White....

Okay, I know I was supposed to read a chapter of the Photographing Children book every Friday and then do the assignment over the week following (and post it here!), but I am not getting enough time to take photos with 3 little ones and being so pregnant (34 weeks now!). So I am just relaxed about it and not stressing - it's something that I can work at as slowly as I need to. The first assignment is a long one (not just one photo, but 20! In 14 different categories!), so it is taking me quite a while to check them all off and spend time thinking about what to do for each category. Some of them I am still stumped on! But I will get to them eventually. So far I have done:

An egg
Texture
Harsh light
Junk as art
Window
A face (though, I have tons of opportunity for this one and am not yet satisfied with what I've taken so far)
White
Round
Partnership

I have yet to figure out and photograph:

Colour
Black
Shadow
Reflection
Smooth

I want to at least TRY to do each category justice, even though it's not about a perfect "photo shoot" at this very very early stage of learning to take better photographs (as a COMPLETE amateur!), more about getting creative and thinking of ideas for settings and composing shots, etc. So I shouldn't get hung up on taking the perfect photo. But I struggle with not! I am NOT taking perfect photos, but I am starting to try new things as I work through this assignment over these past few weeks. I'm starting to use the manual setting more, though I mostly still shoot in auto. Manual usually gets me results that I'm not happy with, or that I can't "correct" very well on the computer, compared with the auto setting. BUT, I'm starting to see a tiny bit of improvement here and there, I guess just from practising - once or twice a shot hasn't satisfied me on auto so I have switched to manual, set the shutter speed and ISO (must be absorbing something from the photography book then, to know to do that?!) and taken a photo that's come out more pleasing to me, which is a REALLY satisfying feeling! I can see how it could become really addictive as I get better at it! :)

Today I thought out the "White" category for the photography assignment, and set it up really quickly and put the boys in the setting (every photograph has to include a child (or children)). I did some on auto setting and some on manual, because the light was strong and coming from the side (that's how our living room is laid out and the angle of our sofas to the light isn't ideal for taking photographs, but oh well). The manual ones came out too dark for my liking, and a bit "noisy" and grainy, but never mind. I am still not letting myself fix photos for these assignments on the computer - I have to post them straight out of the camera as I took them, except I will crop them. I want to see how I'm improving and I think that's a good way to see that clearly.

I am so pleased with some of the photos I took today - I surprised myself with some of them, because I'm really so amateur and if I ever use this scary piece of "grown-up" equipment to take a photograph and turn out one that I think is really nice, then I'm always surprised and pleased! Technically I'm sure they're not GREAT, but I'm so pleased with them anyway! There are way more than I can use for the category, because I really only have room for one or two photographs per category (14 categories, 20 photos in total). I have six or so that I really like, and because I'm really pleased with them I wanted to fix some of them to look even nicer after I saved the unchanged ones for the assignment. And I made a couple of them black and white to see how it looked. I just want to post all of them here, as part of my record of what I'm doing as I learn (and get results!).

My favourite (natural expressions!)! This was done in manual setting - here's the unchanged one. I planned to use this one for the photography assignment but after that, I uploaded the others that I took and now I'm not sure how to choose!



Loved it so much that I wanted to "fix" it for sending to family, Facebook, etc:



Here it is in black and white. I like the effect, and I'm not usually a fan of black and white (I prefer colour!):



I love this one of Arthur and Nathan, it's so cute! :) Matthew was in it too, but he was mid-blink so I cropped it, because it was too nice of the other boys not to! Here it is unchanged (in auto mode):



And in black and white:



Here's one of the boys just having fun (I took a good few like this, just snapping away - the whole "shoot" was very quick because they don't give me more than about 60 seconds before they seperate from each other (out of shot) or start hiding under the covers or messing about, etc!), taken in auto mode:



This one was of all three boys. I'm not posting the original but the older two were saying "cheese" (sigh!) and looked sooooo unnatural, while Nathey just looked edible and precious in the middle. If I look at the photo with the cheesy brothers on either side, it sort of dulls down the cuteness of Nathan in the middle, so I chose to crop them out, haha! ;) No, really, I just wanted to crop it to a cute photo of Nathan. It's not as crisp as I'd like, and it looks a little better if I fix the sharpness on the computer, but I'm not allowed to for this! Tsk! So, here it is as it came from the camera, in auto mode:



I love this one! I decided to make it more of a panoramic picture by cropping it that way. This is unchanged from the camera (except for the cropping) and was taken in auto mode:



I thought it might look nice in black and white, and here's the result (Neil loves it, and I am even wondering about framing it somewhere in the house, maybe?):



Here's the last one - another "fun" one, and it's a bit blurry where Nathan was moving his hand, and his face is partly hidden by the duvet, but I adore Matthew's soft happy expression! I decided to make it panoramic-ish again (and it was taken in auto mode):



Here it is in black and white, just to see:



I'm so pleased with them! I will be back with others soon!

Egg

Well, today I had a go at some of the things on my list for my "idea box" assignment. I took a lot of photos of the boys in the garden with the idea of using the hedge as "texture" or the light for harsh light and so on, but those really didn't turn out well. I DID get my definite "an egg" photograph though, so I wanted to post it right away! Once I uploaded my photos to the computer, I realised I wasn't sure whether I should be leaving assignment photos unedited or not. Eventually I decided that I would NOT edit them in any way except to crop them. So, I think some of the lighting and colour and white balance and so on will look bad, but I want to get an accurate picture of how my photographs are improving over time as I complete the assignments and learn more about using light and exposure and such. I won't be able to see that kind of progress if I touch up the photos I'm taking early on to make them look better. So I'm leaving them pretty raw! Except for cropping - I'm letting myself do that where necessary!

I took two photos of "an egg" that I liked, so here they both are:

I have a new camera (hence this new blog!)! :)

Well, I bought a Sony Alpha 300 DSLR camera, and was honestly scared of it when it arrived and I unwrapped it! But I have just started taking photos with it in the last week, and I'm excited about it!

I really want to get GOOD at taking photographs. I want to capture soooo much of my children's early years, and beyond. I want to be GOOD at taking great photos of my newborn babies, and I have already had three so I feel like it's slipping away from me fast enough without me having learnt to take good quality photographs. I will have another newborn in the next 8 weeks (yay!) so I am really hoping to "study" photography in as much as I can here at home with three small boys to keep me busy while I wait to give birth! ;)

At the moment, I don't understand my camera yet. I don't know anything about photography. I haven't read much of the manual yet, and I'm shooting on full auto mode without the flash. I keep the display screen on, but I have no idea what all those numbers scrolling up and down mean, as I move the camera! I know I will learn though, and I'm SO eager to! I am actually interested in semi-professional photography of children and babies, if I am able to learn the art well enough and get good enough at it. I hope I can! I might find that I don't have time for that, but I will be delighted if I can learn to take professional quality photos of my own children throughout their childhoods, and my little nieces! I would love to also branch out and take beautiful photos of other people's children as (if!) I find time available in the future. I have had a nagging interest in this (nagging as in "vague", not pesteringly persistant!) since long before having my own children, but it was a sort of "I wish one day..." type dream, not something I necessarily expected to accomplish.

I bought a book which arrived a couple of weeks ago, called "Photographing Children" which is a Photo Workshop book, by Ginny Felch. The reviews were excellent and it sounded like exactly what would interest me and help me learn some new things. I'm delighted to see that it has an assignment at the end of each chapter, and I have started to read it as my "Work on a craft or hobby" item on my Motivated Moms list every Friday, so that I'll actually stick to working on it and make some progress - one chapter each Friday. It's Friday today and I have read the first chapter. I'm supposed to stop there but I was so excited about it that I went and read the second chapter too, hehe!

So, the first chapter taught me about inspiration and creativity. There is a main assignment, but I also liked a little "idea box" earlier in the chapter. I am supposed to take photographs each time I've read a chapter as an assignment, based on what I learned in the chapter, so I need a place to post those photos. I can post photos at my main blog but as I read the chapter I quickly realised that I should have a special place to post photographs as I learn and practise, because some of them will be just too MANY or too boring for my blog I think. I want a clear record of my progress as I practise things, so I figured I would have to start a photography blog! I'm excited about the very fact that I'm (ME!!) starting a photography blog! That in itself feels like it holds so much promise, and I'm so excited about it! :) Even if it doesn't end up panning out to anything. But I really hope (and expect?) that it might! :)

So, I have noooo idea how to use my camera, except for some photos that I have taken of the boys so far (which are on my blog, and some more on the camera that haven't been uploaded yet).

I am going to work on the "idea box" assignment before doing the Big One at the end of Chapter One. I hope it's okay (copyright-ish-ly) to state the assignments here... :S Anyway, hopefully it is!

I need to make 20 photographs out of the following subjects, and include a child in each photograph:

An egg
Texture
Harsh light
Colour
Junk as art
Window
A face
Black
White
Shadow
Reflection
Round
Smooth
Partnership

I have to just be creative and let my photos reflect what influences ME, and who I am. Thankfully I have a bunch of children to choose from to include in any photos I take ;) So I will try to get started on this list tomorrow, and I'll post things as I complete them. I'm hoping to complete this assignment over the weekend. I am not sure what I will do for some of them! It's all going to be at home, no field trips to the park or anything, lol! So I need to get somewhat imaginative I think, since I am not sure what to do for some of them here. I'll post again with the results! I don't know whether to make this blog public or not yet. I think I will want to, but right now it's sure to be boring to basically anyone and everyone, and also I feel kind of SHY about my beginner's status, and the stuff I might end up posting here (in case it's really really really BAD after all that waffle about wanting to someday take professional quality photographs, haha!)! So we'll see. For now, I'll post just for my records.