Oh Lolli-Lollipop!

I was doing a portrait sitting for a young man last week and I couldn't resist getting a shot of his older sister with her coordinating tights and lollipop.  What a cutie!

What Kind of Spider...

...made this web?  And do I really want to be around when it comes back?

I was going through photography withdrawals, so I took a little trip today and found this interesting structure.  From this image, you'd never guess what it really is.  And maybe I'll leave that a mystery, because I think it looks much "cooler" this way.  I've always loved geometric patterns and the sun was at just the right angle to highlight it nicely.  It drew me in as soon as I saw it.  Maybe that's what the spider was hoping for.  Hmmm.  I think maybe I'm going to leave now!

Hoops!

I went to a high school basketball game tonight to take pictures of Mr. 23.  I just wanted some fun, yet challenging, photography practice.  I took 70 shots altogether and narrowed it down to 7 for my blog.  I really like this shot, especially the facial expressions of the other players.  I just wish I could have gotten the rest of his arm and the ball in the shot.

I really like this one too. Maybe because he is looking at the camera.

This was an attempt at a panning shot, but it got pretty blurry. I still really like it though. You really feel like he is running fast with those blurred feet.

Air Time!

This is the only one where I got him and the ball in the same shot.  Not an easy thing to do!

I love the look on his face in this shot.

This one interests me because of the looks on the faces of all the people lined up behind him.

Techie Corner
I decided not to use my flash, so I eventually had to kick the ISO up to 3200 in order to stop some of the action. 3200 is super grainy, so there is a trade-off. Makes me wonder what flash would have looked like.

This was just for fun though, so I don't really care. Not the kind of photography I would like to do all the time, but nice for a change of pace.

Just Cuz

I had lunch with my cuz today.  I had warned her the night before that I wanted to do some practice portraiture with her.  As I was talking with her at the restaurant, I notice how nicely the light was coming in the window, so I decided to do my practice session right there in the booth.  From this image, you would never know that she is sitting in a restaurant.  That's one of the things I like about location portraiture.

Techie Corner

For comparison, here is a shot, straight out of the camera with no editing, to show where she was sitting.  She didn't want to take her hat off, so I said that was fine.  It's a cute hat, but the color just

wasn't working for me.  I went into Lightroom and used the handy-dandy Adjustment Brush to take out the color.  That is the best tool that Adobe has ever dreamed up!  I used a light disk behind her as a backdrop.  I didn't have a second disk, so I opened up the shadows on her face in Lightroom.  I was using f1.4 to try and blur the backdrop as much as possible.  f1.4 has such a shallow depth of field that it made her face softer than I would normally like.  However, it's great for softening wrinkles.  I added a softening technique in Photoshop to soften her face even more.

Down by the Waterfront

After my practice photo shoot yesterday, I came back to my side of town and went down to Harriet Island for a little while.  The sky had been overcast all morning (which is great for portraiture) but now the sun was trying to peek out.  I thought the red paddle wheel looked beautiful against the white of the snow on the river, so I had to get a shot.

Just as I was leaving, the sun burst out and lit up this beautiful shot of Old Glory fluttering in the breeze.