From pixels to paper - My first POTD book!

It's been way too long since I've made time to post anything on this blog but here's a little of what I've been up to instead of blogging...  With the arrival of Baby #2 coming up very soon we have been working hard to get everything ready for him/her.  Evan's new "blue room" has been rearranged, painted, and decorated (the baby will eventually occupy his current "green room").  The newborn clothes have been washed.  The car seat is installed and ready to go.  My hospital bag is (finally) packed.  And somehow I managed to get Patrick to clean the spilled juice, goldfish crackers, and beach sand from the inside and out of my car!  Also in the last month I've (barely) managed to keep Evan fed, entertained, and rested between my own feeble attempts at rest and sleep.  Now I'm trying to be patient as I wait out the final days of my pregnancy - this is only made harder by Patrick constantly saying "I wish the baby would come tonight".  Well dear... while you are sound asleep (and snoring BTW), and I'm gettting up to pee for the 3rd time, I have the exact same thought!  Needless to say we both can't wait for Baby #2 to get here!

On to the subject of photography... In my last post I talked about the POTD (photo of the day) concept and just how how far that can go to improve your photography and your sanity.  Here's an example of how I put my POTD work to good use.  I used all of my 2010 POTD images and the captions that I posted to create this awesome 120 page hardcover book for our family.  It was so great to have the POTD images at my disposal for this project.  I was able to tell the book software to organize all of the images by date and had it automatically add them into my layouts.  Then I copied in the captions.  Can you believe that I was able to design a whole book with a full year's worth of photos within a matter of a few hours? Thank you POTD project!  Having something like this completed makes me look forward to getting older so that I can look back at these currently fresh memories and see them with a different perspective that only time will bring.

Just in case you were wondering... I designed and printed my book through Blurb and I'm pleased with how it turned out. Our 2009 book is in the works now.  If you're interested, you can see the whole 2010 book here.

 

Pick just 1 image

In a previous post I alluded to my photo of the day (POTD) project that I do for my family (and anyone else who wants to peek into my life! Well, today is the day that I want to encourage anyone who is interested in improving their own photography skills to take on their on POTD challenge. 

Here's an example of 1 day of my POTD project.  These are the thumnails of all 22 pics I took on a random day in January (you can see this larger here)

You might be able to tell from the thumbnails above that some shots are better than others.  Some are out of focus or not exposed properly, and one is completely black (should have deleted that one!)  Some days it's really tough to choose a single photo and others it's a no brainer.  Picking the best photo of the bunch is not easy but by forcing myself to do that I have learned to be more critical of my work and as a result have improved my skills.  So, without further ado, the winner for the day was...

Here are my top 5 reasons that you should start a POTD project for your family...

1) The best of the best will always be ready to go. 
In 2010 I had 170 images in my POTD project (no I don't really take photos 365 days a year).  Lets just say that for each day in the project there were 10 images to choose from.  If I had not sorted out my favorites during the year, I would have 1700 photos to look through to find the ones I like the best.  Now that I'm in the process of putting my POTD images into books for each year, I'm so glad I don't have to sort the best images out of 1700+ files.  That would never happen, not even for me.

2) Your friends and family will love you for it.
A POTD project will allow you to give frequent updates to the people who love you from a distance.  This was the main reason I started my POTD project after Evan was born. 

3) Less is more.
If you think that uploading 50 shots of your kid doing the same thing is better than displaying 1 photo a week, think again!  It's not necessary to share every image you take!

4) It will make you a better photographer.
By forcing yourself to choose 1 image a day to show off, you will start being more critrical of your images and can learn to improve your skills.  Also, as with any skill, the more often you practice, the better you will be at it.

5) Less editing! 
My editing is pretty streamlined now but even so, there is no way that I would ever have the time to edit every photo I take.  I bet you don't have that kind of time either!

My POTD's are located here if you would like to check them out
2011 POTD
2010 POTD
2009 POTD

If you want to start your own online POTD gallery, here are a few (of many) free places you can use...
Flickr
Picassa
Facebook
Shutterfly

Good luck and please share your photos with me!

Everyday Life - Fun in the tub!

Here's another one of my favorite shots of Evan from 2009.  Bath time is a great time to break out the camera when your kids are little.  Turn on some music, get out the toys, pour in some bubble bath and you're sure to some genuine and excited expressions from your little ones.  Here are a few other tips for making your bath tub photo shoot a success...

• Since you'll be holding a camera instead of a wrangling a slippery kid, get someone else to help with the actual bath time monitoring.
• Don't worry about getting the kiddos to look at the camera for every shot.  If fact I would say you should ask them to look at you for only a few shots.
• Instead, allow the photo shoot to be about what they are having fun with... painting on the wall, dumping water on dad, eating bubbles... you get the picture.
• Capture the details... naked tushies, bubbles in the hair on the nose or in the hands, and the mess on the floor!
• Try different angles... get down low (as in the shot above), get over the action by straddling the tub (just don't get hurt!), zoom in, zoom out...
• If you're a more advanced photog, use a flash gun on top of your camera but point it up at angle to bounce the light off of the walls/ceiling.
• And as always with those sneaky kids, take lots of photos because you never know what they'll do next.  Just don't be afraid to let go of the shots that aren't great.  And yes, I do mean that it's okay to delete the pics of your kids that are not as good as others.  I know, you think there are no bad photos of your child.... well, we'll talk about that later!

Cubical Wall Art

Here's a little project that I did for Patrick for Father's day.  He doesn't have space on his desk at work to display many standing frames and I don't know of a good way to hang regular (heavy) frames on his fabric cube walls.  This was my compromise.  It was actually pretty simple!  For this set I used 8 pre-cut mats from Michaels.  Six of them have 3x5 openings and 2 have 5x7 openings.  All I did was tape the 4x6 and 5x7 Walgreens prints to the backs of the mats.  (I used painter's tape so we could easily change out the prints some day later.)  Then I glued a ribbon at the top, this is where a t-pin can connect the frames to the fabric cube wall.  Super easy and cheap ($24 total).

Here's a shot he sent me from his desk (I might have to go in to re-arrange and get a nice pic)!

Mom's DSLR Crash Course - Which Mode? & Assignment #2

Mom, don't worry, I don't expect you to be the "pro" at Ali's wedding.  You need to be able to enjoy the occasion and not worry about camera settings the whole time.  But... I'll try to teach you a few tricks that will give you an edge over the other wedding guests with "nice cameras."

Check out the descriptions (starting on pg 40 of your manual) for the modes that are in the basic/image zones.  These are pretty self explanatory.  These are the "point and shoot" modes.  Since we don't have tons of time before the wedding, you should get to know these modes because you will probably want to use them, especially during moments that you just don't want to bother with camera settings.

The new mode that I want you to start learning is the Av (Aperture Priority) mode in the creative zone.  See pg 70.  In this mode, you will tell the camera what size aperture you want and it will set the shutter speed for you.  I'll go into details later about aperture size.  For now, here are my reasons as to why you should use this mode over the basic modes for some of the photos you take....

• Av mode (and the other creative modes) will allow you to decide what to focus on, rather than letting the camera assume what you want in focus.
• We can set the camera to record RAW files instead of jpegs when using Av mode.  This is good because there are greater editing possibilities with RAW files.
• On camera flash is not the greatest thing since sliced bread.  In Av mode, we will try to limit the number of shots in which the camera needs to use it's flash.

Here's assignment #2....

1) Put the camera in Av mode

2) Find the 2 places that the camera shows you the aperture value (this will be between 2.8 and 22 for your lens). 

• Hint #1: When you look into viewfinder and press the shutter button down half way, you will see it here...

• Hint #2:  Look at the LCD screen on the back of the camera, it's here...

3) Use the main dial to adjust this value

4) Go outside and pick 1 thing to photograph.  Pick an angle and shooting distance and keep that constant.  Now take and share a few pics at different aperture values.  Oh, and have fun!  Love ya.

Composition - Frame It (Through crib slats!)



Don't worry, you don't have to go out and invest any money to achieve this sort of framing!  Every now and then you will have the opportunity to capture an image with a "natural" frame.  This is really simple to achieve, all you have to do is shoot your subject through some object.  This photo of Evan was taken when he was just over 4 months old.  It's tough to get a lot of variety with babies of this age, so I decided to get one with him framed by the slats of his crib.

Start watching for framing possibilities in your own world!  You don't have necessarily have to set a shot like this up.  Just watch your kids as they play and look at the things that surround them.  This is something I find the opportunity to do often so I will post more framing ideas in the future. 

Mom's DSLR Crash Course - Assignment #1 - Join Flickr

The "Mom's DSLR Crash Course" series of blog posts that you will see in the coming weeks, is actually for my mom, but hopefully it will benefit others as well.  She will be attending my sister's wedding in August with a DSLR camera in hand.  Unfortunately, she doesn't know how to use it - yet!  Hopefully we can (somewhat) fix that before August.

Assignment #1
Mom, your first assignment is to join flickr and post at least one new photo, anything will do.  Then let me know what your flickr name is.  By posting pics on there (instead of trying to email them to me) I can better help answers questions for you (regarding your future assignments).

By the way, here is a link for the manual to your camera 300D Manual.  I'll probably reference it in the future.

Good Luck Mom!  It's gonna be a fun summer!