Archive for June, 2010

Well I started my photography workshop on June 7. Since the kickoff I have logged several gigabites worth of pictures. The workshop is called Bloom and is run by Brenda Acuncius and Kristy Lane. They are amazing teachers, photographers and mentors.

Before:

After:

Leading lines combined with perspective: 28 mm, Ap: 2.5, SS 1/100, ISO 400, spot metering
Before: Making Father’s Day cards

After:

I added one more set because yesterday I took the opportunity to take some photos on Stanford Univ. campus which has all of this wonderful architecture. I thought I would try and frame some shots in the arches. Honestly, when we got there I didn’t know how to make the arches work for me…

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After:

Well the Franklin’s went on vacation this week (lots of pics coming in another post). To kick off the vacation my new lens arrived in the mail. A 28 1.8 mm wide angle lens. With this lens I am able to capture more “storytelling” like photos rather than just “portrait” like. Already, Noah and Nicole were fighting over who would be the first to get their picture taken . Nicole is a determined little girl, can’t you tell.

Oh, yeah…I started my photography workshop this last week too. I am learning lots, taking hundreds of pictures, taking up gigabites worth of space on our hard drive, and begging Nate for a full frame camera…more pictures from my workshop to come.

I wanted to share my two favorite places to photograph Nicole and Noah. If you have little ones knowing the best places in and around your house to take pictures is critical. Get them to play near these places and you are bound to walk away with a few good photos!

For Nicole, I love to get her on the adorable rocking doggy in front of the big window in their room. She sits on that dog and my camera goes into action. I love this photo below because it actually shows me taking her picture. A bit of storytelling.

For Noah, I like to take him to the bottom of our stairs just outside our apartment. It has wonderful shaded light to take pictures in without there being dappled light. We take turns doing a photo shoot. I take pictures of Noah and then he asks me to sit down in the same spot and he takes pictures of me. Usually we do this when Nate is putting Nicole down for her naps!

Last week Nate and I rented a 50 mm lens to test it out and to decide whether or not we want to purchase this lens. Renting lenses is a great way to really get a feel for the glass on your camera body or to rent a funky lens like a fisheye for some fun creative shots without having to pay the full price for the fun! I like to rent from BorrowLenses.com here on the Peninsula. We liked the lens and got some really wonderful photos with it. I called this post “Uncommonly common photos” because these are just a few photos where I am actually in front of the camera (the uncommon part), the common part is the game that Noah and I are playing in the pictures called “Puppy dog kisses”. What? Everyone doesn’t play this game:-)!

The three photos above were edited in ACR and then taken into PS CS5. I am working on different recipes for processing my photos. On the three above I used Pioneer Woman’s Boost Action at 75% opacity followed by MomaZiggy’s XPSoft Action at 100%. Both actions are free and can be used in Photoshop Elements and full version of Photoshop! Check out their blogs in my sidebar!