SuperStar!

Happy Sunday folks! I hope everyone is enjoying the last bits of their weekend. Finding time to refresh, recharge and refocus for the week ahead.
Maybe you should take a nice, long, hot, bubble bath.

Nikon D40 kit lens @ 38mm
ISO 800
Shutter speed 1/80
Aperture f/5.0
natural light

This is one of my daughters bath tub toys. Once upon a time he would spit water like a fountain. The batteries have long since died so my dear sweet child refuses to let him in the tub anymore. I feel kind of bad for the little guy so I gave him some tub time before turning the girl child loose.
There isn't anything extravagant about this photos. I will tell you that I intentionally underexposed the shot in camera so that I wouldn't blow the white highlights. I knew I was going to have to brighten things up manually using Photoshop Elements 8. Making decisions on what post processing you're going to do before shooting is always helpful.
I took a few at proper exposure in camera and sure enough, the highlights were all blown. Glad, I thought things through before hand.

My tie to Jay'me's fantastic gumballs is two fold. One the vibrant colors of Mr. Star. Two, the childlike quality that both photos possess.

Enjoy your beautiful Sunday everyone.
Our fantastic repeat guest poster Amanda will be charming us with something fantastic tomorrow.

xoxox,
Brandi

Frosty the Snowman

Brandi has been playing around with different perspectives. Scott has been using HDR and both have been getting some great shots. Poor Jay'me has been having some technical difficulties and doing a great job working with what she has. My latest photography obsession has been getting those awesome warm, glowy, Christmas lights as a background. I have spent the last few nights practicing, messing around with all my settings to get this right. It is probably because the Christmas season is in full swing. We, down in the central part of the state have no snow (all you northerners are stealing it from us) to use for my Christmas portraits, so lights it is. I actually love Christmas lights, they are one of the absolute best parts about Christmas but I have always had a hard time getting them right. So while this shot is far from exactly where I want to be, considering where I was at (read, I shudder at looking at my Christmas light picture archives) I was pretty pleased with what I got.

Nikon D2X
ISO 400
Lens My Nifty Fifty again (love this lens!!!)
Aperture - F/2.8
Shutter Speed - 1 sec.
No Flash

All I did to the picture was give it a touch of fill light in Lightroom. Mr. Snowman was an absolutely perfect subject. He never argued or gave me a goofy, unnatural smile and he always sat exactly where I wanted him to sit. I had a lot of fun practicing on him. My connection to Brandi's picture is tenuous at best. If you look at her shot you can see some holiday lights and decorations set up around the storefront, that's what I used as my connection. Sorry but it is the Christmas/holiday season and I had to jump on anything I could :).

The key to getting nice Christmas lights is to have a really, slow shutter speed, so use a tri-pod or something to help you stay steady, and as low(wide open) an aperture as you can get to get that nice blur look. Also your subject should be not too close to the lights themselves. Mr. Snowman here was a few feet away in reality, and do not, I repeat do not, use a flash unless you absolutely must. Here is an article worth reading about to help you with those holiday light pictures.

Now settle yourself down with the lights off and your holiday lights on, grab yourself a cup of hot chocolate or coffee or whatever floats your boat, and join me in enjoying this most beautiful part of the holiday season.

Orange you beautiful

Brandi here, jumping in for Jay'me who is experiencing internet troubles on a day where her English bulldog is giving birth.
The photo is Jay'me's but you get my drivel attached. Sucks to be you.

Like any good friend, I have an inbox full of pictures that Jay'me, Sere and Scott have taken. Not the photos they have for here but the photos that friends share just because. The little snippets of life, if you will.

When Jay'me sent out her distress call I knew I had something that would work. Sere's photo yesterday was all about orange. The calm glow of the sunrise that warms your heart.

I thought this picture of Jay'me's daughter M did exactly that.

Cannon EOS Rebel XT
Shutter speed 1/125sec
Aperture f/8.0
ISO 400

Who's ready for a little Wordless Wednesday tomorrow?

Strike!

Happy weekend everyone!
I hope you're all out there enjoying some free time with the ones you love.

Before we get started... You've got one more chance to get your name in the hat for this last Wordless Wednesday. All you have to do is enter your name in the comments section and you'll be entered to win. It's really easy and if you're having any trouble posting a comment just send an email to 3chicks1dudephoto@gmail.com. We'll count that too. Winner will be chosen by Random.org and announced with tonights post.



My three year old went to her first "kids from school" birthday party this morning. It was an absolute blast. The party was held at a Brunswick bowling alley where a group of wild 3 year olds attempted to bowl. Talk about comedy.
When the party got underway the bowling alley went into cosmic bowl mode. If you're not familiar with this, it's where black lights are turned on, regular lights are turned off, music plays, strobes lights swirl and everything glows neon.
This was going to pose a serious problem for taking some photos. Not one to let obstacles get in the way of a good photo opportunity, I tried to do a couple different thing to capture the glowing lights but just wasn't quite satisfied.
I tried working with slow shutter on the moving, dancing, laughing kids but nothing quite struck me.
Came home and went through all the photos and thought I had a total bust, until I saw the original version of this photo (you can see it and another potential post picture here). I thought about an option I had seen in Photoshop but had never played with. An option to make a regular photo neon.

And here you have it.

Nikon d40 kit lens
exposure 1/4sec
aperture f/4.5
ISO 800

Something a little fun, a little funky and of course my build on Scott's photo would be the connection between sports.

Tomorrow guest photographer Justin will be joining us. Stay tuned.
xoxox,
Brandi

Getting Back to my Roots

Canon 30D
Canon EF 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length 34mm
Shutter Speed 1/20, 1/50, and 1/125
Aperture f/4.5
ISO 125

Friday was a very long day. I had several meetings set-up for potential clients spread across three counties. What's more I wasn't bright enough to plan my visits in a logical manner. As such, I was in Chicago Heights for my last meeting, practically looking at Indiana right around the time rush hour starts...on a Friday evening. It wasn't looking good for a pleasant trip home. The good news is that my route could conceivably take me by the Morton Arboretum! Now we're talking! So off I went in search of some peace after a hectic day of mostly driving. This boy needed to stretch his legs. His dogs were barking!

Those of you unfamiliar with the Morton Arboretum only need to know one thing: stop what ever you're doing and go there now. I mean it. Go now. It's just a stunning place, both for it's simplicity and it's humble grandeur. Every time I go I reconnect with Ma Earth and that is something I cherish. There are four things in life I always consistently return to: music, photography, reading, and just being outdoors. This place feeds my soul.

Knowing I might be able to swing by I packed my camera and a full 10GB of memory knowing how pissed off I'd be if I ran out. I arrived just in time to enjoy that delicious late afternoon sunshine. I literally snapped 630 pics as I wandered the conifer walk, circled Lake Marmo on the West side, and stumbled upon Schulenberg Prairie, a new find for me. I just cannot put into words how this kind of place affects me. It's why photography is such an important and vital art form and why I'm so in love with it. Words just can't do what a good photograph can.

This photo was taken on the banks of Lake Mormo. The tree is a Freeman Maple, which is a crossbreed of Silver and Red Maple. The roots are just fantastic and the way the branches fall over the water just captivated me. I took 3 exposures with HDR editing in mind. The tricky part is that my tripod is kaput forcing me to do my best at holding very still whilst my camera gets three exposures. It helps tremendously that the light was sufficient. If the day were cloudy I probably would have been out of luck.

So why did I think HDR with this shot? Couldn't I have gotten a good shot without fancy software? The answer to that question is yes, I could have gotten a good shot without HDR. I've posted an edited shot here that is a single exposure. The facts of this setting are the dark shadows potentially clipping the details in the roots and the bright highlights of the reflected water potentially clipping the highlight details. The range from darkest to lightest is just extremely wide. And that's exactly what happened in the single exposure - clipped shadows and highlights (I'll admit, I edited a little extreme to emphasize the point). So why shoot with an eye towards HDR? It's just a better representation of what I'm seeing at that moment. And that is a key point.

There are some that rail against HDR photography, stating it looks fake or dreamlike. And indeed it can look fake and dreamlike. Some even prefer it that way. I would venture to state is can actually make a photo (particularly a landscape) more realistic. That is to say more like what the photographer is seeing when the shot(s) is taken. This is what I'm after and I'm fairly satisfied with the results on this one. Make no mistake, I struggle with making these shots look real. Ask Brandi. She's functioned as foil to my recklessness (Thanks B! I need it!). But I continue to learn when to push it and when to back off the "fixes." In the end, all I want is a photo that conveys the emotion of the scene. This shot does that for me.

My connection to Brandi's adorable faces are the ringlets of hair framing the little one's face. These roots remind me of those ringlets. And I was struck by the symmetry exhibited as the root comes up to kiss the reflection, similar to the girls leaning into each other.

I've posted several other HDR shots on our Flickr page. Check them out and leave a comment. I'd love to hear what you all think. In the meantime, your assignment is to go to the Morton Arboretum ASAP. If you need company, I'll be there.

Scott