Finally...

I've done a few photo shoots in the past couple of months, but I wasn't able to share any of the photos because they were for Christmas gifts and I didn't want to spoil the surprise. (Not that anyone is really reading this blog on a regular basis, but with my luck THAT would have been the time when someone who was on the receiving end would find the post. LOL)

Anyhoo... I am going to share some of my favourites from a shoot with my own kids way back in October.  My kids are very comfortable being in front of the camera so it provides great opportunity to practice and hone my skills and technique.

More from other shoots to come...

Revisiting the Past

So I found this photo from a shoot I did for my friend waayyy back in 2006 when I had no clue how to use an SLR and was afraid of RAW so I shot only in JPEG.

Both girls are so adorable and naturally sassy.  Originally I was satisfied with my limited abilities in post-processing, but when I came across the file in my archives I decided to have another go at it.

To begin with it's a technical nightmare and a JPEG to boot... there are about a million things I would do differently if I were to shoot this same shot today, but this is what I came up with after just a few mins of tweaking in Photoshop.

Shooting the Moon

A big beautiful moon came up over the farm out behind my house the other night, so I grabbed my camera and   tripod and went out on the deck...

This is the first shot I took...

Obviously this isn't the shot I intended to get, but I thought this turned out interesting... in a that-is-really-weird-and-doesn't-look-right way.  It almost looks like the sun at night... does that make sense?

I really need to go back to my lessons on long exposures and shooting at night because I just couldn't get the shot right. I tried everything... Aperture, shutter, ISO, exposure compensation, etc.  I know the moon is difficult to shoot because it moves across the sky so quickly, but I just couldn't figure out how to get a crisp, clear shot and keep the details that the naked eye could see on the moon.  In every shot I took after this one the moon is either blown out or there is no detail in the rest of the shot because everything other than the moon is black.