Up high, down low

Over the past couple of months, I've come across quite a few good tips for photographing kids. Get in close. Use a fast shutter speed with  quick moving toddlers. Engage with older kids by asking them questions or telling jokes to avoid cliche "cheesy" smiles. And finally get down low.  This last piece of advice is a bit of a departure from the natural tendency to take a photo at your own level. By crouching down very low to take pictures at a child's eye level, you're able to capture the world through their eyes.  I've employed this tip quite a bit (with the unfortunate side effect of some grass stains from lying completely down).  Here are a couple of my favourite eye level pictures:

That said, I've also realized this perspective isn't the only way to snap a great photo. By varying the angle from which I shoot, I can capture a wide range of interesting pictures. Some of my favourite pictures of Maelle are taken from a bird's eye or "way up high" angle. These shots sometimes require me to hold my camera up above my head or hop up onto a chair. This unexpected vantage point can add a sense of vulnerability to the photo or draw your attention to a child's bright eyes.

I've also experimented with shooting pictures from a low-to-high angle, to less success. This perspective is a little more tricky to get right. For adults it often just flat out doesn't work: you end up with unflattering shots with double chins or close up views of nostrils, or you make the legs and lower part of their body look larger than the upper body. But for babies  it can sometimes work by making the subject appear a bit larger than life:

Before and after

Computers have never been my best friend. I loathe learning new software, have lost more than a few documents by forgetting to save and know far fewer keyboard shortcuts than I am prepared to admit. So when I realized that the second photography course from George Brown College was focused on editing photos, I wasn't exactly enthused. Learning how to take photos was overwhelming enough without having to worry about editing them. But being able to edit photos is a key part of the photographer's toolkit.  As much as I strive to "get it right in camera" there are inevitably times when I need to make edits after the fact.

Photo editing software (like Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture or any other of the dozens of other programs) can do some pretty amazing things. It can brighten an overly dark photo, bring out details in shadow areas or highlights, correct colour issues, remove unwanted objects, etc. That said, you need to be careful. There's a fine line between improving something and making it look unnatural or overdone. Take a look at Faith Hill's arm, eyes and back on the cover of Redbook (scroll down to the flashing picture / the second magazine cover). 

Thankfully the flabbiness of babies' arms is never a problem to correct;) After taking the course and reading all 500 pages of The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book for Digital Photographers, I am starting to get the hang of it. However there are still times I make a tonne of edits only to realize it looks worse than the original and have to start over.

Here's a couple before and after photos of my friend Steph's super cute newborn, Zoe.

In the after photo below I removed a bit of the redness from Zoe's skin by adjusting the Hue, Saturation and Luminance of the red in the photo. These changes made the blanket a bit greenish, so I adjusted this colour too.

With many cameras there's a black and white setting but I much prefer to shoot in colour and change to black and white after the fact for maximum flexibility. For many photos I still have no idea exactly why I prefer it in black and white (probably a subject for a future post!) but for this one I think the back and white draws your eyes to Zoe's adorable features. 

In the after photo I brought down the clarity and sharpness a bit to soften the skin. I also removed some of the redness from the skin and cropped the photo for a closer focus on Zoe's face. 

The changes I made below were fairly subtle. The original picture was underexposed (too dark) so I increased the exposure to brighten it up and also adjusted the Highlights and Shadows to recover detail in those two areas. 

Aloha Hawaii

Travel photography has always been my favourite type of photography (although photographing little ones is now a close second). New sights, colours, architecture, food, landscapes and people offer endless subjects for photos. So it was no surprise that I took over a thousand pictures on our recent trip to the Hawaiian islands of Kauai and Maui. But since no one (not even my super supportive and always interested parents) wants to look through a thousand pictures, I had to narrow them down to the best of the bunch.

While paring down photos to a more manageable set is never my favourite task, I find the following tips helpful to keep in mind:

1. Keep a sufficient mix to tell the story of your trip (e.g. culture, landscape, architecture, places you stayed, etc). 
2. Even though a photo might not be technically perfect, it's a keeper if it captures a unique moment or makes you remember something truly special.
3. There is no need to have 29 different photos of the same beautiful sunset (...or building or flower, etc.). Pick a couple of the best and move on.
4. Less is often more when posting photos online, printing or showing to friends and family. Review, delete the weakest photos and flag your favourites. Repeat. And repeat again. And yet again.

Take a look at my Hawaiian favourites!

31 photos in 31 days

Way way back in March (it seems like so long ago now that the nice weather has finally arrived) I was a feeling a little low on photography inspiration. I needed a project. I had seen Project 365s online where you take a photo every day for a year. But that seemed a little daunting so instead I embarked on Project 31.

So how did it go?  I liked that it challenged me to find something interesting in the everyday and ordinary, like on March 9 when at the end of a picture-less day I ended up taking an interesting, abstract shot of my neighbour's Christmas lights (yes, Christmas lights in March). I liked that it gave me lots and lots of practice to improve my photography skills. I liked having an excuse to take my camera to places I might not normally have (see my friend's birthday on March 28). And finally as much as I like taking pictures of babies, it was a nice change to photograph non-moving subjects (like walls) that don't care how many photos you take.

But like any challenge it wasn't all roses. There were days when I just didn't know what to shoot and ended up taking a boring picture of my house (see March 17). I also found myself constantly considering if something would make a good photo, which meant I felt guilty when I saw something interesting and wasn't shooting. All in all I did breathe a sigh of relief when I realized it April 1. 

Which brings me to the final question: did I succeed in taking a picture every day? Those who skipped ahead to the pictures below might already see that one photo is missing. On March 8, I forgot to take a picture with my DSLR but I did have my husband's iPhone. He later lost his phone (and all his photos!), so March 8 just wasn't meant to be and this post should really be titled 30 photos in 31 days.

4 ideas for printing and displaying photos

Digital photography has numerous advantages but one thing that film photography had going for it was that in order to even see your pictures you had to print them. I still remember the excitement of getting a roll of 24 pictures (wow, that sounds like so few!) developed. This also meant you always had numerous pictures available to put into a frame or album. Now with digital photography it can be hard to find the motivation to print and all too easy to accumulate thousands and thousands of photos on your computer without actually doing anything with them. However, whenever I have taken the time to print my photos, I've been happy with the results. Plus there are so many interesting and different ways to print or display your photos these days; here are a few:

Group them

Sometimes when a single photo is hung on a wall  - especially if it's a large wall  - it can look a little lonely. Grouping photos into a collage or on a photo ledge can make a greater impact and allows you to display more photos (a bonus if you have a hard timing making decisions like I do!). A couple tips for creating collages:  keep the space between the photos relatively consistent and fairly narrow, test out different layouts on the floor before hand and be sure to have a good mix of larger and smaller frames.

Make them fun

Pinhole Press makes a variety of super cute photo items that are perfect for kids. I ordered a memory photo game as a gift for my niece's upcoming birthday and created a mini book of names and faces for Maelle (which she loves to flip through).

Make them glossy

A couple of years ago my husband and I went to an art show and fell in love with a photograph covered in epoxy resin (which creates a glossy, glass-like sheen). Since the piece's $1000 price tag wasn't in our budget, we decided to try the technique ourselves.  The process was relatively easy  (check online for tips) and involved 1) Printing the photo 2) Gluing it onto a wooden board cut to the same size (Home Depot can do this) 3) Following the epoxy resin directions on the box (we bought our resin from Curry's Art Store).

Bind them
There are so many online options for ordering photo books but I've been happy with My Publisher. Be sure to sign up for their emails so you can order during one of their frequent sales (40-60% off).

Cabin fever: indoor photography tips

Thanks to this year's neverending, bitterly cold winter, I have spent more time indoors than I would have liked. Which means that I have become very well acquainted with the challenges of indoor photography (off colours with artificial lights, blurred images because of slow shutter speeds, harsh and unforgiving light from the on-camera flash, the list goes on). There are some oft-repeated ways to address these problems: adjust your white balance to correct colour, choose a large aperture, increase the ISO and limit the use of the on-camera flash (click here for an article on the topic).  And while these tips help, the truth is I often find myself forced to make unappealing trade-offs in low light situations.

I can crank up my ISO to 800 and higher but I'll end up with a grainy picture (at least with my camera, noise is less of a problem with higher-end DSLRs). I can choose a very low Fstop (such as 1.8 or 2.4) but this will result in a shallow depth of field (which might not be the look I want). I can try a slower shutter speed  but this almost always seems to result in motion blur. All this to say I haven't quite figured out indoor photography or which trade-offs to make.

Thankfully one of the best indoor photography tips has nothing to do with exposure choices (phew!).  Find the natural light.  Natural window light can cast a softer, more flattering light than what you'll see in an artificial lighting situation. This does require a bit of thinking though: you might need to move your child's play space to the window or coerce your husband to move to the brightest room for the photo shoot or figure out which windows in your house have the best light and at what time of day (north or south facing windows usually offer the best indirect light). But it will be worth it. I find it easiest to place myself in between my subject and the window (front lighting) or to shoot from the side while my subject faces the window (side lighting).

Nonetheless, given my struggles it was a welcome relief to find myself visiting my husband's aunt and uncle a little while back. Phyl and Morley live in a beautifully restored, old farm house (that goes back generations on Morley's side) outside Shelbourne, Ontario.  It was such a treat to take photos in a house that was bathed in beautiful, natural light (even more so as it reflected off the snow outside). Here are some pictures from our weekend away.

And since a winter walk is much more appealing in the woods than in the grey, dreary city, I took a couple pics outside too.