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!