Wordless Wednesday: Beans 2011

Mini Camera Tutorial: Adjusting the Exposure

I absolutely struggle with understanding the how’s and why’s of exposure when I take pictures.

No matter how many times my brother has tried to explain it to me, it still sounds a little bit like mumbo-jumbo.

I’m a trial and error kind of photographer…I mess with the settings ’til I find a combination of settings that gives me the image I want, without really understanding what I did to get it.  I keep hoping that someday all the technical stuff will click in my mind and it will all make perfect sense, but until then, I’ll just keep messing around and hoping for the best.

Last week I was taking a few pics at sunrise, and I decided to mess with the little “+/-” button on top of my camera.  I’ve heard that using it at dawn/dusk is a good idea, so I gave it a shot. (Sidenote: I’m shooting with a Pentax K2000 D-SLR.)

The purpose of the “+/-” button is to adjust the exposure.

In layman/Jen terms, that means deliberately overexposing (brightening) or under-exposing (darkening) your picture. The normal setting is at zero.  You can move it up or down in .5 increments.  To brighten your picture, you would move it to .5, 1, 1.5, etc.  To darken a photo, move it down to -.5, -1, -1.5, etc.

Clear as mud?  It’s way easier once you try it out and see.  Trust me.

So, this is the first picture I took that morning.  All of these pics were taken within seconds of each other.  I just had my camera set on the generic auto setting, with the “+/-” set at zero.  (These pics are all untouched…I haven’t edited them at all, so you can see exactly how using the “+/-” button changed the image.)

This one was after I upped the exposure to 1.5…it’s quite a bit brighter!

And this one is when I lowered the exposure to -1.5…lots darker!

None of these are award-winning shots, but hopefully it shows you what’s possible by adjusting the exposure.

The only thing you have to be careful with is re-setting it back to zero after you’re done…it’s a setting that doesn’t automatically return to normal when you turn your camera off, so you have to manually change it back to the original setting.

It’s kind of a fun  button to play around with.  Give it a shot! 

Sunday Sunrise

I’ve been dying to get out and take some early morning pics for about the past week or so.  I can see the sunrise from our living room, and they have been stunning lately.   Fog hovers over the river and creates some pretty spectacular scenes.  One morning last week, I loaded Abby in the car and we went out in search of some photo opps, but by the time I figured out where I wanted to go, the fog was lifting and I shot nada.  Sigh.

On Sunday morning Abby woke up around 6:00ish. I fed her and she fell back to sleep.  I looked outside and saw that it was a little foggy down by the river, so I left my hubby and baby sound asleep in their beds and snuck out.

It was a glorious morning.  I love that each morning is brand new, unique, never seen before and never seen again.  I didn’t get a ton of shots, but that was ok.  There was just something therapeutic about the hunt for great pictures.  So here are some shots from my early morning photo jaunt.

I love fog.

 

 

Photo Session: One Month

It’s a couple of days late, but we took Abby’s one month pics today. I got some great pics…then realized that I hadn’t set my white balance correctly and all the pictures were blue. Argh! And by that point, my child was about done putting up with her shutterfly mama, so I only got a few decent pics. These were taken after she’d had a mini-temper tantrum, hence the pacifier. Maybe next month’s shoot will go better. :/

I love love love this little outfit…it has ruffles on the butt. She has almost outgrown it length-wise. Grandma and Grandpa Grove bought it for her. I found that Alco has it in the next biggest sizes, and I really am tempted to buy them so we can keep wearing it-I love it that much!

The Week Before

As I write this, baby day is 4 days away and counting. Lately I feel like I am on a roller coaster of emotions – happy, scared, excited, panicked, terrified, elated.  So since this weekend was our last “pre-baby” weekend, I figured I’d better buckle down and make it count…which meant an intense work day on Saturday followed by a complete day of rest on Sunday.

My evenings for this week are booked with last-minute “must-do’s,” including finally installing that car seat and making these Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Eggs.  Seriously.  These are #1 on my to-do list for Tuesday evening.

I think Saturday qualifies as my first (and probably only) real nesting day.  I hopped out of bed with loads of energy and immediately got busy cleaning and sorting a few last minute storage areas in the bedrooms…which led to scrubbing (and I do mean scrubbing) our filthy bathroom from top to bottom…which led to getting cleaned up for some maternity pics at home and in town (more on this below)…which led to vacuuming and detailing the car for the first time in oh so long (we can’t bring the baby home in a filthy, manure covered vehicle)…which led to hauling yet more junk downstairs (so much for a clean, organized basement)…which led to baking lemon bars (using this recipe)…which led to cooking sausage and potatoes for supper…followed by heading into town to take pics of Christie at her senior prom (she looked fabulous!).

On Friday, out of the blue, I had a sudden urge to have a few last minute maternity pictures taken.  I’ve never been interested in the formal, traditional posey-posey sort of maternity pics that bare my belly to the world, so I hadn’t really thought about getting any pictures done until now.  But on Friday it occurred to me that the only pics I really have of my pregnant self are the quick little month-to-month pics that we’ve posted here on the blog…which is better than nothing, but left me wanting just a few more.  I’m assuming we will have more kids, but if for some reason this turns out to be my only pregnancy, I’d like to have a few belly pics to remember these months by.

So that was something else that got done on Saturday.  I headed outside with my camera and tripod and took some shots at home using the self-timer on the camera, then I met Tresia in town and we took a few more.  I’m much more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it.  I’m terrible at being a model.  Since I tend to like “non-traditional” pics, I tried to get some that didn’t necessarily include me grinning at the camera like a goofball (because MAN, all that extra baby weight shows in my face).  I tried to get a few shots that focused on the belly, since that’s really what it’s all about.  I used Photoshop to edit them and I think we ended up with a few that are decent.  I think.  I don’t know what I’ll ever do with them, but at least the “one week to go bump” has been captured.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The biggest task of the next few days?  Trying to grasp that this time next week there will be a new little person in our lives.  I can’t wait to meet our baby.

Have a Picnik

Now that it’s spring, I’m entering camera-mode once again.  Winter where we live is pretty uninspiring (to me, at least)…it’s bleak and blah and brown and cold, and I can always feel my creativity draining slowly out of me as the months drag by.  So when spring hits, I usually get completely rejuvenated and back on the photography wagon.

I have a few ideas of photo gifts for people and events that are coming up, and I’ve mentioned lately how I plan to take some newborn pics of the kiddo once he/she arrives, so all those ideas have been bobbing around in my head recently.

Normally, I use Photoshop to edit and spruce up my pictures, but I have kind of a love/hate relationship with PS.  I’ve downloaded lots of actions that make it easier to use and are pretty great, but whenever I attempt to stray from using the actions, I get lost and confused.  And I don’t like being hemmed in to only use actions, because while they offer great effects, the end result isn’t always what I want.

I was online one day and come across some photos that were AMAZING, and the photographer had used Picnik to edit the pics.  I think I may have mentioned Picnik briefly in the past.  Picnik is online photo editing software that is super easy to use, and offers lots and lots of effects to spruce up your pics.  And best of all, it’s free.  They do have a premium version that is actually super affordable and offers even more special effects for photos, but I’m impressed with just the basic free version so far.  It blows Photoshop out of the water in terms of usability.

The downside (for me) is that it is an online editing program…which means I can only edit pics when I’m online.  I tend to not spend much time online when I’m at home for lots of different reasons, and that would make it a little tricky to use Picnik.  I often spend my evenings with my laptop on my lap, editing photos in Photoshop while watching Iron Chef or Real Housewives; if I had to rely on getting online to edit pics through Picnik, I don’t think I’d be very productive.  OK, I’ll just say it:  it wouldn’t get done.

So IF I were online often in the evenings, I think I would use primarily Picnik.  But I’m not, so I’ll probably continue to use Photoshop for the majority of my editing…with some Picniking thrown in on occasion, because it’s just so dang fun and easy.  If you are online often and are looking for some super duper photo editing software, I’d head straight for Picnik and wouldn’t look back.

Here are some edits I did through Picnik, to give you an idea of what they offer.  (These took me about 30 seconds each and about one click of the mouse.  And I can’t exactly remember what effects I used, because I just clicked around and tried them out.  They’re nothing outstanding, but are just meant to “test the waters” and give you a little idea of some of the effects offered.)

(I think this edging effect (called “Matte”) would be super cute to use on baby pics…very good way to soften the photo)

The Basics

I wanted to post a few tips that the camera doctor shared at our class a couple of weeks ago.  (For more details on the camera doctor and class, you can read about it here.)  These tips will probably mean the most to people who are currently using an SLR camera, as opposed to a point and shoot.  I thought it was all basic, important information, and wanted to share it in case it would help anyone. Some of it I was aware of, and some of it was new to me.  Hopefully it will help you out!

• The key to minimizing camera shake (and thereby eliminating blurry pics) is to grip your lens with your left hand (placing it UNDERNEATH the camera), and use your right hand to press the shutter.  Your left hand will act as a tripod, in a way, and will steady the camera when you click the shutter.
• If you’re a smart photographer and use your neck strap when taking a picture, you’re my hero.  If you’re like me and can’t stand to have something wrapped around your neck, there is a way to ensure that your camera won’t go crashing to the floor if you have butterfingers or trip on something unexpectedly.  Wrap the strap around your wrist (I wrap around my right wrist) so that if you do have an “oops” moment and the camera goes flying out of your hands, it won’t slam into the ground and wind up being the most heartbreaking mistake of your life.
• Did you know that digital cameras have software that needs to be updated, just like a computer?  I did not know this prior to our class.   The software, when related to cameras, is called “firmware.”  It’s really important to find out a.) if your camera is updated and using the most current firmware, and b.) where to go online to find firmware updates. Google your camera make (i.e.Pentax) and model (i.e. k-x) and “firmware update” to see how to check your camera for the version it’s running and also where to find updates online.  Since I shoot Pentax, I can tell you that the website you need to visit for this info is pentaximaging.com.  My camera was NOT running the most recent firmware, so updating it was the first thing I did after the class. And it was super easy and fast, so don’t be afraid.  I was noticing that my batteries were not lasting all that long (like, they would sometimes die within hours of being replaced), and who knew – that’s an issue that can be corrected by installing the most recent version of firmware.  Fab!
• This next tip is something that I am TERRIBLE at…and thus is probably why my camera was exhibit #1 for being the dirtiest camera in the class: changing the lens with the camera pointed downward.  Why, you may ask?  Doing so prevents dusts and dirt and debris from landing in the innermost sanctuary of your d-SLR – the sensor.  Mine was so dirty that the dirt and dust was starting to be visible in my pictures (which is TERRIBLE – it should never get to that point!), so last week it was sent to the camera doctor for a nice thorough cleaning.  Good as new!  And will stay that way longer if I can remember to point the camera downward while changing lenses.

That’s it for this lesson…hope to bring you more nuggets of info in the near future!