Regan and Jake

I met with this family back in early December and never posted anything on it. We walked around a lake in Gilbert and found a small spot next to a stream and did most of our shooting there. Nicole and Regan made me want a daughter so bad! Wearing pink and being completely girly and in love - couldn't you just die looking at the two of them?



Jake gave me a lot to work with - - in a good way and a complicated way... he's such a sweetheart but his energy makes me run out of fuel fast! I love this next collage though - he's a beautiful kiddie!!


And one last one of the entire family - aren't they a good looking group? Thank you Nicole and Scott for meeting with me for your first family session with little Regan!!!

3...2...1...

Ok, so I've been away for a while BUT I will totally make it up to you, my six faithful readers, by launching a new blog AND holding my first ever photo contest ever!!

We are relocating to a permanent home at dkphotographer.com/blog

What are you waiting for? Go go go! Don't spend anymore time here!!!

FireShooting

Fireshooting: I'd never done it before. We were all grouped around the fire trying to get just close enough to be warm but not so close that we'd burn ourselves. The glow illuminated our faces and while they discussed computers, operating systems, ICANN and cron jobs, I sat there roasting a marshmellow. Why couldn't someone want to talk about photography?

After getting lost in the flames and burning my tenth marshmellow, I had to shoot the fire. I guessed the settings: Medium ISO for a fast shutter and a 2.8 f-stop as a standard jumping off aperture.

Perfect! I loved it! Any time theres a fire, I will be shooting. Can you even tell there are four people back there? Who needs to talk about cron jobs when you're shooting flames? Not me, that's who.

How To Fake and Make a Silhouette

My first attempt at a silhouette was on a cloudy day. I had no idea that silhouettes were not to be done on a cloudy day, so I did it anyway. I positioned my subject on this hill and kept shooting. My instruction was:

"Turn your dial to auto and take a photo. The camera will expose for both the sky and the subject. Now turn to manual and keep speeding up the shutter and checking the back of camera until you see the sky become better exposed and your subject and everything in the foreground will fall to black."

Nowhere in those instructions does it say "your sky must be significantly brighter than the subject." I am here to tell you, "your sky must be significantly brighter than the subject.


The above image is straight out of camera. I kept moving my shutter up and then realized that it was turning the whole photo black. I wasn't done - enter Photoshop. I duplicated my layer by clicking CTRL+J on my keyboard. Then I changed the blend mode of the top layer to LINEAR BURN and got this:

Ok, theres a fake silhouette. And then I painted on a little blue in the sky using TRA's BIG BLUE action and I was done with my fake silhouette.


Have you ever been driving at sunset and you look to the West and everything is a natural silhouette because you're looking into the sun? And then you look to the East and nothing is a silhouette because the sun is shining ON everything instead of coming from BEHIND everything? Try it next time you're out driving to the North or South. To the West will be filled with natural silhouettes and to the East will be none. This is how you need to shoot for a silhouette: To the East - where your eye will form natural silhouettes - your camera will see them too. Expose for the sky and watch the foreground fall to black and season to taste.



*Another Tip: Your lens won't focus well when shooting into the sun. For this one, if we look at her feet, theres no silhouette because the sun is really only shining behind her upper half. In silhouettes a blurred background isn't really important. So I bumped by F-stop to a 5.0, aimed my camera at her feet, focused on her feet and then shot her upper half without refocusing. The 5.0 f-stop gave me a deeper depth of field so I didn't need to refocus when I aimed my camera at her face.

If I would have kept moving my shutter to a faster speed, you would have seen more of her (her hat and her shirt) start to fall to black. Again, silhouettes are seasoned to taste - you can go with a strong one or keep the image bright and sunny - up to you!

2010

The first week of the year is still a Holiday. The diets don't count and the resolutions don't kick in until the seventh. So starting today, these are the goals I'm working towards in 2010.

1.) 300 blog posts. Yikes. Apart from the above paragraph, the four blog posts I've done this year totally count toward this 300 goal.
2.) Continue with Peripheral Visions (which should help with goal #1)
3.) Move away from blogger and create a new custom blog
4.) Spend more time with Kayden and take him to do more things outside of the house.
5.) Create more balance in my life
6.) Read 20 books that I haven't read before
7.) Learn to play and sing at the same time three songs on the guitar
8.) Continue to develop my photographic style hopefully to include more color
9.) Get in shape - for real this time...
10.) Get Kayden to Disneyland and Los Angeles to visit the rest of my family

To help encourage me to follow through with goal #2, I made these two collages of Peripheral Visions of 2009.

Chocolate Frogs

Chocolate frogs actually exist. We saw some yesterday at the Phoenix Zoo and were we excited. Tell me these aren't straight out of Harry Potter. Chocolate Frogs.


Its been too long since we went to the Phoenix Zoo. Last Summer if I remember correctly - this time was especially exciting because Kayden could say all of the animals names. He kept saying, "FIND ME GORILLAS!" and he pronounces: "GO-WI-WA!" *sigh


Giraffes take my breath away. Even when the wind is blowing all the hay from their mouths into my eyes.



Across from the Warthogs are Rhinos. Kayden saw the Warthogs and said "RHINOS!" and then he saw the real rhinos and his jaw dropped open in disbelief. They are huge.



The monkey exhibit is wonderful. There is no barrier between you and the monkeys and yesterday, they went nuts. As two ran across my feet another one jumped past me so close he brushed my chest... I was frozen.


And our own little monkey.
What a darling.
Love surrounds me so thick I can hardly breathe.

Baby Jordans

Eric has been on a Jordan trip since he found a pair or almost new vintage Air Jordans at the thrift store. He's purchased two more different styles of Jordans on Ebay and now Jordans are his shoe of choice.

Back to Ebay, Eric found a pair of baby Jordans for Kayden. UPS delivered the box and Kayden waited patiently while Eric opened the package. He held up the shoe for Kayden to see and said "Kayden, what are these?" And Kayden exclaimed, "JORDANS!!!" And they have hardly left his little feet.

We took him to the park yesterday to test them out.