Rattlesnake Ridge

I took the kids to Rattlesnake Ridge this evening. I took about 400 pictures. :) I just randomly picked a few to look at.

My daughter wouldn 't look at me without giving me these strange looks...she is into that lately. :) So I figured this one looked okay compared to all the rest of the pictures I took of her sitting on the rock.

I like the idea of the kids walking down the path right here; however, I was having such trouble getting my littlest one to hold hands that I totally didn't notice that my son had his hood on! :( I will have to go reshoot it sometime.

California

Just taking another break from the mass editing that I am doing. I have started to go through some more of the pictures from our trip to California. I feel lame for not posting anything in over a month...so here are a few pictures. :)

Favorite

The one of Braedon is my favorite...simply because of the expression on his face. I also really like the picture of my kids at the pumpkin patch.

Silhouette

Ky's silhouette taken at the lake.

Shadow

I would have liked more of his body in the picture, but that was the best I could do without getting my own shadow in there as well. I didn't want to have to do a lot of Photoshop work.

Mood

I guess these two will be my mood pictures. I try to take a new picture and then look at some old ones. The one of the beach was when we went to Seaside in February. I think the depth of field is a bit off. I would have liked the footprints to be more in focus, but I can't go redo it! ;) I don't know where the nearest beach like that is. I am ready for another beach trip!

The other picture of Cameron I took on Friday. She refused to look at me so I just had her walk up and down the stairs for me.

I am not sure what kind of "mood" these pictures create, but it is better than the scary pictures I took of Cameron earlier this week that I was going to post. She was coming up with some pretty intersting faces for me.

Lines

One is an old picture taken last month at the park. The other one is of Cami with sitting in front of a window. I kind of like the lines on her face cast from the window blinds.
Maybe I will have time to take some new ones soon. I really like this week's assignment Pat! I can't wait to get out there and take some more pictures! Must get back to editing now though. ;)

Art?

I decided to take a small break from editing pictures (I probably shouldn't be), and I came across this picture that I took of Shalene a couple of years ago. If you can't tell, I tried to make it look as if she had painted the flowers. I just thought I would share. I was hoping it was a bit more "art" like than the first one I posted. :)

Flowers

Panning

I thought I would just post this for everyone to see just incase there are more people who would like to learn how to pan.

I am not an expert on panning so here is a link I found that probably explains how to do it better than I can.

http://tr-photo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/panning-how-to-capture-motion-in-your.html


For the shots I have taken using panning, I have used a shutter speed of around 15-30. You can of course adjust this to your liking. If the subject is moving faster than say a child running, you might want to adjust your shutter speed to 60-100. For panning, you need to shoot in either shutter priority mode or manual mode so you can control your shutter speed. If your camera has a continuous focus mode, I would use that setting. Also if your camera hast a burst setting, I would use that as well.

The trick to panning is moving your camera at the same speed as your subject. Normally, you stay stationary as you try and take a picture of your subject. When panning, you are pretty much just trying to mirror your subject's movement with your camera. This really takes some practice. In the beginning, I would save only one shot out of 50. The rest I deleted. Now I can get around 10 out of 30. I hear it takes some luck too, to get that "perfectly" panned shot. I haven't been lucky yet, so anyways...with Braedon on the fire poll type thing, I had to move my camera down as he was moving down. With Shalene, I tried to move my camera at the same speed she was moving by me. Her movement was easier to mirror than Braedon's. I think her face ended up a bit more in focus because of it.

I have found that panning works best when the subject is moving past you at an angle and not coming directly towards you. Does that make any sense? I don't know if panning would even work with someone coming towards you. I would think not unless you are moving backwards at the same rate. Might need a car or something to do that. I can't take a picture and run backwards at the same time. I would damage myself and others. ;)

Panning is just a fun little thing to do. It makes for some interesting pictures. If you have any questions, I would love to help in any way I can, but like I said, I am not an expert!

Motion

The first two are taken using the "panning" technique. It is hard for me, but I got a couple that I like okay. I do have another panning picture of Melanie Jarocki running in her half-marathon race over the weekend. Jenn, Mara, Heather, Paige, and Melanie all went down to Oregon and ran over 13 miles!!! I was very lazy and just took pictures of them "enjoying" their run, but I am so proud of them! They all did great. I still can't believe that they could actually even run for over two hours! :) I need to get permission of the runners before I post their pictures. I don't think it would be fair to them unless they agreed to have their pictures posted. I really like this one picture that I took of Melanie though.

The picture of Ky is at Tolt Park. The kids love walking on that fence. The pictures was taken right after Ky lost his balance and is falling off.

The pictures of Cameron don't have a lot of motion in it, but I thought they were fun, little pictures. She would hardly try and catch the ball. She would just stand there, close her eyes, and scream with delight when I threw the ball at her. ;)

A Day at the Park

I took the kids to the park the other day. It was cold, but at least it wasn't raining...well, it did snow/hail on us a couple of times. :) The sun kept coming out so I had to wait for it to go back behind the clouds. It was sure creating some harsh lighting. The lighting still isn't that great in these photos, but I just got a light meter yesterday to help! I have been trying it out, and I love it. It was a bit frustrating at first, but now I am catching on. I hope it helps me improve the quality of my pictures.

I think that I like the B&W of Cami better, but I thought I would post both anyway. I don't like the hue of her face in the color photo. I am just terrible when it comes to correcting color.

I posted one more picture...inspired by Rebecca's photo of her kids. Not as cool, but hey! ;) And yes, these are taken in Carnation. The tree is across the bridge. You park in the parking lot close to the bridge and walk on over the bridge. The tree is there to your right.

New/Beginnings II

Well, this is post number two. I didn't like number one. :) It is the beginning of spring. I love those blossoms! Now if only I knew how to take a good picture of them! It has been so gloomy out. I might go back there and take a picture today while the sun is out. Also, the dandelions are starting to come out. Don't like those in the lawn, but I like to watch the kids blow them...which of course adds more to the lawn. ;)

Crazy Self-Portrait

Well, I know that this is a weird picture, but at least I tried to do a self-portrait, right? ;) Half of the time, I wasn't even all the way in the picture. I took this at night after the kids went to bed, so all I had was a small lamp light. I wasn't about to set up my lighting equipment for this. I know the lighting is not that great. Anyway, I wanted a picture of me up close like this with a book in my hand as well, but I couldn't balance myself well enough to do it. Hee Hee.

"The End"

The picture of the book is new...not a very exciting picture, but I love to read. I always have mixed feels when I come to the end of a book. The second picture is of Cameron's back end. I took it over the Christmas holiday down in Tucson.

Reflections

Okay, I removed my orginal post because the pictures really didn't have much of a reflection. One was more like a shadow. Another had gross foam all over it, and it just didn't look that nice with yucky beach foam all around it. I just thought I would mention this just incase anyone noticed I deleted some pictures. :)



This one is just a silly snapshot, but Cameron loves to look at her tongue in the mirror. This is fine with me as long as she doesn't decide to lick the mirror. Gross!

Curves

Five

Well, my five are more past pictures that I have taken. I took them over the Christmas holiday. One of these days, I will be able to take pictures again like I used to. :) Here are five fingers and five toes. Not very creative, but there you have it anyways! I am going to Boise, ID this weekend, and I am going to keep my eyes open for "fives"!

Interaction

Well, this weekend, I went and took pictures for my brother's wedding. Um...not something I enjoy doing! Too much stress, and frankly, I am not very good at it! I need to take a class on posing. Anyway! Right now, all my extra time is spent editing these photos, so I guess I will post a few from the wedding. Does her flower thingy (don't know how to spell the real word so I am not even going to try) count? Hee Hee...her hand is interacting with her bunch of flowers? ;) Don't ask me why they wanted their picture taken skipping. College kids! :) Gotta love them!

Emotions

The first makes me laugh. Kyle so loves hig grandpa's dog. That dog has one of the longest tongues I have even seen on such a little creature. The second makes me feel a bit of sympathy....not enough though not stop for a few moments to take his picture. :) The third makes me frustrated, although some might feel sad/bad for the girl when they see this picture. I don't feel bad for her at all. Actually, she can go to time out! :) The last picture...well, honestly, it scares me.