40/52 - Photo Ops

So, we've had our baby home for almost 2 weeks now.  I didn't get quite as many pictures as I'd liked to have gotten that first week since Paige was back in the hospital for a few days, but I've managed to get a few.
Over the last week, I've tried capturing several of the images I've been waiting to get of my newborn.  I'll use this post to show off a few of those.
I had a list of several different kind of shots that I wanted to get.  Some I still can't get yet since he isn't strong enough to completely hold up his head, some I just haven't had the chance to get yet, but I've been able to capture a few I am quite fond of and even a few that I hadn't planned on getting yet.

Isaac is a pretty content baby.  He doesn't fuss too much and sleeps quite a bit, which is very helpful when trying to get his picture.  He doesn't react too much to putting him in different positions or to moving him around to get the best light, so he has actually been very easy to work with.

It's been a lot of fun having him for these last couple of weeks and I can't wait to see what all we can get with him in the near future!

Let me know what you think.

T.

39/52 - Isaac David Roberts

Friday morning, 10/21/11 @ 10:03am, my life changed forever. 

My son, Isaac David Roberts, was born. 

6lb 9oz and 19 3/4 inches. 

He is perfect.

Thank you Lord for this unbelievable gift.

Let me know what you think.

T.

38/52 - Fall DOF

Fall is finally under way in North Carolina.  Bringing cold weather and beautiful leaves.  Between Illinois and North Carolina, I will take NC Fall every day.  The weather is beautiful and there are more trees, more mountains and better foliage this time of year.  It's a great place to spend the fall.

Since the leaves just started falling, I wanted to capture a very simple image of fall...one single leaf laying on the deck rail.  I really just wanted to focus on the leaf and nothing else, so I knew my 50mm f/1.8 lens would be perfect for the task.

Since I didn't really have any leaves sitting on the railing, I grabbed one from the yard, and placed it on the railing.  I knew I wanted a lot of railing left over in the background, in order to have some leading lines and have more of the scene out of focus. 

It was really a pretty simple photo...I had to snap the picture fairly quickly because if you move the camera much at f/1.8, you will quickly lose focus on your subject, so as soon as I locked it in, I needed to shoot.

Some slight tweaks in PS later (mostly just making the color more vibrant and adding a little contrast) and I had my picture.

It's pretty simple, but I like it.

Let me know what you think.

T.

37/52 - Baby Name

So, here's another maternity picture...a recurring theme in my photos.  We're getting really close to the baby showing up, so we're both really excited about it. 

Technically, we've got 9 days left, but he could really show up about any time now.  I've had this picture in mind for a little while.  Shortly after finding out Paige was pregnant, I did a few searches on-line for maternity pictures and this was one of the first ones I saw that I really liked.  I saved the picture in a file of 'maternity pictures to take' and stored it away until Paige was pregnant enough to actually ge it.

Finally, her belly was big enough to get the picture I had in mind, so we set up the other night and went about trying to capture it.  It was really a pretty simple picture to take.  We used her 'Moby' wrap as the cloth wrapped around her.  While the wrap is designed to hold a baby, it works pretty well as a body wrap too.

The set up for this picture is pretty similar to many of the other ones I've done.  After capturing the image, I brought it into Photoshop, adjusted it a bit, then extended the background to make it look like she's standing in a much larger room than she actually was.

We've decided on a name for our little guy and I wanted to incorporate it into the image.  Isaac is my middle name, which I've always really liked and have always wanted to name my child.  David is a pretty regular name between both of our families and I thought that it flowed really well with Isaac.  I like the way the two names sound together and can't wait to actually use it to him in person.

Let me know what you think:

Update:

I found a couple flaws with the photo above and tweaked it a little more.  I cropped in a bit, centered the text properly, brightened Paige and edited out a white line in the top middle of the photo.  Also added a signature.  I like this version better.

T.

36/52 - Belly Sunset

I saw a picture like this the other day on-line and really wanted to try to emulate it.  The picture I saw was a little different because it was a guy (cowboy) who was the subject and had a split rail fence in the middle of a field, but I thought I could get something close to it with the fence around my pool and my pregnant wife in stead.

So, the other night after dinner, I had Paige put on a shirt that her belly would stick out of (the same shirt from the "Belly Shirt" picture) and head out to the pool.  Our pool is shaded in the afternoons / evenings and the sun actually sets behind Paige, so I had to re-create the sunset light.  To do this, I put a 1/4 CTO (color temperature orange) gel on my flash and shot it through an umbrella to soften the light and 'warm' it up a bit to mimic a sunset.  I could have put a 1/2 CTO gel on it, but I think with how bright the ambient was, it would have looked a little fake.

After getting the lighting dialed in, by using myself as a test subject, I had Paige come out, snapped 5-6 pictures and called it a night!  I got a couple that I liked out of the bunch.  I really liked this one of Paige the most.  I got one of the both of us together, which I liked as well, then I got one of just myself, which Paige really liked. 

Let me know what you think.

T.

35/52 - Pose

I know I've posted a few pictures of the puppy before, but when you only have a wife and a dog to act as models, the subject of the pictures can get a bit repetitive.
So, here's another picture of the dog.

When we were in Arizona a couple of months ago, we visited some friends.  They have a big canvas black and white print of their dog hanging in their bedroom and both Paige and I thought it was a pretty cool picture.  We both liked the idea of getting a nice shot of the dog and potentially printing one out.  So, over the last few weeks I've been thinking of a shot I wanted to get of our dog and putting it in B&W. 

The other night, just before sun-down, I decided to take the puppy outside and have her sit for me.  I didn't just want a head shot of her and I didn't really want a full body shot either, so I decided to go 3/4 length.  I brought out a couple of treats with me and, like she always does, she will sit extremely still for me while I'm holding it.  So, I put the treat over the lens of the camera, told her to stay, and started snapping away. 

I like this shot a lot.  I like her expression, how she looks strong and lean and at attention.  You can really see the terrier in her in this picture more so than the boxer.

If I were to print this, I would need to lighten it up a bit...bring more detail in her eyes and just brighten the picture overall, but I think it's a good starting place.  Maybe I'll try a few more before we print one, but this one is definitely a keeper.

Let me know what you think.

T.

34/52 - Doorway Silhouette

As with most of the pictures I take, I saw one similar to this on-line and really liked it, so I figured I'd give it a try.  However, I like the one I shot a lot better because I really like the front door / entrance way of our house.  It worked perfectly for this picture.

I've done a couple of silhouette, back-lit pictures of Paige before, standing in front of the bay window we have at the house.  So, that idea wasn't new.  But, doing one with the open doorway and blowing out the lights outside was what really caught my eye with the picture I saw.  As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to shoot one at our front door.

I got home from work that Friday and had Paige change into her black dress.  The dress worked perfectly because it is somewhat form fitting and really shows off the curves of her body, especially in profile with the belly sticking out.

I took a few test shots to figure out which shutter speed I needed to blow out the lights in the window and doorway and moved around a little bit to find the best perspective point to get as much of the entrance way in the scene as possible.  Then, it was just putting Paige in the doorway and snapping a few off to seal the deal.

I really like the way this picture turned out.  My only regret is not masking out the rail, trees and bushes outside the doorway when I dialed up the contrast to make those a little less visible.  But, I still like it regardless.

Let me know what you think.

T.

33/52 - Floating

This is a picture that I've had in mind for a while.  I've tried this type of a picture before using myself as kind of a joke, but really liked it, so I figured I would do it with Paige at some point as well.  It's a pretty simple multi-picture composite.

One shot is just of the background - empty living room with the coffee table and couch.  The second shot was of Paige sitting on the coffee table.  The third picture was of me holding the pillows in mid-air.
I layered the second and third picture on top of the background image, then erased everything except for Paige and the pillows.  I then moved Paige up a little bit to make it look like she was floating and that was about it.

It was a pretty easy picture to take and the most difficult thing to do was masking out around Paige's body and around the edges of the pillows.  Other than that...easy peasy.

Let me know what you think.

T.

32/52 - Belly Shirt

A friend of Paige's recently had a maternity shoot done and got a picture that looked like this one.  Paige saw it on Facebook and showed it to me.  I really liked the picture a lot and asked her if she wanted to take one like it.  I immediately knew where I wanted to shoot the picture and just needed to get her on board with standing out next to the house to let me capture it.

Her friend's picture was next to an old barn or something because the background was of worn, cracked, faded wood.  I knew I didn't have anything like that around our house, but we do have a brick wall on one side of the house that I thought would look great behind her.

So, I set up the light out in the drive way, got the lighting set the way I wanted it and had her come out.  She was a little embarassed to be standing outside with her belly hanging out while I was shooting.  Every time she would see someone coming down the street, walking by or going past our house, she would run back into the garage so that they wouldn't see her.

After a few shots, I got the one that I wanted...all in all, it took about 5 minutes to set up and 5 minutes to shoot (including the time she spent hiding in the garage).

In post-processing, I turned up the contrast a little, darkened the colors of the bricks and added a little extra blur on the background, so it would fade out a little bit and not be so pronounced.  Then, I just cropped it the way she wanted and that was it.

Let me know what you think.

T.

31/52 - Stormy Sunset

Throughout the late summer in Arizona, it is pretty typical for a thunderstorm to develop almost every night.  Some are longer than others and some don't amount to much, but they come through quite a bit.  We were in Phoenix the first week of August and got to see these storms 5 of the 7 nights we were there.  I guess this time of the year is their 'rainy' season, so they get pretty frequent storms.  They don't hit the city very much because the heat radiated off of the concrete downtown rises and pushes the storms away.  But, if you're in any of the outside suburbs, you usually get hit.

We were on the north side of Phoenix in Scottsdale, and I guess we were far enough away from downtown because we got hit a lot. 

One of the last couple of days we were there, we got back from dinner around sunset and I thought it looked really pretty with all of the clouds coming in for the nightly storm.  So, I went in, grabbed my camera, tripod and shutter release cable, and headed out onto the balcony.  As the sun set further and the colors really started to come out, I snapped off quite a few pictures.  I got a couple of panoramic shots of the sunset which turned out nicely, but this is one of my favorite shots from the evening.  The clouds coming in really made the colors pop and you can see several different areas in the frame where it is actually raining. 
I got a few more pictures of the crazy clouds that were coming through and even a few pictures of lightning, but none of those were good enough to really post.

It was fun standing around for the hour or so that I did, just watching the sunset and trying to get different images that really showed how pretty it was. 

Let me know what you think.

T.

P.S.
Here is the sunset panoramic picture that I got. You can see more of the rain in this picture in several different areas.

30/52 - Grand Canyon

I've always wanted to go to the Grand Canyon.  Especially more recently, as I've gotten more into photography and have a better camera.  As I've posted a few times on this blog, I really like taking panorama pictures.  I'll grab a bunch of frames and stitch them all together in Photoshop to put together different panos.  When I hiked a couple miles down into the Grand Canyon, there were plenty of opportunities to get great photos, especially great panos. 

This picture is a combination of 11 different pictures all stitched together.  Technically, I didn't really need 11 pictures, but I overlapped them quite a bit, just to make sure the image didn't get screwed up when I went to stitch it together.  That's happened to me before, where I've missed overlapping a picture slightly, and it messed up the entire picture.  I didn't want that to happen here, so I erred on the side of caution.

Paige's dad and I hiked down into the Canyon on the South Kaibab trail from the South Rim.  I believe the South Kaibab trail goes all the way down to the river, but since we were only there for the morning, we just went a short way in. 

This photo was put together at the 'Ooh-Aah Point', named after the fact that when you get there and look out at the vista, everyone naturally says 'oooh' and 'aaah'.  Kind of cheesy, but it works.
We continued hiking for another half hour or so downward, decided to call it quits, since it was going to be a steep hike back out and headed back.  We were on our second day of hiking at this point (after hiking 10 miles with 7,000 feet elevation change the day before) so we were already tired.  We also had a 4+ hour drive back to Phoenix that afternoon and didn't want to over extend ourselves.

The two days of hiking were a great time and this photo really doesn't do the Grand Canyon justice as to how enormously big and beautiful it is.  It is a spectacular place and I can't wait to get back and hike even further down into it and get some more great pictures.

Let me know what you think.

T.

29/52 - Homeless

When I was walking around New Orleans a few weeks ago, I really wanted to try to get out at night and do a little bit of people watching and possibly try 'street photography' a bit.  What I mean by 'street photography' is simply to capture a candid image of a person or people, without them knowing I was shooting them.  Hopefully, in New Orleans, I'd be able to get an interesting person or group of people that could make an interesting image, so I thought I'd try it out.

I made a couple laps around Bourbon Street, trying to find something of interest...I know, being on Bourbon Street, there should be plentiful opportunities to find something interesting.  I shot a lot of pictures, a couple of them decent, many that were just boring, but this one really caught my eye.

I passed this guy the my first trip down the street and thought that he would make an interesting image.  I'm nervous shooting pictures of complete strangers and even more nervous that they would catch me shooting them, which could get akward.  So, I didn't stop right away and take his picture.  I kept walking down the street, but the further I got, I convinced myself that I would regret not taking the picture.  So, I walked the couple blocks back towards the guy and stopped in a doorway to an apartment or something, half hidden, and composed my picture.  I snapped off a couple of shots and was really pleased with the way it came out.  I felt this whole scene really makes this guy look like he feels lonely and isolated from everyone else.  Although there are a lot of people out on the street, there isn't anyone close to him.  I felt like it made a pretty good scene.

So, happy that I got the picture I wanted to take, I kept on walking, stopping every now and again to grab pictures of everything that was going on.  This ended up being my favorite picture from the trip.

Let me know what you think.

T.

28/52 - New Orleans - Tilt Shift

I know that I say this a lot, but this is another picture that I've been wanting to attempt for a little while now.  I've seen this effect done many times before and never knew that I could do it, using a standard lens, until just recently.  There are lenses out there designed to produce this effect, specifically the Lensbaby line, but I didn't realize the same effect could just be applied in Photoshop.  I'm sure the effect isn't the same as if you were to capture it using a special tilt-shift lens, but I thought it still looked kind of cool.

My example here isn't a great one for a few reasons.
1.  I don't have very much height compared to the subject I'm trying to bring the effect on: the people down on the street.  To really achieve this the best way possible, I'd need to be higher up.
2.  I took it during the night and its' not an overly well lit photo.  I know you can still get a good tilt-shift photo done at night time, but I'd need a little more light on the subjects to make it better.
3.  I think I might have over applied the effect.  I think that I blurred out the other areas of the photo a little too much. 

But, the effect is noticable still the same.  The result of the effect is to make the subject look almost 'miniature' or look like a small model replica of the scene you're shooting.  There is one single band of the photo that is in focus and everything else is out of focus, which, for whatever reason, makes the subjects look small or fake.

So, a few weeks ago, I was traveling through New Orlans visiting a customer.  Luckily, we stayed in a hotel right on Bourbon Street.  It wasn't quite as crazy as I thought or had pictured it was going to be, but it was still farily busy for only being a Wednesday night.  I walked around for the evening with my camera, snapping pictures of whatever I could find that I thought was interesting and got some decent ones.  Then, I decided to go up on the balcony of the hotel and try getting pictures of the crowd with the intention of putting together this tilt-shift photo.  I was using my 50mm lens, so that on top of my cropped sensor camera body resulted in about a 85-90mm zoom in my veiwfinder.  Being that I was only on the second level of the hotel, I didn't have a very wide angle or zoomed out shot that I could put together.  I decided to try it anyway and took several photos with multiple different exposure times from 1/30th second all the way to 30 seconds, just seeing what the difference did on the people walking around and the feel of the picture in general.

I ended up deciding on using a photo with one of the quicker shutter speeds (1/30 - 1/15 second) in order to somewhat freeze the movement of the people on the street.  There is still some blurring and visible movement, but for the most part, the people are still defined.

From there, I used a technique that I looked up on-line to mimic the tilt-shift style and applied the effect to the photo and this is the result. 

Let me know what you think.

T.

Follow up:

I went back in to the image and tweaked the blur to lower it a little bit.  I think that it looks better this way.  Let me know what you think.

27/52 - Morning Run

When we first got Ellie, I used to take her out for walks or runs in the morning. I wanted to try to burn off as much of her energy as possible because we were going to put her in her cage for the rest of the day while Paige and I were at work.

We got her in October, so for the first several months, our morning walks / runs would be in the dark. We bought reflectors to put on her legs so that she would be visible to cars. Our neighborhood doesn't have many streetlights and doesn't have any sidewalks, so we would have to be on the road. I would wear my own reflectors and carry a flashlight so that we could be as visible as possible while walking down the road.

I wanted to get a simple picture of Ellie and I just standing together with our reflectors on. I didn't want our bodies to be in it, just our legs and feet. I've seen pictures where runners will just shoot their shoes or race tags or whatnot and I kind of wanted to emulate one of those pictures.

Let me know what you think.

T.

26/52 - A Woman's World

OK, I'm a bit behind getting pictures posted here.  Not necessarily behind in taking them, but I've been pretty busy the last few weeks and haven't been able to get any posted.

Here is a picture that I put together with Paige a few weeks ago and just forgot to get it posted.  I had the idea that I wanted to do a silly photo that was exaggerated.  The first thing that came to mind was the old macho saying that a woman's place is 'barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen'.  Since my wife is pregnant now and routinely walks around the house barefoot, I thought that it was really funny and would fit.
So, we set up the kitchen to make it look a mess, threw some flour around and had Paige wipe it on her face, shirt and pants to make it look like she was working really hard, then got the lights all set up.

It was actually a pretty easy picture to take and was kind of fun.

Sorry for the short description, but I'm still incredibly busy with work now and need to get back to it!

Let me know what you think.

T

25/52 - Waiting

I've seen a couple of images like this and really wanted to try one out for myself.  I wanted to try a picture with a 'blown out' window (meaning there is little to no detail in the highlight) and with Paige laying on a white cover or sheet or something to give the picture a overall high key effect.  I like the way these pictures look as they kind of make it look a little dreamy.

I knew the room and window that I wanted to use in the house, since it is one of the few large windows we have that gets direct sunlight in the afternoon.  On top of that, the bed in that room has a white comforter and pillows, which makes it even better.

So, the other afternoon, before dinner, when the evening sun was shining directly onto that window, I had Paige come up and lay on the bed.  We tried a couple of different poses, with her looking at the camera and looking away, but I think that this one is the best.  It gives a feel to the image that Paige is daydreaming and thinking about the baby to come, just lost in the moment.  To me, it's a very calm, relaxing picture.

I kind of messed up the picture a little bit in that, preparing to take this photo, I was using a different lens, trying to get this same effect.  I had to boost the ISO up pretty high to achieve the blown out window while maintaining a relatively fast shutter speed.  I didn't like that and switched to my 50mm f/1.8 so that I could open up the aperture and have a fast shutter and give me a great depth of focus.  Well, I forgot to lower my ISO, so when I opened up the pictures on the computer, they had a bunch of noise in them from the high ISO and my point of focus (Paige's face) wasn't very sharp.  So, I tried cleaning it up as much as I could in Photoshop.

I really like the way it turned out, minus the mistakes.  I've got a few other ideas in mind that I'm going to try with this same concept, but really open up my lens and close down the depth of focus to a minimal distance.  But, I'll have to save those for another post.

Let me know what you think.

T

24/52 - Painted Hands

We finally got our nursery painted in preparation for our baby boy.  We picked a very masculine baby blue, painted the room and got all of the furniture arranged.  Now, we've just got 3 months left and we can finally put the baby in his own room.  We can't wait and get more excited each day waiting to meet him.

It took me a couple of evenings after work to get the room painted and after my first night of painting, I noticed how much paint I got on my hands.  After seeing the paint on my hands and seeing some of it flake off, this idea came to mind.  I wanted to get a shot with my hands covered in paint and make it look pretty weathered and cracked.

So, after my final night of painting, I took the rollers and ran them over each of my hands a couple of times.  In order for it to look weathered and cracked properly, I kept working while the paint was drying.  So, I grabbed my touch-up brush and went about finishing up a few extra spots around the room.  After about 20 minutes of opening and closing my hands while the paint was drying, it looked a lot like what I was going for.  The fingers had worn away where I was holding the brush and roller and the paint on my palms were really cracked and peeling away.

I went downstairs, got my light set up the way I wanted and fired off a few shots.   The hardest part about it was getting my hands in the right position for the shot.  I put the camera on a 2 second delay and started shooting.  I wanted the shadows to come across my hands at a pretty hard angle to really give texture to the cracking paint, but if I had my hands turned slightly the wrong way, or my fingers bent too much, they would throw shadows across the rest of my hand, so it took a few shots to get it just right.

I really like the way the shot came out.  The paint doesn't look quite as blue as it does in the room, but I still like it.

Let me know what you think.

T.

23/52 - Feeling Bubbly

This is a picture that I've been wanting to do for a while as well.  I've had this idea sketched out for a few months, but never got around to actually putting it together.  I found the sketch that I had drawn with the idea the other day when going back through a notebook of mine and decided to finally try to get it done.

It's really a pretty simple set up.  I filled a large, clear plastic salad serving bowl (square) about 3/4 of the way with water.  Then, I just squirted some liquid dish soap into it and blew into it with a straw to get the bubbles.

For the colors I had a flash on either side of the bowl, one with a red gel and one with a blue gel.  After getting the power levels right and getting the camera settings how I wanted it, I snapped off a few pictures and that was about it!  I really wanted the colors to pop and I tried to get them split about as evenly as possible. 

I had a 3rd flash set up behind the bowl pointing at a white board that I used as a background.  That flash didn't add much to the lighting, but it helped make the water at the very bottom white and it brought just a little detail out in the bubbles as well.

That's about it.  Pretty easy shot of some bubbles.

Let me know what you think.

T.

22/52 - Back to the drawing board

This last week, I was finally able to put together a picture that I've been wanting to do for a while now.

My Brother-In-Law, Chad, has been living with us for the last month as he's been transitioning from moving out of Illinois to figuring out what he wants to do.  He just accepted a job as a camp counselor in the mountains around Asheville, NC and moved out this week.  So, the last night before he left, I figured I needed to get this shot done or the opportunity would pass me by.

Chad is an artist and Art, or Sketch Art (or something like that), is one of the majors that he got from Northern Illinois University.  So, I wanted to do a picture that showcased one of his drawings along with him actually drawing.  I wanted it to show his creativity coming to life or something like that.  I had a rough idea of the picture that I wanted to get and a basic idea of how I wanted to do it.  I've tried this technique before (layering multiple images together) but haven't ever done it with this much detail in the image.

So, while he was at work the other day, I got everything set up the way I wanted it and fired off several test shots to make sure I had the lighting the way I wanted and the room set up properly to get the image I was after.  Once he got home, I laid out the idea to him and we went to work.

It really only took about 10 minutes to get the shots that I wanted, so it was a pretty easy shooting process.  The thing that took the most time was the post processing.

I used the shot of Chad sitting at the desk as my 'background' image, the one I'd layer all of the other images on top of.  Then I put the image of him on the right side of the desk on top of that, and erased everything out of the image with the exception of him and his shadow.  Then, I did the same thing with the image of him on the left of the desk.  Then, I took one of his drawings that I got off of his website, Screw'dTopia, and layered that one on top of all of them.  I blended the drawing in so that it would show all of the shadows and subtle lighting changes through, so that it looks like it's actually drawn on the wall, rather than just pasted into the image.  Then, I just had to erase the drawing where it was covering his body.  After that, I did some final processing to the entire image where I enhanced the contrast, adjusted the highlights and shadows and a few other things to make it look more gritty and slightly cartoony itself.

Overall, I was extremely happy with the end result.  It came out better than I had it imagined, which is always a fun thing.

Let me know what you think.

T.

21/52 - Neighborly Dogs

A month or so ago, I took a picture of our puppy, Ellie, and put it out on Facebook, just because I was bored and felt like getting another picutre of her.  It's different than the one I've posted on this blog as it's just a head shot on a black background.  Well, my neighbor saw the picture and REALLY liked it, so she asked me if I would try to take a picture of their dogs.  It took me a little while to actually get it done, but this last weekend, she came over with their two dogs and I got to shooting.

One of the dogs is a tiny little Chug (Chihuahua / Pug mix), Riley.  She's about 5 pounds soaking wet.  She is a really cute and sweet little dog and was very easy to photograph.  Jodi (neighbor) held her in place on our coffee table and when I gave the magic words (Chicken Bone) she let go, the dog's ears perked up and I shot the picture.  For whatever reason, the dog perks up when you say that, so I got a couple of good pictures out of it.

The second dog, Abby, is quite a bit older and is probably on her last legs in life, so they wanted to try to get a good picture of her before she passed.  She's also fairly small at maybe 15-20 lbs or so.  I'm not sure what type of dog she is, and I don't think they're too sure either.  Since she's so old, she wasn't much a fan of having her picture taken.  She didn't want to look at the camera and pretty much just wanted to lay down on the table.  I guess she gets stressed out pretty easily in new, unfamiliar environments, so she didn't like my coffee table much.  So, I tried all of her keywords, but didn't really get much out of her.

Then, we tried them both together.  Again, Riley, posed for the camera, but Abby just laid there.

 

It was fun trying to shoot pictures of someone else's dogs for a change.  Jodi said that she really liked the pictures and has posted them all over the place, so I'm happy about that.

 Let me know what you think.

T.

20/52 - Window View

Going along with all of the pregnancy pictures that I've been taking, I figured I'd post another one.  I know the theme of these pictures is starting to look very repetitive, but oh well, I've got a pregnant wife, so I'm going to capture it!

We did one of these pictures before when she was just over 3 months pregnant and really liked the way it turned out.  So, we decided to do antoher one this month, but she wore a light blue sports bra (boy) this time, instead of the pink one she wore before. 

This picture was really easy to set up in that I just needed her to stand in front of a window.   I think the most difficult thing about it for her was getting her hair to stay up...it required a few bobby pins to keep her bangs from falling in her face.

I really like this type of a picture since it is kind of a mix between a silhouette and a portrait.  I like the fact that when you first look at it, it looks like a silhouette, but then as you look more, you can see all of the detail still in her face and body. 

It's been a lot of fun getting to document and capture the changes in her body and the 'feellings' that we've had going through the pregnancy so far.  I'm really looking forward to the next few months and getting images as things get closer to the end!

Let me know what you think.

T.

19/52 - Baby Momma

Earlier this week, I had a picture come to mind that I wanted to try to capture of Paige.  Thus far, most of the pictures I've done of her have been more serious or just showing her belly or just her head or something, so I wanted to get something a little more fun.  I wanted it to look a little more like she was dancing or celebrating or something like that.

I had a specific pose that I wanted to try to get, but didn't know if I'd be able to pull it off due to my lack of a real 'studio' or really even very much space to get it all done.

So, after getting home from work, I asked her to put on the dress I had in mind, a bright pink dress she bought for a wedding, and I got busy setting up the shot.

We started off with a few of the poses I had in mind, then changed it up a bit and tried a few other shots as well.  I was right that we didn't really have enough room to pull off the actual pose I wanted to get because she couldn't extend her arm all of the way and I couldn't get her feet in the picture either.  So, I had to crop in a little bit so that I could get the entire background as uniform as possible, without seeing the outer edges of the bedskirt I was using as a background.

But, we ended up getting a picture that was very similar to what I had in mind.  If I thoguht Paige could jump without hurting herself or the baby, I would have tried something like that too, but even not pregnant, she doesn't have hopps, so I didn't want to push my luck with the baby! 

Below is the end result.  I had to over expose slightly to blow out the background so that it went completely white, then clone out some of the wrinkles you could still see.
Oh, and if you noticed, her dress wasn't bright pink any more either.  In Photoshop, I used a "replace color" tool that allowed me to select all of the different shades of pink of her dress, then adjust the hue to get a different collor.  It ended up changing some of her skin color too (since there is some pink in her skin) but a quick layer mask got rid of that.  I thought light blue would be a little more appropriate for a baby boy than the bright pink dress...just a personal opinion.














Let me know what you think.

T.

18/52 - Belly Ribbon

I know I've been doing a lot of pictures of Paige and her belly as my weekly updates, but since she's pregnant and I want to document the pregnancy, that's what gets shot the most.  Plus, I've been kind of lazy at shooting other things, so these will most likely continue.

This week, Paige crossed the half way mark.  She was 20 weeks on Wednesday, so she is officially half way home!  It's crazy to think that she has been pregnant for 5 months now...it really doesn't seem like it has been that long.

As an added bonus this week, we had another ultrasound and they were able to tell us that we're going to be having a little boy!  We are both really excited about it, especially since Paige has thought that it was going to be a boy from the start.  She's had dreams that it was a boy and everything.

So, this week, I wanted to get a picture of her with the indication that the baby was a boy, so she bought some baby blue ribbon to tie around her belly.  I know there are tons of these types of pictures around, but I still really wanted to get one.  We tried a couple of different poses, but ended up liking this one the best. 
It is a pretty simple picture, but I think that it's really cute and a fun way to let people know we're having a boy.

Just for fun, I'm throwing in a couple of pictures that we got from the sonogram.  One is just a profile picture of the baby's upper body and the other is the definitive picture of him being a boy.

 

Here are the two pictures that we got from the Sonogram. 

It's a Boy!!!!!







Little Baby Roberts!



Let me know what you think.

T.

17/52 - Washington, D.C.

This last weekend Paige and I took a trip out to Washington, D.C. It's just a 5.5 hour drive from our place and we've been wanting to go ever since we moved out here. My aunt and unlce live just outside of the city in Chevy Chase, MD, so we used their house as home base for the long weekend. They were wonderful hosts and my Uncle Mark rode into the city with us on Friday and spent the day touring around with us. Outside of all of the touring, we kept it pretty low key. They grilled out both nights and had very nice dinners out in their back yard. I couldn't have handled going out and partying with all of the biking, walking and standing we were doing during the day.

We brought our bikes with us since there is a bike path that goes from Bethesda (right next to Chevy Chase) all the way into D.C. and it would be a very convenient way to get into town and around the city. It was a 10 mile ride on the bike path from their house to the Lincoln Memorial.

Friday, we headed in and really hit a lot of the National Mall. We started at the Lincoln Memorial, where the trail dropped us off, then hit the Vietnam Memorial, WWII memorial, Washington Monument, the White House, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the Capitol and the Library of Congress all before heading back home. Between the ride into the city, around the National Mall and back home, we put in about 25 miles on our bikes. It was a long day.

Saturday, we decided to put our bikes on the Metro and head in that way, rather than riding in. We took the Metro to Gallaudet University (the biggest deaf college in the US). Since almost all of Paige's sign language instructors attended school there, she really wanted to go see it. From there, we rode our bikes back downtown and hit up the National Archives, Smithsonian Natural History and American History museums, then rode across the Potomac to Arlington National Cemetary. Again, it was another long day, capped off by a 1.5 hour commute on the Metro, due to construction and delays (coupled with a screaming baby) which made it seem even longer.

All in all, it was a great weekend. It was a lot of fun getting to D.C. since it was both of our first time to go there. Having the bikes was critical to getting to see as much as we did and I was really glad we brought them.

There is still a lot of stuff that we didn't get to see, but we hit a lot of the big points. I can't wait to go back again.

I didn't take a whole lot of artistically inspired pictures, but rather a lot of touristy pictures (I've been Here, type) so there isn't anything really special about a lot of them. As I get through the rest of the photos I took, I might come back and post some more, so check back.

This is a photo I got of the Washington Monument. It's a 2 picture verticle panoramic that I stitched together in Photoshop, then converted to B&W.

Paige and I in front of the White House. The President or Prime Minister of Israel was in town, I believe, so they had extra security and had the perimiter pushed even further back. We are standing on the Elipse, which is across the street from the White House. Normally, you can get right up to the fence.

Here are a few more pictures that I got while we were walking around.  I finally got them processed and uploaded to the computer.  I put a certain style of processing on these pictures that really bumps up the contrast, brings out more details and gives an older, kind of grainy look to them a little bit.

I then either converted them to 100% black and white, or I desaturated them about 75% where there is still  a little bit of color remaining.

Arlington Cemetery



Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

 

Seating at 'Unknown' Ampitheater





The "West Face" of the US Capitol



US National Archives



Smithsonian Natural History Museum

Let me know what you think.

T.

16/52 - Baby Bump

Paige is actually starting to show now and has almost fully transitioned into her maternity clothes. She thinks that she's getting 'fat' and looks too big, but I think she's beautiful and looks great. She can still fit into some of her regular clothes but is wearing more materinty than not.

I wanted to get another picture to kind of showcase her belly. I thought that by using cross lighting, I could get a nice shadow going right down the middle of her belly to really show off the bump and really bring out some of the detail of the curve.

Both of the lights are set at the same power to try to get the same amount of light on either side of her body, but the left light was placed slightly in front of her and the back light was slightly behind her, so I cross-lit her at an angle. I thought this would bring a little more shadow on her body and give it a little more of a 'key & rim light' feel.

It took a little bit to get the light placement and camera settings the way I wanted, but I was pretty happy with the way it came out.

I really like the 'low key' style of pictures because it really makes your subject stand out against a black background and I think the darkness really gives it a different feeling.

I wish I would have gotten more definition in her clothes, so they didn't look like they completely blend in with the background, but I guess I could go in and change that up a bit in PS if I wanted to.

Anyway, I'm sure there will be more of these pictures to come as her belly continues to get bigger!

Let me know what you think.



T.

15/52 - 5 o'clock somewhere

I havne't had much time to get out and shoot over the last couple of weeks.

I got this picture 2 weeks ago while I was just messing around outside. I wanted to try to balance ambient light with the flash. I think that the picture turned out fairly well, withe the exception that the entire image looks a little underexposed. I wish I would have slowed down the shutter just a bit to bring in more ambient light and brighten the flash...but, it was my first time trying to do this, so I'll just live and learn.

This was taken while Paige was on spring break and back home in Chicago for the week, hence the beer and cigar, haha.

The set up for the shot is pretty simple, I've just got one light, set around 1/4 power camera left, 7 feet high and 10 feet away from me.

It took a few shots to get the exposure the way I wanted it (even though now I realize it's too dark) and it was tough getting the focus correct, as I was shooting this all myself.

So, it took some time, which I didn't have much of becuase the sun was quickly setting, but I eventually got something.

I'd like to try this again, when I can get one of Paige against the sunset. I think that would look pretty nice.

Let me know what you think.

T.

14/52 - Beauty Lighting

This week I wanted to try out a lighting style that I saw on a post from Scott Kelby. I really liked the way this lighting style made the subject look as the background is completely blown out with some of the light wrapping around the subject's face. Then, just firing one light to brighten the face. I think that it gives a very natural and flattering looking light to the subject.

It's a very easy set up, with just the two lights, so it really wasn't too hard to put together.

I had Paige pull her hair back so that the light coming from behind wouldn't be blocked by her hair and it would wrap around her face a little. Also, I thought it would make the lines of her face more 'clean' and less distracted.

So, Paige stepped in and I got a few pictures. I made some joke about how she was holding her head at one point and made her laugh, so I snapped another picture while she was laughing, and I really like the candid feel to that picture coupled with the lighting.

All in all, it was a really simple shoot that just took a few minutes. Post processing was easy as well as I didn't really adjust the color at all.

So, thanks to Paige for posing for me again. I really liked the way the pictures came out and will have to try this style again at some point.



Let me know what you think.

T.

13/52 - Puppy

I actually took a few pictures this last week that I could have potentially used this weeks post, but I only have one of them on my computer right now, so this is the winner!

I saw a picture this week that I wanted to try to imitate...it was a picture that someone shot of their dog. It was kind of a dog portrait, if you will. I thought it looked pretty cool and Paige has been asking me to get more pictures of Ellie, so I figured I'd try it out.

I don't really like the background that I got in this picture, so I'm going to try to tweak it a little an see if I can come up with anything better in the future. I've seen a technique for putting in a background during post-processing, so I might try that as well. I might try to shoot it again and if I do, I'll re-post another picture.

I liked the lighting that I got on her, but again, could have probably done it a little better too.

It was my first time really trying to get a good picture of her, so I was happy with the first attempt...that and it took me all of 5 min to do.



Let me know what you think.

T.

12/52 - TRI

Over the last couple of weeks, I've started to notice a lot of photos using multiple lights to create a pretty dramatic look. There is typically a light on either side of the subject, creating a strong "rim" light, then another, more subtle light, in front of them to slightly fill in the shadows.

I've looked through a lot of them and thought they were really cool looking, especially for athletes. They really make the scene look a lot more intense when combined with a background, and alone, they really make the subject pop.

This last weekend, my parents were in town and I showed my dad a lot of these photos. Being that he's a professional photographer, I thought they would be a great addition to what he provides for high school seniors and athletes.

I just picked up two more flashes off of Craig's List and was eager to try them out, so, I decided that I wanted to attempt one of these pictures myself.

The set up was pretty basic. I hung a black sheet on the wall and stood in front of it. On either side of me, about 5 feet away and slightly behind me, were bare flashes aimed at me. In front of me was another flash, but that one was shooting through an umbrella. Pretty simple set up.

I didn't expect to be posting any of the pictures from the shoot, since I was just trying out the lighting set up, but I really liked the way it came out, so I thought I'd put it up.

After I edited the photo to make it look a little more dramatic, I cropped it so that I would have a lot of extra space around me. I did that to show my dad that you could put a school's logo or team name or something like that in the extra space to personalize the picture even more.

I didn't have a school name or anything to put with mine, so I thought I'd fill it in with the different events in a triathlon, since I've done so many of those over the last several years.

(And, I just realized, after posting this, that I have the order of events backwards for the race. I'm an idiot. When I correct the photo, I'll post it again)

I thought tha the picture ended up looking like an advertisement and really liked the way it turned out.

I'll have to try it a few more times and actually get a real athlete to pose for me!



- Updated image with correct sequence of events.

- Another update. Changed lighting ratios slightly.

Let me know what you think.

T.