Christmas

I know this is a little late, but here is a Christmas picture for you. Naomi checks out her new doll's blinking eyes:

Extremely low lighting situation and no flash used. Whoop whoop! I'd say that's progress!

A cold day at the aquarium

We went to the aquarium last weekend. It was cold, wet and windy, so no one was there but the diehards, but wow! The animals were out and there was no one to block our view of them! Even the octopus was active and that never happens!

Black and white

I've been learning more post-processing techniques and decided to try my hand at converting to black and white. There's a real art to black and white, and I love the look when it is done well. My conversion has some strong blacks, but I think it turned out pretty well over all:

Wedding #1: I don't do weddings

I have always said I will not shoot weddings. First: I'm not good enough. And second: it's not the type of photography I'm interested in. But what was I going to do when my good friend Jamie asked me to photograph her wedding? They weren't going to hire a professional, so it was my pictures or nothing. Of course I said yes.

The lighting was tough. Really, really tough. We were in shade but it was a bright day, and a lot of the pictures had half sun/half shade in them so they were pretty contrasty. At one point, as I took a quick peek at the dark images on my camera screen, I was so worried that I was going to completely fail that I switched my camera to automatic and fired off about five shots in the middle of the wedding, just in case.

When I got home and started editing I found that, yes, there were some shots that were pure garbage. But there were also a lot that were pretty workable. I have a lot to learn still, although I'm happy to report that my shots were much better than the automatic ones (I was reminded why I never, ever use my on-camera flash!) so I guess that's progress, right?

Here is a scene from the wedding. Pretty dark and lots of noise, but at least the sky isn't completely blown out, and I do love the emotion:

Here's a shot after the wedding was over and I could choose where to put them:

I'm so happy for them! And now I can go back to saying no to weddings! ;)

Meet Miko

I can't believe I haven't updated this blog since May! How did that happen?! Well, here's a picture for you. Meet our new kitten, Miko:

Family photo session

I am happy to say that my second photo "job" (I say "job" because I don't charge anything) went much better than the first one. I actually checked my settings as I was shooting and wasn't nearly as nervous as I was the first time. A friend of mine wanted to do family photos with an urban look, so I scouted locations downtown. I found a nice brick wall that was in full shade and where they wouldn't be looking into the sun:

They were so much fun to work with! I let them be as goofy as they wanted, and their personalities really came through in some of the shots:

I still have a lot to learn--especially with posing people--but it was a fun afternoon. I can't wait for the next one!

Still loving the lens...