Lazy Saturday Coffee

One thing that stays fairly constant each day is that I get up and make coffee.  Over the last 7 years, I've really grown to appreciate a nice cup of coffee in the morning.  I used to not like coffee at all...then I entered the working world and really started to find myself drawn to it.  I'm not a coffee snob by any means.  I'll drink whatever coffee is brewing in the pot at work, but I almost always have to add cream and sugar to it.  I still haven't quite acquired the taste for black coffee yet.  I'm sure I'll eventually grow into that too, but it is going to take some more time.  Right now, the creamers of choice is International Delight Pumpkin Spice and Cold Stone Creamery...yum.

The only thing that makes Saturdays any different is that I actually get to sit down and enjoy my coffee in the morning, rather than taking it in the car and drinking it on the way to work.  This Saturday was especially enjoyable because it was snowing outside, my baby boy was in a good mood and hanging out with me in the family room and my wife was able to sleep in.  She has to deal with him every morning, so I'm happy to take him on the weekend mornings and let her recover a bit from her crazy weeks with him.

This Saturday, I wanted to try to capture a pretty simple picture that would convey the comfort and relaxed mood that I felt today.  It was a very relaxing morning, hanging out with my baby boy, enjoying my coffee.  It was a morning that makes me smile and really enjoy life.

Let me know what you think.

T.

Snowy Night

We're finally starting to get a little bit of snow up here in Chicago.  We went through a historic snow 'drought' of around 340 consecutive days without measurable snow.  They consider 1" or more 'measurable', so we've gotten some dustings here and there, but no real snow.
That all finally broke last week when we got a whopping 1.1" of snow at O'Hare...woot!
Since then, we've gotten a couple other days worth of snow, neither counting as measurable, but it looks pretty while it's falling. 

Yesterday, while sitting at my desk at work, I looked out the window and it was near white-out conditions.  Snow was falling like crazy and they were pretty big flakes.  This comes the day after it was 63 degrees and we got about 3" of rain.  So, while I was sitting at work, I was visualizing a picture I wanted to take...big fluffy flakes gently falling down with my wife standing out in the yard.  Unfortunately as the day went on, the flakes got smaller and the wind got stronger.  Temperatures continued to plunge and the snow was blowing around like crazy.

By the time I got home, the storm was all but over and there were these little, tiny flakes blowing around.  Nonetheless, I still wanted to try to get a snow picture.  I knew I wouldn't have the day light to get the picture I had in mind, but I thought I'd try a different technique I've seen done on-line and have tried once before myself.  I wanted to get a back lit picture - 41/52 "Silhouette" from April 2012 - but I also wanted to try to capture the snow that was still falling.  I've seen pictures of people in the rain with an umbrella, back lit by a strobe and the rain is highlighted, so I wanted to try something like that.

I took my light and camera outside to see if I could even capture the snow, since the flakes were so small, I didn't know if they would even be visible.  I set up a garbage can to act as us and hid the light behind it.  After snapping a few pictures, I thought the light worked well enough to highlight some of the snow, but it really didn't look all that awesome.

I went back inside and though I'd just be done for the night, since the snow wasn't all that great.  But, my wife is a good sport and said that if I wanted to try it, she would come out and we could do it anyway.  So, after a few more minutes of messing around with a second light, I took the gear back outside and set it up again. 

I put the back light in position, then put Paige where I wanted us to stand, then set up my camera.  I took a few test pictures to make sure everything was working correctly, set and locked the focus, then turned the timer on and hopped in the picture myself.  It took two shots with me actually in the picture to get the one we ended up using, so it was a pretty quick shoot.  Including set up time, we were outside for probably a total of 5 minutes.  Easy peasy.

I was pretty disappointed with the pictures when I looked at them on my camera and thought the shoot was going to be a bust.  After I got back inside and zoomed in on the pics, they started looking a little better.  Once I got them pulled onto my computer, they looked a lot better.  The snow was very distinct, albeit small, but it gave it a cool effect. 

I tweaked the image in Lightroom to set the proper black and white points, add a little fill light and really make the snow flakes pop.  Then I pulled it into Photoshop to crop it and take out a few distractions.  Originally, the image was captured in portrait orientation, but after cropping it, I extended the frame left and right and cloned in some of the snow to make it more landscape oriented, rather than portrait.

In the end, I was really happy with the picture.  Are there a few things I would change?  Sure, but I really liked how this first attempt turned out.

Let me know what you think.

T.

Man's Best Friend

It's been a while since I've gotten a good picture of our puppy, so while my wife and son were napping today, I thought I'd try to get one done.  I set up my new backdrop behind the couch and called her up to the seat.  She is typically eager to get on the couch as much as possible, to the point that we've got a blanket over 1/3 of our couch, specifically as her 'spot'.  She loves sitting up there with us.

We've got a large set of windows in our family room and I knew it would work well for a natural light photo.  While it was kind of cloudy outside and not overly bright, I knew the camera I was using (Canon 1D mkIII) would be able to pump up the ISO to keep it properly lit.

I grabbed some treats, to keep her attention and went about trying to grab a shot of her.  I dangled the treat above the lens to keep her looking at the camera and made noises to get her ears perked up...once I saw them perk up, I snapped a couple shots.  This went on for a few minutes until I could see that she was losing interest pretty quickly.  Finally, she just laid her ears back, put her head down and quit responding to treats and whistles.  I got a few images in the 5 minutes the shoot took and this one was by far the best of the group.

In post processing, I put a couple of textures on the background that I found on-line.  I wanted to at least give it a little bit of interest, but not make it dominate the picture.  I lowered the opacity of the layers down to 15-25% each and blurred them to keep them looking like background, rather than a separate layer.  I was pretty pleased with the way the layers came out, but wished I could make them slightly blurrier without making them weird.

I really like the tones and colors of the image.  I like the combination of the different textures of the couch, dog and background and how the image is just slightly darker overall with the emphasis on the puppy.  It is a very casual pose for her, but I think that she still looks pretty cool.

Let me know what you think.

T.

Daily Shots

I think that a lot of the time that I think about taking pictures, of my son, wife, friends, dog, whatever, I always think of them as 'staged' or 'posed' shots.  Even if some of them come off fairly candid or off the cuff, I always try to plan them out and have my subjects act like they are candid shots.
I rarely take my camera and try to capture truly candid shots, of my son playing, of my wife sitting around or of the puppy just laying on the couch.  I'm always trying to think of a way to pose them to get better light, to use flashes to try to manipulate or shape the light more...I never really just shoot.

I'm trying to make it a goal of mine to try to get more candid shots.  It's not going to be long before my son grows up and doesn't want me shooting pictures of him.  I want to take advantage of the times that I have to capture a completely inquisitive mind playing with his toys or creating scenes in his head and acting them out on the furniture.  I want to try to capture those precious moments where he is in his own little world playing and having fun.  It's not very often that we get to really catch those moments, so I want to try to get as many as I can.

For these, I'm just going to rely on whatever lighting is available...be it natural light or the lights in our house and really focus on catching those moments that make my heart melt.  I'm not going to try to pose him to get better shots, or move things around to de-clutter the scene...I just want him to be himself, and try to catch/preserve as many memories as possible.

He is growing up so fast now.  I know it is cliche, but it really does seem like it was just a few months ago that we brought him home from the hospital.  Now, he's running around, climbing on everything possible, driving cars down his slide and trying to ride the dog.  Before I know it, these moments too will be gone and my little guy is going to be all grown up.

Let me know what you think.

T.

New background

For Christmas this year my wife and in-laws bought me a background stand and a couple roles of background paper, among many other generous things.  I had yet to take the wrapping off of the background paper and was getting antsy to set it up and use it.  Last night, before putting our little boy down to bed, I decided to set up the stands, open the paper and try a quick photo shoot. 

So, even though our son was in his PJs, drinking his nightly bottle, I thought I could throw his pea coat and scarf on him and no one would know the difference.  So, I set up my small soft box, adjusted the light and camera to how I wanted it, put his coat and scarf on and got to work.

Unfortunately, as he was winding down for the night, he was not quite in the mood to cooperate with a photo shoot.  He is getting increasingly curious about everything, and a brand new role of paper hanging from a pole was just something new to check out.  He wanted to play with the paper, hitting it, pulling at it, almost tearing it a few times and wanted to do anything other than stand still and look at me.  We tried giving him his bottle, standing him up really quickly, yelling, cheering, whatever we could do to get his attention, but he just wanted to play with the paper.  My wife would hold him, making sure he was standing in the middle of the roll, then let go and jump out of the scene really quickly and I would try to snap off a few pictures before we completely lost him.  This happened a few times until he finally gave up, sat down and tore my paper.  Luckily, the background paper roll is 36' long, so I've got plenty of paper to spare.

I took about 25 shots, but really only got 5 shots of him even remotely looking at the camera.  The entire shoot only took about 5 minutes and he was out of his jacket and finishing off his bottle before bed.
This is the only shot that turned out pretty well.  He's half turning, looking at the camera, looking like he's going to say something.

From all of the playing that he did with the paper and the hard lighting I used, you could really see all of the crinkles in the paper that he caused.  So, in Photoshop, I took out the crinkles then added a slight pattern over the background to give it just a bit more interest.  I think it helps make a flat, somewhat boring background pop a little more.  Hopefully the pattern is muted enough that it isn't too distracting.

Either way, I was pretty happy with the way that it turned out, even though we couldn't really get him to cooperate or pay attention.  Lesson learned...don't try a photo shoot within 20 minutes of bed time...it's not going to go well!

Let me know what you think.

T.

Christmas Card

Well, it was that time of the year again to try to come up with a new, fun Christmas card idea.  I got really good comments and reaction to our card last year, so I knew I needed to try to do something creative again this year for our family photo.

I've been thinking about what photo I wanted to try to get this year for the last several months, trying to come up with a great idea.  I had a few different options that I could choose from, that I thought I'd be able to pull off pretty well, but when it actually came down to the time to shoot, none of them felt right. I needed snow to pull off a couple of them and it hadn't snowed at all yet this year.  So, those two ideas were out.  I had another thought that I was working on one night when our actual card came to mind.  So, I sketched it out, showed it to my wife and got to work trying to set it up.

I had to move all of the furniture out of the way in the family room in order to get access to the center and highest point of our room.  I then had to move the Christmas tree and string up some extra lights from the ceiling, which wasn't a small task.

Finally, I had to get the camera and lights all set up to try to get the photo I wanted.  I took several test shots and it just wasn't coming out the way I wanted.  But, we decided to push through anyway and try to get the final photo.  

I got my son up above the tree the way I wanted, got Paige posed and shot, got the dog's photo, then finally myself.  After looking at all of the images on the computer afterwards, I wasn't happy with the way my wife was posed and my son was slightly out of focus, which bugged me too.  So, we decided that we'd try it again the next night.

After getting it all set back up again the next night, I made some tweaks to the camera settings to get better focus and lighting, and we got to work.  After getting all of the images this time and looking at them on the computer, I was much happier with this set.  

I pulled them all together in photoshop, adjusted as I needed and we had our Christmas picture for the year!

The editing really only took about an hour, which isn't too bad for me doing a 6 shot composite and making everything merge properly.

I've gotten good feedback on the photo so far this year and it's been a lot of fun to show off to everyone.  

I hope you like it.

Just for fun, here is last years picture too.

Let me know what you think.  

T.

Christmas Lights

Ever since we got our tree up, right after thanksgiving, I had images of taking these pictures of our son. Early in the Christmas season, we were shopping for some more diapers for Isaac when we came across these Santa diapers.  They were so cute and I knew that they would be perfect for these pictures as well.  My mother-in-law knitted a santa stocking cap for Isaac as well, so with the combination of the diapers and cap, we could get some pretty awesome pictures.

The week before Christmas, my office let out early on both Thursday and Friday, so I had some extra time at home before dinner to try to get these pictures set up and taken.  I moved some of our furniture out of the way to open up some space, moved the baby gate we had protecting the Christmas Tree and plugged in an extra strand of lights for Isaac to play with.

I knew as soon as we moved the gate out of the way, he would immediately go for the ornaments as he always tries to grab them over the gate.  So, we put a few down at his level and let him go for it.

I had the camera set up to expose the way I wanted, so as soon as he started going for the tree, all I had to do was click away.  As suspected, he went for the first ornament he could get his hands on and pulled it off of the tree.  Shortly after that, we gave him a Christmas cookie and let him eat that while he was playing with and looking at the other strand of lights that we put out for him.

All in all, the shoot took less than 10 minutes, but we got some pictures that I really liked and that I was really happy with.

For the ornament shot, I had to crank up my ISO to 2,000 and even at that, it was barely enough.  My shutter speed was still a little low at 1/50s, even at f/2.2.
For the other shots, I was able to increase my shutter speed because there was extra light available due to the extra strand of lights.  So, I was able to keep ISO at 2,000, run shutter speed up to 1/125 or 1/200 at f/2.2.

I was really happy with the way that they turned out and will definitely try to get another set of these next year.

Let me know what you think.

T.