Canon 7D: 20mm: ISO 125: 1/400 sec: f/8.0
I was having a hard time choosing one photo for today’s Friday Photo. My oldest, Savanna, was still awake when I was making my decision. This was her favorite.
Month: February 2012
Unseasonable
Canon 7D:100mm 2.8 macro:ISO 800:1/200 sec:f/3.2
Last summer, I bought blueberries at the farmer’s market. They were warm, fragrant and bursting with flavor. They were beautiful and I wanted to take a picture of them. Before I could get a photo, they were gone.
Yesterday I was out shopping with my two little ones. My son saw blueberries and he was thrilled when I said yes. I knew their flavor wouldn’t be like the blueberries we had in June, but I knew we’d enjoy them. We have, but they are not summer blueberries. The winter blueberries were around long enough for me to get a photo.
For this photo, I used a macro lens. I started out with my 50mm because it was on the camera. I changed the lens because the 50mm needs to be at least 18 inches from the subject to focus. I wanted to get closer.
I took the berries out to the porch.
In order to get just one berry in focus, I put it up a little higher than the others.
Try It: Choose Your Focus
Canon 7D: 50 mm 1.4: ISO 200: 1/2000 sec: f/1.8
When you put your subject in a frame, you are saying, “Look at this.” The focus you choose for a photograph is the same. You are directing the viewer’s eyes to your subject. But what if what you want to focus on isn’t what your camera sees as the subject?
Canon 7D: 50 mm 1.4: ISO 200: 1/2000 sec: f/1.8In the photo above, I used the camera’s automatic focus mode. The camera looked for the closest thing to the lens with detail and focused on it. In the top photo, I manually chose the focus point for the camera … to zero in on the child’s face, instead of the arrow on the sign that the camera liked.
Focus is very important for capturing those catchlights that you’ve been noticing too.
Canon 7D: 50mm 1.4: ISO 400: 1/125 sec: f/2.0Here, I put Sophia in a place where her beautiful eyes would be lit up by the window light, but the camera’s automatic focus chose her hair as the subject.
Canon 7D: 50mm 1.4: ISO 400: 1/125 sec: f/2.0
In the photo above, I changed focusing modes to manual selection and used a focus point on her left eye.
If you don’t know how to change focusing modes on your camera, look up a tutorial online. For my camera, I searched, “canon 7D focus modes.” When I did this, I found my camera had several other focus modes I didn’t know about. I’m excited to try them. (About the tutorials: I found this one and this one useful.)
I’m also excited to see your photos in the Familiar Light: Try It Flickr group. I’d love to see how it goes for you when you try it: choose your focus.
29|40 Going Up
Our week has been dominated by this new fact: she loves the stairs. Since she discovered them, they call to her, “Climb…climb…”
I knew I wanted to have this milestone be my photo this week, but I had much fancier plans. Ideas involving long exposures, wide angles and a flash. Maybe I’ll still do that, but I remembered, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” It’s good.
I almost overlooked it completely because here is how it looked straight out of the camera:
Yikes! I try to get it right in the camera but sometimes I don’t. I had the white balance set for something else and exposure wasn’t good but after a few minutes in Lightroom, I liked it.
Early
I took my camera on my walk to pick up the girls at school. I knew there would be some flowers out that had been coaxed out of the ground by this unseasonably warm weather.
Taking pictures reminds me to take time to notice small things like these crocuses in February. And at the end of the day I think about the day’s flurry of activity: dishes, sock and shoes, dance class, laundry, dinner, baths, bedtime, and these bold flowers poking through the leaves.