Fun with self-portraits.

I apologize to the bloggity blog land – this has been a whirlwind month, turned on it’s head by a series of medical interruptions, but we’re at the beach on the mend and looking to make up for lost time!  

Today, Sydney and I were lounging on the balcony, sitting side by side with our feet propped up, drinking our “very special juice drinks” (which, I have on authority, tastes like cookies and ice cream) when I asked her if she wanted to take a picture. She thought for a second as all thoughtful two-and-a-half-year-olds do, and said “Okay mommy, let’s take a picture.” 

But Daddy was on his laptop and I really wanted to capture our moment… not just her looking at me.  Knowing I had precious time before she changed her mind, I grabbed a gorilla tripod, the wired remote my brother gave me for Christmas two years ago, and ran back out to take our picture on the balcony. The moment was lost – she’d already moved on to see what I was up to – but it did give me a chance to show her that SHE could take OUR picture.  

I opened up the balcony doors, balanced the camera on footstool, and I tackled and tickled – our moment was back!

My exposure was a little hot, which is admittedly tough to perfect without a bit of rehearsal – but my goal was to capture the essence of the moment – not the perfection of the moment. And Sydney thought she had to raise the remote up to the camera to make it work, so our tickle became a wrestle.  But with a quick crop – it’s just us…

 

Using the balcony as a GIANT diffuser of bright mid-day sunlight allows for vivid, even lighting.  I’ve taken some of my favorite photos of friend’s children in this exact spot with the vivid red couch in the background. The trick is that the subjects are safely in the shade of the indoors, with a giant linear wall of sunshine just three feet away.  

So – after a week of rest (and remote work) – we’ll be back to blog… I haven’t forgotten about our series on eyes

A break in the Big Easy

We had a busy week of farewells, travel, work and birthdays… but I wanted to say hello and share a sneak peak of our wonderful trip to New Orleans.  

Learning experiences

There are times that I am so proud of my photography journey. When my daughter gives me the gift of the perfect opportunity in the perfect lighting and I just happened to find the perfect settings… and voila!

Sigh. That’s good fun stuff.

But that warm after glow of accomplishment is always completely snubbed by the next set of failed pictures. And I think that’s a good thing.

See, if I only learn to work in perfect situations, then I’m eliminating 99.9% of the moments in our family life that I want to capture. Yes, capturing available natural lighting is, by far, my favorite kind of photography stylistically and practically. But when we take the show indoors, I have much work to do.

Enter yesterday’s inflatable jumpy park play date at our local Pump It Up. Sydney had A BLAST. So much so that for the first 20 minutes, she ran up to me and hugged me after every slide to tell me “Mommy, I hab sooo.moch.fun!”.

But mommy was in for a different kind of playground ride – teeter tottering on the limits of my photographic abilities. The lighting in the jumpy park is horrible for photography, at best. Precious few gymnasium-style fluorescents hung 20 feet in the air, making everything dark and, well, fluorescent. But before I start complaining about how fluoresent light makes people look like walking zombies, it wasn’t the color of light that was my problem… it was the lack of it.

I had two options. I could either use my onboard flash, or dial up my ISO to extreme levels. And since I’d rather pack up my aspirations and go home than use the direct pop-up flash on my camera, it looked like I’d be cranking up the cameras sensor.

If you’re not up on camera geek speak, ISO measures how sensitive the sensor on your camera is to light. If you’ve opened your aperture as wide as you can go, and lowered your shutter speed to where you’re on the border line of motion blur, your only other option is to raise the ISO. This can be very effective in medium to medium low-light situations, since most decent dslr cameras can handle a modest ISO boost. But start to get crazy with it, and you add noise so bad to your pictures, that it almost isn’t worth the struggle.

Yesterday, I decided to test my D-200’s ISO limits. Here’s what I learned.

Get it close and get it right.

Here’s baby ‘E’ at f1.8 with a shutter speed of 250… ISO 2000.  Considering I usually only take my ISO up btw 100-and 800, that’s really high for me, and it’s not bad!

But if I zoom in to the details, the noise is unbelievable! But, at a small size, it’s acceptable. If I were to zoom in or make ANY exposure adjustments to this picture, the noise would jump out.

Here’s what would happen if I started making only slight adjustments like an exposure boost and sharpen.

It’s hard to see at this size, but all the noise is starting to give baby ‘E’ a 5-0-clock shadow!  Not so bad here, but if I actually wanted to print this in anything larger than a 4X6, it would be very distracting.

So clearly, if I’m going to take pictures at this high ISO, I need to get my aperture and shutter speed exactly right on the first click because there’s very little I can do with it later.

Now here’s a great example of why a subject in the distance doesn’t work so well:

Technically, she’s as in focus as she can be – but there’s just so much noise making up the details that there’s almost nothing I can do with this.

All this being said, we did have a great time, and I learned that next time, as much as I’m afraid of it, I need to bring along my speed light flash if I’m going to capture anything I’ll be proud of.

Here’s some more pics from my humbling at the jumpy park!

Noise or no noise – Sydney and her friend “M” had a blast.

Pt 1 – The Eyes Have It – How to Photograph Eyes That Dazzle

Have you ever seen those photographs of children with eyes so stunning that you can’t look at anything but their eyes?  They’re perfect – colorful, sharp, BEAUTIFUL.  Well, I’m still learning how to take pictures that make the most of my daughter’s beautiful peepers.

The first step is finding the light in your child’s eyes and, as this video featuring our adorable friend Alex shows, there are a few things to consider.

Enjoy!

The daddy monster.

Ever wonder what it’s like being married to a politico?

Puzzles

If I had to pick the thing that I love most about this age, it’s how Sydney so wants me to do everything with her and is so proud of my involvement. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it also falls on that other list called “Things that take away whatever morsel of personal time I might have had”.

So yesterday, as I was putting together jigsaw puzzle #5 of the day (we only actually have two jigsaw puzzles, so you do the math) I thought – well, I might as well take some pictures while we do this. “C’mon Sydney, let’s move the puzzle on the floor by the back window!” Everyone wins.

“Okay Mommy Mommy, let’s make-a da puzzo”. I’ve birthed a Sicilian.

Here’s our 6pm puzzle time – West-facing window.  They were so contrasty they were ripe for black and white…

Why I love Apple’s Aperture…

There are some things I could write about – but WHY, when I can just show you.  Especially when it’s something that saves a busy mom a lot of time when it comes to her pictures.  Here’s my very first video blog… 2 edits… one quick in Aperture, and one round-tripped from Photoshop.

Before

After

Before

After

Enjoy!

Less cow, more wall-eyed jack russell, but free food nonetheless!

Wow – when I woke up this morning looking for an outing, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  Courtesy of a facebook ad, the good marketers at Chick-fil-a let me know that today was “Dress up like a cow, get free chikn” day.  Woo hoo!  Love it!

Except for the part where it cost more than our meals would have to get the costumes in order.  And the part where I didn’t calculate tape not holding our spots to our clothes.  And how the costumes we assembled in the Michael’s parking lot would look more like deranged rabbits or visually-impared yip yip dogs. And I also didn’t count on the restaurant being a madhouse – a polite madhouse mind you – but there wasn’t enough personal space available to really think through picture taking.

What am I talking about?!?  Free Lunch!  And a great way to pass a morning.  Lovebird loves her some “Sheek-o-lay”

The song is different.

Today I was proofing some lyrics to get out to producers for a project that I’m working on.  This is an oddly-satisfying piece of the production puzzle that I rather enjoy.  Part of it is because it’s data entry.  I like data entry way more than I should.  Typing is like my own special brand of autism, my own personal rocking motion.  But before I completely go down that rabbit hole, the part I really look forward to is getting to hear emerging songs that I’m probably not familiar with since they’re no longer an occupational hazard.

Music used to be my life.  That is, if you measure a life by time spent thinking of, listening to, creating, enjoying, writing, tinkering with, getting a paycheck to procure… blah blah blah.  I loved it.  I could argue passionately for HOURS about all things music.  I even put up with the business part of it just to get close to it’s scent.  And, with almost no warning, I completely put it down.

I think one of the most serious measures of how much motherhood has changed me is exactly how much music I haven’t listened to in the last 2.5 years.  To put it quite plainly, I went from laboring to an i-pod playlist of Bjork and Damien Rice to the occasional lullaby cd and a whole lot of Miss Patty Cake.  And the most bizarre part is – I don’t seem to miss it.

Now when I turn on itunes, I keep turning it down to make sure I can hear noises in the house… even when my toddler is safely filed away at school.  I can’t remember the last time I burned a listening CD (well, there was a Charlie Brown Christmas CD, but I had to burn that to get it into Final Cut)  And I did get through an acre of tree pruning with that strange new U2 album – heck, I think I listened to it over and over to try to figure out what the heck they were thinking. But, these days, in the rare moments that I’m really struck by lightning in a song, it’s hard for me to reconcile just how far away I am from where I used to live.

But today, I was wowed by a worship song.  It wasn’t canned or targeted or (insert jaded commercialized worship slander here).  It was great.  And it was by a folk artist who’s not new.  And neither was the song.  And for a split second I was really miffed that I didn’t know about any of this.  Boohoo.

If you’d have told me years ago that I’d be more than 2 years behind on what’s happening in music, I’d have accused you of trying to talk me into amputating my soul.  But remember that balloon I alluded to in my first post?  The one that comes as the love for your child grows and fills up all of the places that are completely dislocated?  I guess in the grand scheme of things, music just didn’t matter so much.  It might matter more some day, and it might not.  I might find myself sitting at the piano with hands smaller than mine, and I might not.  

It’s so different.  Isn’t it?

 

PS – The song is by John Mark McMillan called “Oh How He Loves”.  It’s great.  Even if it is, by copyright, four years old.

From the song:

So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss, 
And the heart turns violently inside of my chest, 
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets, 
When I think about, the way
 He loves us, 
Oh how He loves us…

Shadow Puppets?

Sometimes I wonder what cave mommies did for entertainment.

 

FIreworks in her eyes.

Grillin’.  Smokin’. Waterslidin’. Waterballoonin’.  That’s how we do the 4th of July!  And in-between playing hostess, fly swatter and bathroom pointer-to-er, Hubsters says to me “Remember when you sat up in the middle of the night after Memorial Day and lamented that you forgot to take pictures?  Don’t do that again.”  Oh yeah, that.

Amidst the scores of child limbs scurrying up and down the giant inflatable waterslide was Lovebird’s friend “M”.  I’ve been in love with “M”’s eyes (and hair and skin…)since I first met her almost 2 years ago, but I’ve yet to get her to look at my camera!  Lucky for me, “M” was saving this balloon for someone or something and she was happy to show it to me!

 

The picture below is where I landed after some photoshop work.  I long for the day when I nail shots straight out of the camera, but until I get there, I have to do a little post negotiating to save my subjects from my photography!

Here’s the before:                 

 

Yup, underexposed as usual.  That and the leg of the tent we were standing under made her look like an “M”-kabob. 

I had a few goals with this picture:

- Surgically remove the distracting tent leg

- Bring up the exposure of her skin while keeping the background dark.

- Pop her eyes so I could finally enjoy them in a photo.

CLONING

I find that any repair work that needs to be done on a picture should be done BEFORE you get into serious adjustments. Sometimes itty bitty pixels get thrown out of whack – and you don’t notice them until you begin cloning them.   So, with that in mind, my first Photoshop step is to get rid of that unfortunate tent leg. Hello Mr. Clone Stamp.

I option+clicked in the area of bushes about an inch off of the right edge and cloned away, being careful not to reintroduce the trunk of the crepe myrtle to the right of the tent peg.  If you look carefully, you can see a repeat of a club-shaped shoot, but cloning greenery is so forgiving that I doubt anyone will ever notice!

 

EXPOSURE/CONTRAST WORK

Okay, now that that’s done.  I want to take the haze off of the entire photo.  Some people use filter>sharpen>unsharp mask to do this process, but I have a secret I want to share.  One of my favorite ways to learn how to use Photoshop is to use Actions.  Actions are an automated set of step by step adjustable commands that lets someone else hold your hand through the work.  The best ones are completely adjustable as you go through the process so you can customize the steps to your needs.  And after a while, you begin to understand what happens at each step and you can do it on your own – or to save time as a busy busy mom – let the action do things for you.

My favorite actions come from a fabulous photographer named Nichole Van . While I can’t reveal the secrets of what each of her actions do, I’ll show you how I use them.

First I use the “defog” action from her Studio Actions set.  It’s great because it automatically lets me decide by way of a layer mask which parts of the picture I want the action applied to.  In this case – I want “M” and her daddy’s hand to pop – I don’t care so much about the bushes and grass behind her.  I run defog, and then I choose the adjustment layer mask and paint black wherever I don’t want the sharpened layer to apply.  Happy with the result of this little housekeeping step, I flattened my layers and moved on!

Next, I want to make the grass and the bushes much more rich and deep so that Maddie’s alabaster skin will pop off of the page.  There are actions that I can use for this, but I just chose to use Layers>New Adjustment Layers,Curves…  I know that, because this is an adjustment layer, it’s non destructive and will come with a mask that I can paint on top of while leaving an original image intact.  Why do I care about that?  Well, when I make adjustments to make the grass and the bushes darker, “M” will get darker too.  The adjustment layer mask will let me paint her out of the changes once I like the result!

Now the trees and grass are deeper, and I paint “M” out of the changes.

When I’m done… FLATTEN!

EYE POP

Here comes my favorite Action ever, again by Nicole V.  It’s in her “Photo Fix” set, and it walks you through her process for making eyes practically twinkle.

Ignore the color difference because I forgot to take the snapshot of her eyes just before and after this step and had to borrow from the end, but wow, right? After the pop, I used Photoshop’s sharpening tool very sparingly (at 13%) to give extra definition on eyelashes, eyebrows, nostrils, and lips, but then I also ran Nicole’s Selective Sharpening action from the same “Photo Fix” set which allowed me to really amp up the eyes, and then sharpen everything else just a little bit.

Next I ran Nicole’s “Soft/Glamor Filter” from her “Essential Color Pop” action set.  It gives just a slight blur to everything, and then you go back and erase the areas you want to remain sharp.  You leave the undesired parts of the image with the blur and paint out hair, skin and clothing from the adjustment layer mask.  For extra eye pop, I recommend painting the skin back in at about 85%, and letting the eyes, eyelashes and eyebrows be the only area painted back in at 100%.

Finally, I Flatten again.  Save again, and went back to Aperture.  Still not quite enough contrast, so I upped Contrast to 0.09 and Black Point severely to 40.32.

FINALLY! THERE SHE IS!  Happy 4th of July “M”!!

Endless afternoon… shooting in late afternoon sun.

When God made Godmothers, he gave them skills.

Afternoon-long ball-throwing skills.

Giggle-inducing skills.

Lovebird delighting skills.

Which means, it’s time for mommy to work on the photography skills

Last Friday, Lovebird’s Godparents came to stay for the weekend, and was she in luck! While mommy and daddy flitted about getting ready for the big bar-b-que,  ”A” & “G” entertained.  And they had so much fun, mommy put down her adirondack installing screwdriver, and pulled out the camera.

Contrary to the joy on my Lovebird’s face, this session was a little daunting.  Since I couldn’t choose where this giggle-inducing game of catch was taking place  - with the sun JUST off of the back of her head at dusk – light levels shifted dramatically as she moved. Notice in the series above how, as her position changes ever so slightly, the contrast and light in each photo changes. I had to hold my hand over the upper right corner of my lens to escape some of the haze and lens flare that shooting to closely into the sun creates.

But the worst part was that my metering was all over the map! The light fluctuated so much, that I chose to find a happy non-blown middle and stick to it… in this case an aperture of 1.8 and a shutter speed of 160.  It was, by no means, perfect, but I resigned to the fact that most of these would have to be dramatically adjusted after the fact once they met my computer.

Here’s a typical example of what these looked like straight out of the camera.  I was trying so hard not to blow the highlights, that she ended up very underexposed.  This is exactly why I shoot RAW so I can try to recover highlights.

I brought this photo into Apple’s Aperture, and was able to make enough adjustments to make it work without having to go all the way into Photoshop.  I bumped the Exposure to 1.75, losing some highlights where the sun illuminated her hair, and some detail in the white wicker chair.  To get back some of the detail, I moved the Recovery slider to .63.  Any further and I’d begin to blow some of the light on her shoulder, and since I didn’t want to go into Photoshop to mask and brighten her face, I decided this was good enough.

And here’s where I ended up:

I could have kept going – sharpening, vignetting, but hey – I’m on mom time here.  I try to save that stuff for the days I’m feeling particuarly like procrastinating

On some of the photos that had extreme haze and sunflare, I bumped the contrast and raised the black point… but that can so easily get into such overall color distortion, especially in skin tones, that I’d typically do that in Photoshop, where I can control with adjustment layers which areas of the image are affected and how much.

I’d love to hear from some other moms on ways to retain good contrast with sunflare!

Hello world!

Hello World Indeed!

A funny thing happened when I became a mom.  Everything changed.  Everything.

Since no one has written “What to Expect When You’re Done Expecting – Mental Health Edition For Ex-Career Turned Stay-At-Home Moms” here’s my outline for that book:

Chapter 1: Everything you know is no longer true… or if it still is, just go ahead an rewrite your frame of reference and brace as your entire life as you knew it implodes.

Chapter 2:  Accident report – Did anyone see the John Deer that ran over my body and left me with a head injury?

Chapter 3: You will love your child.  That love will fill up the holes of your former existence like a balloon – and if you’re wise about it, you’ll use the grace that balloon gives you to build a foundation for your new life.

Chapter 4: Rebuilt that foundation yet?  Maybe you don’t even realize that you have.

Chapter 5: Will someone remind me what chapters 1, 2, 3 & 4 said?  I haven’t slept in a year and can’t remember anything.

Okay, so maybe it’s not fully vetted, but you get the idea.

Looking back at the 2.5 years of my motherhood experience, there’s been one finite thing that’s saved me… Photography.  With each snap of my daughter, 10 million little pixels dance a dance of light, gyrating into a memory, allowing me to step back and appreciate just exactly what this journey is all about.  I get to see those eyes looking back at me and I hear my heart say over and over “You are loved”.  I get to relive all of the good times and appreciate my distance from the really bad.  I get to exercise my inner artist, scratch my itch to feel as though I’m accomplishing something grown-up and re-gird my core strengths as an individual.  But mostly, I get a clear picture – among the 10’s of thousands I’ve taken in the last 2 years – of just how much I’ve accomplished.

I hope you enjoy this blog and continue to walk with me as I verbalize each “a-ha” moment and story in my photography and mommyhood  journey.  And I doubly hope you enjoy my little girl even a fraction as much as I do.  Life as I know it is gone, but she’s sooooo worth it.

A