Self Portrait…well essence of self

I am about as uninteresting as stereotypical people go.

I am a stay at home mum. I have three boys. I spend my days making sure they don’t hurt themselves or each other…Um, that’s it.

You can imagine that although I wouldn’t trade even one second of my time with my kids, after 4 years, I needed something a bit different to prevent my brain from turning completely to mush. When I got my first smart phone I got a hobby. Taking photos.

4 years later the smartphone has changed and alternates with my DSLR. The later is my ultimate challenge. I imagine I will feel frustrated by it and love it dearly for the rest of my life. But although I am isolated, between my children and my photography I will never be bored.

Here is me on any given day.

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Manual vs auto settings – Does my camera know best?

I have been taking some newborn photos. I have never had the opportunity to do any newborn photography and obviously with my own brand spanking new newborn it was the perfect opportunity to have a go at it. I haven’t mastered the setup and shoot thing yet. I don’t have the right lighting and my attempts at a background went horribly wrong, although it was a good lesson in shadow and light.

What I did have the chance to explore was whether I can make the manual settings on my camera work for me as opposed to the auto setting. I took a couple of shots with the settings on auto (mainly to make sure I didn’t end up with nothing at the end of the session) then I switched on to the manual settings. I much preferred the results on manual settings. They were lighter and cleaner. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed in editing shooting in RAW, but it saved me the hassle.

Original auto settings.

Original image with manual settings.

Then I wondered if editing was really necessary. Again, I think the results after I altered the image slightly were noticably better. I cropped the image to focus on the subject, lightened the face as it was slightly darker, removed blotchiness and reduced the redness in the skin.

I am happy with my first efforts at newborn photography. I am sure it could be improved, but its still going on the wall. Much repect to the talented people who get the newborns to sleep and in position for photographing! It would take me a lot of time and practise before I felt confident enough to shoot anyone else’s baby.

First Lesson Done!

I did my first photography lesson tonight. Most of it was stuff I already knew, but I got some clarity on a few terms I didn’t know and things I had been doing without knowing what they were!

So now I have HOMEWORK. I am supposed to take a shot with a low and high aperture setting to contrast the difference and the same with shutter speed.

I will post my homework shots too. That way everyone can be my teacher! Hopefully I can get some ideas and feedback. That should help me to improve more. I have already been impressed with the ideas and feedback people gave me with my latest self portrait. I love that it gives me fresh perspective and new ways to think about things. Educating myself is about broadening my thinking and I am finding the online blogging community is an invaluable resource. So Thanks!

A few more from the card

I have been taking quite a few photos in the last few days. I am visiting my parents so I have the chance to leave the kids with their Grandparents and go off for a few hours and take photos…uninterrupted! Instead of posting 50 photos at once and overloading (boring?!) you to death I will post a couple at a time when I get a chance.

These were all taken this evening at a place near Waikerie in the Riverland called Broken Cliffs. It is a treasure trove of fossils and my husband (who has a science background) loves going there to explore. I love going there to take photos! The cliffs are a yellow tone and in the evening sun they light up. Beautiful. These are a sunset series taken across the River Murray. This evenings photos were an improvement on last evenings too. I am happy with the progress I have made in working out exposure settings on the DSLR. Heading in the right direction.

 

 

A few photos from my week

In the ongoing attempt to learn how to use the DSLR I have been snapping everything! I have only had an opportunity to look at some of the photos, but I thought I would share a couple. I am finding that I am over exposing many images mainly due to not trusting the meter. Oh well, practise, practise, practise.

I have visited Waikerie in the Riverland and saw this house from a roadside lookout. I think I was supposed to be looking the other direction at the cliffs by the river, but the light wasn’t right in that direction.

Also in Waikerie we took the opportunity to take some (more) photos of the boys.

This is my favourite! Gotta love Dads.

This is a very old flamingo that lives at Adelaide Zoo. Thanks for posing flamingo.

 

 

 

Photographers Everywhere: Strange Question – Did you name your camera?!

I have a habit of naming and assigning personality traits to the most used things in my life. It all started when I got my first car and named it Georg (pronounced GAY-ORG) after Captain VonTrap from The Sound of Music. Over the years I have had other ‘things’ in my life and they have been given names according to the personality traits I think they would have. My GPS is named Ken and I wouldn’t go on any excursions without him, I have my iPhone who fell into being called Old Trusty and now I have a new camera.

Unfortunately the first thing that popped into my head was Mr Fancy Pants and it has stuck! I don’t think Mr Fancy Pants would like it. He is a serious piece of machinery and the other cameras are sure to make fun of him. It is surely akin to dressing your Rotweiler in a pink tutu and taking him for a walk past a dog park. I am hoping that something else will come to me later (not too much later or it will never change!).

I’d really like to know if anyone else out there has a name for their camera? What did you call it and how did it come to you?

You can comment your answer or use the poll, but I am curious. I’d love to hear your answer!

Photography: A few portraits of E

We can’t forget E. He is more elusive where photography is concerned. His favourite game is looking at me until I take a photo and turning away at the last minute. Hilarious E.

I love my boys toes. Little people feet are endlessly fascinating to a Mum.

This is E digging in my potplant. Precisely where he is NOT allowed to dig..and he knows it. Luckily for him in this instance Mum was more interested in working out her lens’ and manual settings so he got away with it. Don’t tell him I secretly think its kind of funny.

This is E ‘shaving’. I love his imagination.

I am…in love.

Mr Fancy Pants gets a Workout

I have had a chance to play this afternoon with the new camera and some of the photos turned out OK. After doing my homework this is the first time I have used the camera fully manual and felt like I was controlling it as opposed to being completely out of control. I am happy with that.

Here are the first lot of photos.

This is W. He is watching TV, hence the vacant look on his face. Please excuse the filthy clothing, but he doesn’t generally stay clean for more than about 2 seconds after dressing him. When he wasn’t looking at the TV he kept crawling straight to me and then on me. That made it particularly difficult to photograph him. Cheeky fellow.

That last one was a bit of a disaster. Great face with a distracting background made worse by trying to fix it. Boo.

Gotta love a baby that can put up with his mother following him around photographing him all the time. He just works around me. Beautiful.