photography tip friday.....

today's tip is simple

{it's been a long week, so i vote for not having to think very hard today}

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"be careful what you focus on"

what i really wanted to show you in this photo, is the cool winding path. 

but 

taking a photo of the actual path was so boring.

{you'll see it below in a second}

taking photos of the flowers along the path....oh, so much better.

see this photo. yuck. it's the picture of the path. sad isn't it. 

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now granted. someone reading this might love this path photo and that's fine. 

but focusing on the path didn't do anything for me. 

it looks blah. there's no depth. no bokeh.

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happy weekend everyone

photography tip friday.....oops it's monday. oh well

she didn't know me

so she had every right to be scared

and

at least she thought about looking at me

well maybe not

i don't take a scowl personally. honestly, i think the sun was in her eyes. maybe.

oh, now that's better.

her adorable older cousin, who she completely loves, was being silly and i see a grin.

but still, looking at the stranger with the camera, is not going to happen.

but wait. there it is. the smile and the laugh i was looking for.

perfect i tell you. perfect.

so what's my tip. patience. patience is my tip. 

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now granted, i can completely blow up while being stuck behind slow drivers on the road or while waiting for the coupon lady in the grocery store to find the right coupon, only to be told it's expired. 

but when it comes to kids, especially during a photo shoot, i have tons of patience. i honestly know that at some point, they will warm up to me and smile and hopefully even laugh. 

the best part though, especially since candid shots are my favorite to capture, is when they forget i'm even there. oh yep, that's the best part. always.

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photography tip friday.....

okay

to be honest with you, i'm not really sure if this is a photography tip or merely a suggestion, 

but i feel it's worth talking about.

i think sometimes it's too easy to get into a rut with photography. the kind of rut where we end up shooting only the things right around us. the things we are most comfortable with. the things we find in the perfect late afternoon light, right in our own backyard or the things we see when the morning light whispers it's way onto our kitchen tables.

now i'm not saying that is bad or wrong. but what i'm asking is 

"where's the challenge" "where's the fun" 

"where are the mistakes you learn from" "where are the photos that turn out perfectly, that you thought you'd never be able to take"

i think sometimes we all have the ability to become stagnant. in anything. 

how we dress. what we eat. how we decorate our homes. even how we live.

but most importantly 

{since this is photography tip friday} 

what we see and what we shoot

so really all i'm talking about today, is livening things up. 

seeing new things. going new places. 

finding new faces.

challenging yourself. 

taking your camera off auto.

wait. 

did i just scare some of you with that auto comment. sorry if i did. but i know you can do it. i know you can put your camera on aperture mode and play around with your depth of field. but you have to want to do it. you have to want to shoot crappy photos and screw up and start over again. 

and 

if you want to screw up even more, put your camera on manual mode. i guarantee you'll take photos you hate, but you just might take some photos that you fall in love with.

i was bored the other day, so i grabbed my camera and went to one of our {many fantastic} lakes. 

it was three in the afternoon and the sun on the water was still blinding. 

i used my 70-300 lens for all of the photos i took, as it tends to be my most versatile lens and 

since it was 85 degrees, i only stayed about 30 minutes.

and

in that half hour, i talked to a few hispanic strangers with beautiful daughters and an older gentleman who asked if i was with the newspaper {which i wish i could have answered yes to} 

but most of all, i shot. i shot a ton of photos, while constantly changing the settings on my camera, 

since i was feeling that i wasn't getting the color of the water exactly as i saw it.

but

i wasn't discouraged. i was excited to be challenging myself. 

i was excited to be PLAYING. i was excited to see who or what i might see next. 

and 

i was excited to see what i was capturing,

even though i knew that wouldn't happen until i got home, since looking at the screen on my camera in the bright sun proves to be a waste of time.

so this weekend. go out and play. in a new place. with new "everything" around you. go to a park you've never been to. or an event that you don't want to do {like log rolling} but where you'll have lots of things to photograph. go to your favorite little bistro, but order something you've never had and take photos of it. ask your hubby to go outside and jump for you, if you want to practice the jumping photos i so dearly love. sure, maybe we've already seen your hubby, so you're asking "what's new with that" but i'm guessing we've probably never seen him in midair.

my guess is that once you venture out of your comfort zone, you'll do it more and more often. you'll realize how exciting people and areas right around you can be. now if i was telling you that what you really need, is to go to another country and spend thousands of dollars on a vacation, just for something new to shoot, you'd all be throwing bricks at me and i would totally understand. 

but i'm not. i'm just suggesting you go somewhere new and see things you haven't shot before.

and

the best part. after all your "new shooting" you will feel exhilarated, like you just exercised. 

and

since i don't exercise regularly enough, but will climb up a tree or a hill to frame what i want to shoot, or squat for thirty minutes in order to get a 2 year old on his level. 

well i consider that a win win.

happy weekend everyone

and

happy shooting

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photography tip friday.....

move yourself

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the photo above is right out of the camera {sooc} and was taken after i shot the one below and realized the side of the chair next to me was right smack dab in the middle of my photo.

if this had been the only photo i had taken, i would have cropped the chair out of the photo and been left with just a lady and her newspaper without any depth what so ever.

~

but 

with every tip, just like art, it's all in the eye of the beholder. 

there will be some of you who like the chair in the photo and the fact that you can see the art hung on the back wall and that's perfectly okay and i can't say that that's wrong. 

for me though, in the bottom photo, my eye goes right to the chair and that's not what i had intended to be my focal point. 

don't you love the fact that with photography we can do what we like to do and love what we love and if there are rules to follow, the sky won't come crashing down on us when we don't.

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so tell me, just for kicks, what photo do you like best.

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