Shooting in the dark:

As I began venturing into the world of photography one of the first things I wanted to learn to do was shooting at night. My first order of business was taking pictures of the Christmas lights in downtown Salt Lake City and it has moved on from there, everything from simple night portraits to 15 minutes star trail exposures.

I am going to give you a few quick tips about shooting at night, and seeing as it was just Halloween I will use this Scary Skeleton from a house I had the opportunity to shoot as an example:



Lets start with the Basics of night shooting:

1. Always use a tripod or something to hold the camera stable.

2. If you can, use a timer to trigger your camera. Your hand pushing down the shutter button will create just enough shake to make the image fuzzy.

3. TURN OFF THE FLASH, I can't stress this enough! You know most cameras on board flash were meant to fill only a 5-12 foot area? You know those cool shots of sports stadiums with all the flashes going off? Looks cool, but all the people whose flashes went off got a neat picture of the heads in front of them :p

4. Experiment with different shutter lengths, the shot above was 16 seconds! If you are trying to capture a stationary object at night (Christmas Lights, etc) you will need long exposures. Most cameras will have a mode that allows you to tell the camera how long to keep the shutter open, you may have to open your Manual! *gasp*

5. Take more than one shot! The digital format is perfect for one thing, it doesn't cost anything to shoot more. Try a shot at 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, etc.

If you do just the things listed above, I know you will be able to capture some awesome night images.

Garage sale! 8:00-2:00!

My wife and I had a garage sell (sale? anyone tell me the difference?) over the weekend, I have no words to describe the insanity of it all... but since I am feeling wordy today, I am going to try.

The weeks leading up to the garage sale (I'm going to switch between sell and sale) we did some prep work, deciding what could go (the bookshelves) and what we couldn't part with (my Super nintendo). We researched them on KSL.com, made fancy price lists, added price tags, and we even cleaned out our closets. Friday night I finished moving the big items to the garage and went to bed content and a little worried I would end up hauling everything to the DI because it didnt sell.

We woke up Saturday morning at 6:30, Liz set about putting up signs and buying soda (which we also would sell, for 50 cents) and I slowly set everything out on the driveway. At 7:30 I had a good selection of items on display, bookshelves, entertainment centers, DVD's, beds, TV's... people who were running by started stopping, asking prices on things, I started to think maybe we would sell something!

at 7:50 a.m. Saturday August 1st, what can only be described as chaos erupted in my driveway. I was trying to pack the coolers with ice and water when people just started showing up... by the van loads. By 8:30 most of the clothes were gone, by 9:00 the bookshelves (except the one with the paint peeling off), gone. By 9:30 the Bed, TV's, DVD players, VCR, Lamps, and kitchen table (Which I delivered), coffee table, and most everything that wasn't in bad shape was totally gone. I just remember running up and down the stairs looking for cords, boxes, this and that, I don't know how liz was able to keep up! We kept the yard sale open until about 1:00 and all we had left was a truck bed worth of stuff to take to the DI, overall, a smashing (I'm not british) success!

But thats the entirely the point of this post... what was with all the garage sell junkies? Is there some sort of club? Literally groups of people would show up in vans, browse our goods, and haggle with us, and then buy a pillow for 50 cents. Anyway, that was our weekend in a nutshell! Word to the wise, don't leave your nice air compressor out on the driveway to blow off the dust, everyone will ask you if it is for sale :p

DIY Lightbox

Exposure: (1/60)
Aperture: f/8.0
Focal Length: 50 mm
Exposure:+2.48
Exposure Program: Manual
Lens: Canon 50mm F1.8

I finally got around to making the DIY lightbox, I have had the instructions for what seems like forever. After an hour or so I had the box fully assembled and set about taking some test shots.

I shot in full manual mode and it took me a few shots to get the hang of it, but I was very surprised with the results, I am not sure what I expected but I think it turned out great. As you can see in the EXIF data I really bumped up the exposure, I also played around with the image in lightroom to get the colors I was looking for, but it turned out perfectly. For less than $20 I couldn't be any happier!

Photographing a child

Exposure:(1/125)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO: 200
Exposure Program: Aperture-priority AE

This is my daughter, a frequent (only) subject of mine. Over the past 18 months I have been trying to figure out the best way to photograph her, and I have come to one simple conclusion, shoot in THEIR environment, where they are comfortable. Chances of you getting them to hold still and pose for you (at this age at least) are almost none, so why not follow them around for a bit.

This shot was taken as my wife and I were getting ready to take her to a friends first birthday party, she was just running around in her little swimmers, dad wasn't smart enough to get the swimsuit on :p She was on the couch looking out the window, a favorite spot of hers. So next time you want to photograph your child, start by making them feel comfortable, let them do their thing and I bet you will have great results!

Side note... isn't she just the most beautiful little girl in the world? And for those wondering, the post processing was done strictly in lightroom, as always. All the light in the shot is the natural light coming in from the window.