Harrowing Halloween Fun

On Halloween my sweet friend decided she would host a party at her house. This particular friend has no children of her own yet. However she ended up with 8 kids and 6 adults in her house. And it was so much fun! My daughter made out like a bandit trick or treating as Elsa... I know, I know... yet another picture of a child Elsa...

I have to give another kudos to my friend though because not only did she host Halloween she made her 2 year old niece a Halloween costume, and I have to say she might be the cutest ghost ever!

My sweet "Elsa"

Baby Tigger

It's a ghost and Minnie Mouse!

Cat woman - who is actually a master entertainer

Monsters in the window.

Seriously considering editing almost all the color out of this to fit the theme of the picture. Thoughts?

Oh baby baby!

This is a selection of my favorite pictures from a mini shoot I did the other night. My baby makes for an excellent subject. I'm learning to make the best of indoor lighting at night because I'm at work during the day. That means a lot of my shots at night have imperfect lighting. However the issues of indoor lighting don't seem to keep me from being able to capture my family's moments in time.

Inspiring color scheme

This is just a  quick post to show a shot that I like purely for the color composition. Inspiration can come in strange places.

I'm starring to see patterns in the pictures that I like to take too: I like very close up shots a lot, but I want to have a good range as well so this weekend I'm going to focus on taking some group shots and wide angle scenery shots to see what I can come up with.

Stealing Focus

This last week has been insanely busy. The kids and I have been hanging out a lot with some new friends, which has turned in to a couple of fun mini photo shoots for me. This picture of my sweet daughter is pretty cool to me because the focal point in the picture is actually the flower in front of her face. It was a good exercise in manipulating the focus of the picture using the manual zoom and manual focus while shooting in aperture priority mode. I find it hard to get the same soft bokeh in full manual, partly because I have a kit lens that does not go very low at all in the f stop settings. Something to think about for my Christmas list.

In the meantime though I plan to keep practicing with the lens that I have and the settings available to me.

Friday Night Fun

On Friday we decided to have a little "camp out" in our living room. We put all the big, fluffy blankets down in the floor as cushions along with every pillow in the house. We watched movies, cuddled, ate popcorn and all slept in the living room together. My sweet 4 year old thought it was a fabulous plan. My husband and I are still sore, but it was totally worth it!

I think the picture of both kids with the giant bear is definitely our Christmas card picture, especially since it looks like handsome baby is getting completely squished by his big sister. I should portray them as their natural selves after all. Hahaha!

I'm actually planning another photo shoot with the bear as the focal point, but he is in more of a supporting role in these pictures.

Abandoning Automatic

This little series of shots are the first pictures I have taken in fully manual mode, where I took control over every feature of the picture. I love that there are indicators in the camera to show whether or not the shot is going to be properly exposed before you ever shoot the photo.

This picture is from yesterday. I have a thing for baby feet!

 

 

This picture was taken this evening. I decided to take a few shots of my kiddo's bicycle. It was more willing to sit still than my sweet girl.

 



Shallow or Sharp? That is the question.

Tonight I played a very little with depth of field. I have a little trouble with varying the depth of field since my lens only goes to f3.5. Its easier for me to move around my subject than to very the aperture settings.

 

 

I also went outside and took some sunset shots. The colors were all beautiful and pastel tonight.