Brooke Snow Photography Basics Series: Week Four

This week was all about finding natural light! I had a lot of fun with this and learned a lot. I look forward to finding other opportunities for different natural light situations.

Front Lit:

My awesome husband Alex with Lizzy. The two of them were facing an open window as I took the shot. This shot looked properly exposed on the LCD screen of my camera, but I am beginning to realize I may need to err on the positive side of zero with my camera as my photos seem to turn out a bit too dim for my taste. But I love this photo :)

50mm, f/1.8, ISO 400, ss 1/200

Side Lit:

This is one of my favorite lighting scenarios! I love the dramatic look of side lighting. Although something seems a bit off in this shot. Does it seem too cool? Perhaps a white balance issue?

50mm, f/1.8, ISO 400, ss 1/160

Silhouettes and Backlighting

**Quick disclaimer** I used a storyboard template to put these two vertical shots side by side to be uniform with the horizontal dimensions in my blog, and the photos ended up looking cooler on the web than in Lightroom or Photoshop (where they were originally imported). Still figuring that out...Anyway, this window proved to be very useful for my assignments this week :). Silhouetting and backlighting is so neat and creative.

50mm, f/1.8, ISO 400, ss 1/800; 50mm, f/1.8, ISO 400, ss 1/125

Natural Reflector

This was my very first time attempting to intentionally use a natural reflector, even though I have been using them all along without even knowing! This little tidbit of knowledge helps me figure out why some shots in the shade turn out great while others turn out far too dark. This was taken at noon under the shade of a large tree and the picnic table. The light beige sand acted as a great reflector to help illuminate the shadows of my pup's fur.

50mm, f/4.5, ISO 100, ss 1/125

Brooke Snow Photography Basics Series: Week Three

This week is all about COMPOSITION!! A simple shift in framing or perspective is sometimes all that stands between an ordinary snap shot and creative art.

50mm, f/5.0, ISO 100, ss 1/250

Here's my little girl! Can't believe she's big enough for a SWING. She's a big fan of the playground :) As far as composition, I thought this shot turned out nicely with being able to capture her whole body (not an easy feat while swinging) and the leading lines of the swing's chains. If it had been only the fence and the sky behind her, I would have been thrilled to death, but instead I captured the top of a neighbor's roof in our background. For fear of including too many competing patterns in our background, I turned the image into a nice sepia/creamy latte tone to help cancel out that little distracting factor.

50mm, f/14, ISO 400, ss 1/30

This was one of the many photos taken at a local botanical gardens. I thought this archway was really beautiful, and framed the path leading through this herb garden. I tried to take the photo from a perspective that would draw your eyes into the herb garden, inviting you to enter under the archway.

50mm, f/4.0, ISO 100, ss 1/250

Same day at the playground, wanted to test out a different perspective to achieve a uniform "background" (the bark). In a perfect photo world, Lizzy would have looked right up at mama just as I had everything set just so with my focus sharp. However, there were children playing basketball so mama's camera was not all that interesting at that moment. But, I still did achieve decent composition, exposure and focus. I like that I framed her in a way that used the rule of thirds, at an angle, and I didn't crop out any important features. I did snip off a foot and the toes of the other, but not directly at a limb. Your mind is able to complete the rest of the image for us, especially since I captured one of the cute little shoes :). Is my thinking correct on that?

50mm, f/5.6, ISO 100, ss 1/250

Couldn't let you leave my page without sneaking in a laughing Lizzy picture!

Brooke Snow Photography Basics Series: Week Two

It's still me! I did a lot of readjusting of my blog this week, trying to settle into a theme and layout that feels like "me". And well, I just decided to leave it as a blank slate until I can figure out exactly what that might be!

This week's lesson was about ISO, White Balance and Shutter Speed. Our assignment this week required us to get different shots of motion: Frozen, Implied and Panning. I feel as though I came into the class with a good understanding of how to freeze motion-super fast shutter speeds. That photo was not super difficult to capture. Implied motion was a bit more challenging to actually show an obvious display of motion , not just an out of focus shot. And panning...oh my. That was tricky...as you'll see! But first, my frozen motion shot:

Shot at 50mm, f/1.8, ISO 1600, ss 1/1600.

Implied Motion: 50mm, f/2.0, ISO 400, ss 1/30

Panning: 50mm, f/1.8, ISO 400, ss 1/30

Brooke Snow Photography Basics Series: Week One

Well here we are! Week One of my first photography workshop complete, and so far I am feeling as though this will be a fantastic experience. Aside from the technical aspects of shooting, I will be gaining a valuable lesson about courage. This is my very first blog-ever. I have been so timid about putting my work out there at this stage for fear of criticism. Putting images on the internet just seems so...permanent. But! I am here to grow as a photographer. I'm here to learn all I can to be comfortable shooting manual in any situation so that I can allow myself room for creativity.

So, Week One focused on Aperture. The assignment was to find a storytelling opportunity, a single-subject opportunity, a "who-cares" opportunity and take three shots of each (f/22, f/8, f/2.8). The below shots are all straight out of the camera with no post processing. Eek. These are not my most creative masterpieces, but I was challenged to find different subjects and scenarios than I am used to, which is great practice.

Storytelling

50mm, ISO 100, f/22, 1/20 sec

(This is supposed to be the "correct" aperture for this scenario)

50mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/125 sec

50mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/1250 sec

Single Subject

50mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/200 sec

(This is supposed to be the "correct" aperture)

50mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/20

50mm, ISO 100, f/22, 1/4 sec

"Who Cares?"

50mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/40 sec
(This is supposed to be the "correct" aperture)

50mm, ISO 100, f/22, 1/3

50mm, ISO 100, f/2.5, 1/320 sec

So...

Not so bad! I do see things I wish I would have done differently, however. When shooting at f/22, I noticed that it was very difficult to avoid camera shake. I should have increased the ISO or become more comfortable with using the tripod. Also, my white balance issues need some help. The photos of my handsome pup look way underexposed, yet they appeared ok in the viewfinder. I suspect that has a lot to do with being in front of the very white fence, I should have metered off of something else. Likewise, the photos of my lovely Mom turned out to be a bit too cool as the camera metered off the dark green leaves. I could have metered off of her skin to avoid that issue. 

Just for fun, I ran the "correct aperture" photos through a quick clean edit in Lightroom. Much better, eh? Even though the slight edits made a big difference, there is no way I would have had as much success shooting in manual mode two months ago. We're making progress :)

("Who Cares" f/8)

(Single Subject f/2.8)

(Storytelling f/22)