12 years of owning computers, we've never had any kind of computer bugs.

but yesterday my husband & i spent the better part of our day worrying & trying to fix a "virus" that my laptop had gotten saturday night after troy downloaded a document from what he thought was a perfectly safe sight.

so we talked to my nephew who seems to know a lot about these things & he advised us to use a free program off the internet. we tried, but it didn't seem to work. also, we never really checked into the security program that is already installed on my laptop, which runs everyday with no problems. troy tried a few other free programs, but they all seemed to be free only until you needed them to actually DO something for you, then they direct you to upgrade to the paid version. we opted not to go that way, but thought we'd purchase some software from the local store.

after the $40 purchase, an installation that seemed excrutiatingly long & painful, we were happy to find out that the new software said we were virus free.

huh... then why were we getting these constant pop-ups saying that we were infected with a "trojan" windows exe blah blah blah... and that infomation was being stolen from our computer & being put on the internet?

well, i'll tell you why.

because we had been hit with a "fake/rogue antivirus". ours was a well known (yeah right) virus called "Personal Antivirus". you can read all about this on AVG's support section where they fully explain this. the whole point of this application is not that it does anything harmful to your computer unless you consider constant pop-ups telling you that your computer's being damanged & that there are 127 different infected areas on your computer PLUS the added pleasure of your computer being slowed down to a near halt to be harmful.

basically, this bogus security application installs itself on your computer. you start receiving pop-ups saying that your computer's infected with a virus. this is all coming from a bogus security program that kind of looks legitimate. it even puts a shortcut icon on your desktop. if you're not paying attention & you're freaking out a little bit, you just assume that's part of the software that came with your computer. you will try to run the software, but it tells you that it's expired & you need to upgrade. this is how they try & get you to buy their security application, which isn't really a security application, and they just take your money & run.

another fun extra is that when you figure this out & try to uninstall this bogus program from your computer, it won't let you. there are all sorts of ideas on how to do this floating around the web, but we found that doing a system restore was the best alternative for us. it worked. enuf said.

this whole thing struck us as really stupid. our general consensus was that whoever came up with this should be hunted down & shot. no questions asked.

yeah, i know that doesn't sound very nice, but seriously, we spent the better part of a beautiful sunday trying to get rid of this thing.

it was not fun. and as if there's not enough stress in life!

so the moral here or what we learned is:

• calm down when you see a virus alert from your computer
• make sure 1st & foremost that you know your computer - know what your security software is & that it is working & not expired!
• run your antivirus software, if it doesn't pick up anything, maybe you don't have a real virus, could be this "rogue antivirus"
• go on line if you can & search these things - there is all sorts of good information, lots of free applications & faq's that give you a pretty good idea about the usual suspects floating around
• do all of the above before you make any purchases & even check out the support site of the program you do purchase, before taking it out of the package, downloading it, and finding out that you just wasted your money because you don't really have a virus & the new software isn't gonna do you a darn bit of good.
• the end

part 2 : digital photography & why you shouldn't delete photos in camera

so you say "what's wrong with that?" & i'm just about to tell you why.

let's start out by prefacing this whole subject by 1 singularly important idea: read & know your camera manual. this is really the only way to know what to do with your camera.

unless you just LOVE to learn the hard way. then don't read anything, just push buttons randomly & see what happens...

*sorry, i'm in rare form today, or maybe i'm in normal form, probly so...

anyhoo... i believe that it's a pretty common theory that it's not a good idea to delete photos in camera for a few good reasons

• it takes up battery life that could be better used taking pictures
• accidents happen when you're hurriedly deleting photos, for instance to make more space, and sometimes you push the button for "yes" when you meant to say "no"
• some menus are set up more user friendly than others & the ones that aren't make it really simple to accidentally arrow to deleting "all" rather than deleting the one specific checked photos. i don't know why they do that, they just do
• some people have deleted all the photos from their card this way, totally by accident. ouch...

so there you have it. good reasons not to delete photos in camera.

coming up...

part 3: why you should transfer the photos from your card onto your computer or onto a disc at the very least

part 4: why you should use a card reader instead of usb cord to transfer images from your card to your computer

check out picnik

hey, if you're looking for a resource to edit your photos, there is this neat little website called picnik that you've got to check out. over there you can do standard editing & other fun things like add fonts, frames, special effects, make collages - all sorts of cool stuff and it works with your photos in lots of places like flikr, facebook, photobucket, picasa or just straight off your computer.

so even if you already have photo editing software or if you're considering a change/upgrade, check this place out!

tutorial: bigger photos on blogger blogs

you can have little blogger photos like this...


or upsize to something like this...

see the difference?

i have had a few nice compliments on the larger images on my blog.

some have even said that they wish they knew how to do this for their blog, so rather than try to email people individually, i thought i'd post a tutorial here.

it's really very easy, so hopefully i can clearly explain it here:

1. load your image into your post like normal
2. when you get it there, go to the "edit html" tab up above next to the "compose" tab
3. you'll see the coding there for your photo, look for a line that says "width: 268px; height: 400px;" or something similar, it might include the words "cursor" & "hand" in it or your numbers might be different than the example i'm using
4. next, delete that line, starting with the width & ending with the height - don't change the numbers, just delete it
5. then, look for a number further into the coding that looks like this "/s400/" and change the 400 to 800. there might be another number that works for a different size, but 800 is the number that i use
6. you may have to change the size of the "wrappers" of your blog depending on the template you're using because if you have a 2 or 3 column blog, your main body might be too narrow to accomodate this larger image & you have to increase the size. you'll know because when you try to upload this larger size & post it, you'll see that it's being cut off by one of the columns

so there you have it. that's all there is to it.

go forth & increase the size of your images!

photography tip: catchlights

something that always draws me to a photo is seeing great catch lights in the eyes. catchlights are the reflections coming from a light source captured in someone’s eyes in a photograph.

sometimes i’ll take a picture just because of the catchlights. i see them all the time, when i’m talking to someone, especially my kids. it’s not unusual for one of my boys to be talking to me & i’ll interrupt them saying “stay right there - don’t move, let me get my camera!”. i know, real nice mom… but sometimes i just can’t help myself!

when you’re taking photos you normally try & position someone toward the best light, which should in turn result in getting some nice catchlights in their eyes. it makes a huge difference in the entire result of the image, especially a close-up. in studio, many photographers use soft boxes just for this reason, to mimic the the look of the reflection of window light in the eyes. many even have preferences over square, rectangle & hexagon shapes depending upon which shape of catchlight they like best!

since i shoot natural light, indoors i like a big window (or set ‘em right next to a small window) or french door/s. these work niiiiice! so... next time you're taking photos, set out to capture some catchlights. let me know what happens!

photography tip: digital image storage

taking care of your photos is really important. i’m sure you all know someone who’s lost their data, crashed their hard drive, etc. so please consider taking care to archive your images properly.

i may not be the best one to talk, but at this point, i’m in pretty good shape with my photos, storage-wise that is.

i have probably upwards of 10,000 images on my computer & that’s just since i went digital, christmas 2003. i used to just download them to the computer & that was that. Of course, I started to get nervous about that & began burning cd’s for an additional copy. then i labeled them & put them on a shelf. now i am trying to do an even better job when it comes to archiving all those memories.

the first thing i do is import the images to my computer & external hard drive. the fastest & most reliable way to do this is to download the images from your memory card to the computer if possible. you can purchase a card reader pretty inexpensively these days if you don't have one built into your computer already. importing directly from your camera is the slowest & most dangerous way to import images.

external hard drives are really dropping in price these days, so it just makes sense to take the leap and get one. ideally, making a copy on a dvd-rw is my next step & if you don’t have an external hard drive, this is the next best alternative option for you. i use dvd-rw’s because they have greater capacity than a cd & can be rewritten to, for updates or edits or just to add & remove images. the price difference isn’t that much greater than the cd’s & to me it’s worth it.

now, when marking those cd’s or dvd’s, make sure to use a non-toxic marker. that would mean NOT A SHARPIE! sorry sharpie people, but you’re just no good for those disks! i use Slick Writer’s by American Crafts. i purchased mine at hobby lobby, but you can probably get them at most craft stores locally & online. they are great for scrapbooking, but also nice for writing on the disks because they are permanent, write on slick surfaces & are non-toxic too.

photography tips

i will be putting up some photography & photo editing tips as i get the time, so...be looking out for them!


in the meantime...

i've been asked what photo editing software i use so i thought that i would post a bit about it. i currently use photoshop cs3 by adobe.

many people (including myself) have or use adobe photoshop elements. that is a really useful, affordable choice for most people looking to do basic image editing/organizing or digital scrapbooking, etc. one great thing about using a "photoshop" brand product is that it is probably the most supported program out there, as far as trying to learn goes.

there are several other programs out there including picasa, which i hear is a really nice, FREE program to use. i haven't used it, but i hear good things...so check it out.

i have learned most of what i know from getting on forums, searching for tutorials, reading books & even taking a rather overpriced college course (sadly, the least useful resource by far).

if you are looking to learn, i can suggest a few sources ~

online:

other than typing in something like "photoshop elements tutorials" which is good & will find you lots of info, a place i have gone back to is photoshopsupport.com. there are tutorials for various versions of photoshop there.

another source is photoshop elements techniques. and last but not least is the adobe website. go to support, then knowledgebase, for whatever software you're using. of course, if you have the latest version of whatever they're peddling & you've registered your software (ie. you're not using it illegally... you wouldn't do that, now would you???) you can always call their tech support...they're actually pretty helpful people over there.

books:

i like books. i have lots of them. anything by scott kelby is really helpful. he's a photoshop "guru" as they say. i have his photoshop cs3 for photographers book & it's well worn. mr. kelby has written books for most of the photoshop programs if you're looking for an elements book.

i also have adobe's "classroom in a book", but i don't really recommend it. tim grey has a series of books on photoshop workflow also that are pretty nice, he explains things totally differently than scott kelby does, and i also have another book called top 100 simplified tips & tricks for adobe cs3 & they have similar books for the elements programs also.

if i are just getting started & new to editing, i'd say the top 100 book might be the book for you...but that's just my semi-educated opinion.

get close

back when i was scrapbooking more, i read a quote(i don't remember the author) that went something like this, "if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough!" and this has always stuck with me, sometimes it sticks TOO much with me! i love to get in there close, especially with children.

so if you're trying to improve the quality of your photos, try getting in there closer. most all digital cameras these days will give you a light or a beep or some sort of sign to let you know that you're in the focused range, otherwise you're going to get a blurry image or the camera just won't let you take the photo. so... try it & have fun!