October 2011 – The Family Photographer

17|40 Dinosaur Hug

October 26, 2011 admin 4 Comments

I almost left my camera at home today. I’ve been in the dinosaur hall many times with my camera and I come away with badly lit, boring shots. But look what happened today.

Update on 2011-10-28 01:11 by Jennifer Stein

I was so excited about this picture that I posted it right away. Later I thought about my 40 Friday Photos project and realized this would be a good picture for it.

I must confess that while it looks spontaneous, there was some direction. Here’s how it came to be. The boys were wearing masks that we bought on the way in with money my mom had sent with them to buy a souveneir. When they both had the masks on, I thought, “Mom would love to see this.” We stopped them from running in circles for a moment and I took this picture.When I saw the bones in the background of this photo, I saw the potential for a much better photo. What dinosaur would be better than the fierce t-rex? We moved our little dinos to a spot where I could see the t-rex bones and told them to hug.

16|40 Beautiful to the End

October 22, 2011 admin Leave a comment

Another of the echinacea in the park.

15|40 Blue

October 13, 2011 admin Leave a comment

This week I didn’t try something new. The weather was beautiful and I spent as much time as possible outside. One day I was taking care of my friend’s daughter. I have taken pictures of her before but this is the first one that did her eyes justice.

I was also glad to get her lips in focus. When I first got my 50mm lens I shot so wide open that often only one eye would be in focus.

This one was at 2.2. (Avery was 2.8.) The photo above was at 3.2 and I wasn’t as close to her which causes even more to be in focus. The aperture is still large enough to blur the background and even her shoulders.

14|40 Humpty Dumpty

October 13, 2011 admin Leave a comment

FragileHumpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

(Did you notice there is no mention of an egg?)

We were making cookies. In his excitement to get the eggs out, Atticus dropped one. I was hoping to do a close up shot for my 40 Fridays project. When the egg fell, he said, “Oh no!” I said, “I can use that one. Get out another one for the cookies.” It reminded me of why I like doing a photo project. It helps me see ordinary events in our daily lives as something worth looking at a little longer.

I had been reading about close up photography and thought the egg would be a good subject. First I took it outside.

These were okay but I wasn’t really happy with them. But, in the second one I noticed the light coming through the egg and saw thought it was interesting.

Before long, the baby needed some attention and the shoot was over. I looked at the photos that evening and thought I’d try again. I cracked the egg this time and set up a light behind it.

When I was reading about close up photography, I learned that to get enough depth of field this close, you need a small aperture. With a small aperture, less light gets to the sensor, so I needed a long shutter speed. With the long exposure, I needed to get out the tripod. And so, this was the set up.

This is the first one I worked on. I liked the light shining through the egg. Then I tried it in black and white.

It looked like the moon.

I chose this one because it was more clearly an egg, but liked the unfamiliar look that black and white gave it.