Header collage

Header collage

Saturday, November 30, 2013

30/365

D was tired after a few full days of playing with his cousins and bummed since they left today, so we let him watch Donald Duck cartoons this afternoon and chill.  Played around with selective focus.

f2.5
1/125sec
ISO 1600




Friday, November 29, 2013

29/365 Black Friday

It has become a bit of a tradition to go shopping on Black Friday with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law.  We don't go crazy.  This year we didn't even shop until about 9am, but we go and it's a fun morning just us gals.


f2.8
1/100sec
ISO 800


28/365 Putting up the Christmas Tree

A few detail shots of D helping decorate the tree before we went to Thanksgiving dinner with the family.


f2.8
1/100sec
ISO 800





Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Monday, November 25, 2013

25/365

Today D actually took a nap and this was after he woke up groggy.  I need to start taking photos earlier in the day, otherwise it is just too dark inside.

f1.8
1/100sec
ISO 6400



Sunday, November 24, 2013

24/365

I took some snapshots of baby A this afternoon just playing with the light in our great room from a different angle.  I'm still very much trying to learn the lighting in our house and might do a challenge soon to use light other than 45 degree window light.  Today's attempt wasn't great.  I got most his face underexposed and then some of his face and head are blownout.  And white balance today..ugh.. that's all I can say. But, I do kinda like the lighting in the second picture.  My husband thought it was gross and will probably be sad I posted it, but this is life for us right now...drool and all.

I did try a little matte processing, but I have no idea how to keep sparkle in the eyes using lightroom so if anyone has tips for that. 

f2.5
1/125sec
ISO 100



f2.5
1/160sec
ISO 200



Saturday, November 23, 2013

Friday, November 22, 2013

22/365 All the good toys

Not a great day of photos.  It was super dark and dreary (hence the high ISO), but I still got a few snapshots of the boys. I did explore around my trial of Lightroom and figured out how to watermark.

f2.2
1/100sec
ISO 6400





Thursday, November 21, 2013

Editing Questions

Tonight I downloaded a 30 day trial of Lightroom 5 and edited day 21 minimally.  It seems relatively user friendly, although I still feel a little overwhelmed and didn't do anything with the curves, etc but it took me forever. Deep breath. Baby Steps.  Ok, to my questions:

First of all, does anyone know some specific functions Photoshop Elements does that I might miss if I only get Lightroom? (or vice versa)

Also, I have only shot in JPG format up till now but it is a goal of mine to start shooting in RAW during this 365.   It seems everyone shooting RAW starts post processing in ACR...is this a plug- in I have to get separately, or is it downloaded as part of Lightroom?

21/365 Haircut


f2.5
1/100sec
ISO 800


Wednesday, November 20, 2013

20/365

This cute little fella spent the afternoon in our backyard.  I got out the kit zoom for this one.  I shot a few photos from inside to get a little of the window frames for a more interesting composition, but this little guy blends with the fence so well that the sun's reflection on my embarrasingly dirty window (this window is D's favorite place to spot bugs and is covered with little fingerprints) made it almost impossible to spot the rabbit in those photos.  Camoflage at it's finest.

f5.6
1/100sec
ISO 800

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

19/365 Library

Today's photo is again in black and white, not because I felt it adds to the photo this time, because I did not take the time in the library to custom white balance.  I'm still trying to get over some of the weirdness of getting out the camera in public places where people don't normally take photos.

f2.5
1/100sec
ISO 1600


Monday, November 18, 2013

18/365

Baby A's enjoyment of learning to roll over last week kept him happy about 10 seconds, it seems.  Now he rolls around and is mad on his back and mad on his tummy.  He tries to get his knees under him and he is ready to go places.  I think he may not be the most patient little person and, while he's generally easy going, when he is mad he shows a bit of a temper.

Today's photo is black and white, again.  Did I mention I love black and white?  I should have bumped my ISO to 800, though.

 f2.5
1/100sec
ISO 400



Thursday, November 14, 2013

14/365

I am trying to figure out in the second photo how much haze is too much.  I'm thinking I should have moved to the right of D a little so his head would have blocked a little more of the sun and so the side of his head wouldn't have been blown out (although I was already laying as close to the sand box as I could since it's under his playset...so it wasn't really possible to move more right, but if it had been possible it would have made a better shot)  I also guess I could have cropped out the blown out part, but I already have an awkward limb shot at his wrist...oops.

f 2.8
1/100sec
ISO 100

f2.8
1/160sec
ISO 100



Wednesday, November 13, 2013

13/365

Baby A started eating his first veggie this week, butternut squash.  He likes to hold the spoon himself and grabs it out of my hand.  It makes for a messy meal, but cute photos.


f2.8
1/125 sec
ISO 800



12/365 Self Portrait

First self portrait.  I think I might wait until I have a remote for next time.

f2.8
1/100sec
ISO 800




Monday, November 11, 2013

11/365 Enjoying Fall

Today D and I went outside to play in the leaves while Baby A was napping.  We're supposed to have snow flurries tomorrow!

f2.2
1/125 sec
ISO 200



Sunday, November 10, 2013

10/365 Playing with light

Today I was working on a photo book and discovered my photos have been uploading at 72 dpi, not 300.  After some googling, I ended up really confused but convinced that I need to convert my photos to 300 dpi.  I have been using Windows Live Photo Gallery for my editing, and converting to 300dpi does not appear to be possible with this program.  I also have Corel Paint Shop Pro, which came on our computer, and figured out how to do it in that program but then lost my shooting settings (f stop etc).  At least I hadn't deleted this image after importing it like usual so I got it off my card in camera.

I have been back and forth about the Corel software.  I realize it will probably do everything Photoshop does, but I am intimidated to learn it since no one uses it and it seems so much easier to get Lightroom or Elements or something that has a ton of tutorials on Clickitupanotch.com and Pinterest.   Anyhow, I just got myself all confused and frustrated over the DPI thing and worried about how my photos may print.  So if anyone has some insight and would like to have a discussion on this, I'm game!  Also, I would welcome any opinions on editing software.

So, after all that I still didn't havea photo for today, and I snapped this quick photo in the backyard just before the sun went down.  My focus and composition are lacking big time, but I was mainly concentrating on the lighting (and getting a photo in for today ;-)

f 2.2
1/100 sec
ISO 100


Saturday, November 9, 2013

9/365 Pumpkin Farm

Today made up for yesterday's photo. We went to the pumpkin farm and had a few shots I really like so I couldn't decide.  Since I got my camera in October, I've mostly used it inside since it's getting cooler and today was a great chance for me to shoot in more sun than I'm used to.  We got there right at about 12:30 and I had a really hard time at first and got a lot of flat, overexposed, harsh images, but by the time we left about 1:45ish the sun was just low enough to get some better shots, especially with the sun peeking out from behind the barn.

f2.5
1/100 sec
ISO 100


f2.2
1/200 sec
ISO100

 f2.5
1/100 sec
ISO 100

Friday, November 8, 2013

8/365

I've been thinking since starting this blog that I need a picture of myself and today I started to attempt a self portrait.  It did not go very well and I did not have enought time to really devote to it today, but I will keep trying.  So, I didn't get a picture until tonight.  I took some photos of D in the bathtub playing and baby A eating dinner, but I had a bit of a hard time choosing because none were that great. In fact, most were downright boring snapshots.  I tried to think of a unique angle, etc, but I mostly just had sort of an uninspired day.  And, since all the photos were inside at night I had to set a custom white balance using a white piece of paper (An expodisc is on my Christmas list, but I don't have a gray card or a camera with a Kelvin option) and sometimes came out pretty wonky so I had to edit each one.
f2.2
1/125 sec
ISO 1600




Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Note to fellow 365ers

Please, please, please feel free to critique my photos each day or tell me if there is something you would have done differently or something I should consider.  I value any feedback you can give me!

6/365 Spaceship

With the time change Sunday it seems if I don't get my picture taken by 4:00 it gets pretty difficult.  Today the lighting was not on my side.  It was dreary, rainy and foggy.  In November.  In Indiana.  I decided to just turn on the lights and do custom white balance, but my son insisted the room be dark as the box was his space ship and space is dark. So my ISO was cranked and I might have actually got it a tad overexposed. But, I think ISO 1600 would have been underexposed and in the program I use to do a little editing it seemed if I took it down a notch it was underexposed, so I dunno.

Which brings up a question I have.  On occasion I will see someone's post with a ISO of say, 620 or some odd number, do other cameras allow for selecting smaller increments because mine just has 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, and 6400 or was this because they were using a semi-automatic setting like AV/TV and not shooting in manual mode and the camera selected that for them?

Composition was also a little tough.  The light was so low in the room, my camera was having a hard time focusing and my son was moving too fast for manual focus (or at least for me to manually focus) so I just set my auto focus point in the center since it should be the strongest and then did the best I could to crop the image to add a little more interest than his hand in the very center.


f1.8
1/80 sec
ISO 3200



Monday, November 4, 2013

4/365

I had a hard time deciding today so I'm posting 2.

For both:
f2.5
1/160sec
ISO 3200


Sunday, November 3, 2013

3/365 Carrots

My mom planted a little vegetable garden this summer with D.  Today they harvested some of the last of their bounty...the carrots!

 f2.2
1/80sec
ISO 1600

Saturday, November 2, 2013

2/365 Inauguration of the self timer

I'm kinda excited about today's photo.  I have been trying to get a photo of baby A's little hands while we are reading because he likes to help "hold" the book, but I had to figure out how to get the shot.  So, I used the self-timer for the first time.  It also gave me a chance to work out a few things I haven't thought about before. I set it for 10 sec. and continuous shoot so it takes 2 pics each time.  The camera was on a shelf in baby A's closet on a little table-top tripod.  I don't have a regular tripod yet.  Setting the camera up in the closet posed a few challenges, but was possible since my T3i has a variable angle LCD.  I am glad now I went with the T3i, even though there have been moments I wondered if I should have done the T3 and a non-kit zoom lens. Instead I kept the T3i, 2 kit zooms, and purchased a 50 mm 1.8 separately. It's serving me well, so far.

My next challenge was focusing.  I generally use back button focus since I mostly take photos of my kiddos and have from the "get-go" taken photos this way, after reading a tutorial on it.  Plus, I am not very steady and found it hard to focus and recompose.  I couldn't figure out how to focus in "live view" from the LCD without turning off back button focusing, which I felt too lazy to do.  First I tried to focus on something I thought would be in the same focal plane once the camera was in place.  This was a pain and didn't work very well.  Then I finally wised up and manually focused..duh! Problem solved.

On another note, I did convert this to black and white.  I have been trying to resist this since: 1) I love black and white and sometimes am tempted to convert everything, 2) I get tempted to think black and white will fix my photo issues...but I know this is not really true or ideal, and 3) I do not yet know how to do a true conversion other than just the "one step click" to convert to b&w.

But, I did convert ("one step") on this one because I thought it accentuated the light shining on baby A's face, helped the strange mix of colors in the photo, seemed to work well with the stripes on baby A's outfit and the other geometric details in the photo, and I felt it gave the photo a more intimate and timeless feeling.
I posted the color sooc below it.  Black and white or color, what do you think?  Would you have left it in color?
f2.5
1/125sec
ISO1600






Friday, November 1, 2013

Day 1/365 Baby A.

First official day of "Project 365."  This is my 5 month old, baby A.

Since I just got my dslr in October, a Canon T3i, (Ok, technically I received it from my hubby for my birthday at the end of September but it took me a few weeks of research to see if this was the model I wanted, and then about another week to get past the intimidation of opening the box and, thus, making the purchase final), I have not even begun to dive into photo editing or post processing, really.  I want to work on getting things as good as possible "in camera" first.  But, eventually, maybe toward the end of this 365, I do want to look into editing more.  Right now I am importing my photos into Windows Photo Gallery to organize and crop and I may adjust exposure and color for white balance, if necessary but I am just using some of their very basic options for this.  No layers for this girl yet.

So, that being said, this is an example of why I do want to start more extensive editing sometime during my  365:  the lamp coming out of the left side of baby A's head.  In fact, I have several pretty cute shots and all but one have the lamp sprouting from the top of his head, but I think this one would be fixable with a little cloning..if I knew how to do cloning.  Baby steps :-)

f2.8
1/125 sec
ISO 200
SOOC