Prints for Sale

So I am sorry I have been so silent I've been busy with school and life and what nots. It will probably stay silent for a little bit because I am working more now trying to save up for my study abroad trip to Scotland. So I have put prints up for sale to help fund my trip you can find them here: CLICK ME! Also I have set myself up a gofundme and have now become the person I didn't want to become. I am not against people asking for money I just prefer for me to earn my own money so that is why I'm selling prints also. Thank you for anyone who has supported me and for anyone who will support me. And when I come back I will have tons of pictures, enough to fill multiple blog posts :)

Also If there are any pictures I posted on here that aren't on my site just let me know and I can put them up there for you!

Tis the season for babies!

So in honor of the holiday that most mid November babies are conceived in we will be talking about babies! Yesteday was valentines day and I really wanted this to be up yesterday but between work, school and vampire diaries I wasn't able to write it up. So here we are a day late but better late than never right?

So babies are fun to shoot if you don't mind crying and wiggling and curiosity. Now I'm not saying I don't like shooting babies I love the little suckers you just have to be prepared for anything and everything when it comes to babies. So this shoot was for a dear friend that has a 1 year old. So for the setup we did it on my white backdrop inside because just before it we got a cold front and I didn't want them outside in the cold. So one of the things to remember about babies: They will not ever stay where you want them on the backdrop so you have to learn to be super mobile and fast with babies especially ones that walk.

 Also don't be afraid of taking crying pictures. I for one when I have a kid am going to have tons of crying pictures. Babies have so many different expressions, capture them all!

 And when all else fails distract them with props!

 Most pictures you get with babies who are awake and walking will be candid unless the baby was born a model and sits where you tell them, pose how you tell them and smile when you tell them.

Babies are as I have said hard to shoot but to me they are super fun. Also most of the parents are a bit biased when it comes to the pictures they think their kid is adorable so just capture them being themselves.

One thing I do recommend is when you are setting up your shoot you want to shoot when the baby is most agreeable. As the parent when their baby is happiest. Most common times are after a nap, after they eat, or first thing in the morning. Every parent should know when their baby is the most agreeable. Next you want to have something to get the babies attention, so have the parent bring a favorite toy or something. For this shoot we would distract and lead her around with snacks, which is perfect, she puts it in her mouth and bam the "prop" disappears!

Hope you had fun and next time you shoot a baby you can keep these things in mind :D.

New York: The City That Stole My Heart

Ok so I finally finished going through all of my New York pictures and finished editing and what not so I am finally able to write up this blog post which was supposed to be out last week but we all know me and I was being lazy... So without further ado NEW YORK!
So there are tons and tons and tons of pictures I want to share and gush about but I cant do that because this post would never ever end! So I have just gotten a few of my favorites and I will tell you about these!

So while I was in New York I had both of my cameras with me, my D5000 was for every day use and my D7000 was for when I knew I was going somewhere specifically for pictures. Basically each of these pictures have elements I have previously talked about, how shutter affects night time shots, the f stop affecting brightness and depth, and the ISO affecting brightness.

This lovely beauty was taken while walking around so it was taken with my D5000. It was as you can probably tell a very cloudy day so my settings were F 3.5, ISO 250 and shutter 1/250. These are just simple normal settings for everyday use when its not super bright outside. The only editing I did was when you shoot in raw there is an option called clarity which I love the affect it has on the image as a whole, it basically sharpens the entire image which looks really good when you are shooting landscapes, not so much when you shoot people. I basically did this to all of my shots so I'm telling you now so I don't have to retype this over and over again.

 This shot was taken on top of the Brooklyn bridge of the sky line. It was super freezing cold that night and so worth every frozen breath. My setting for this one was F 11, ISO 250 and shutter 1.6 seconds. I used my remote trigger to take this shot to avoid an sort of shaking that can happen by touching the camera. One of the main reasons for using the remote was the shake factor the other is that I could put my hands in my pockets and trigger the camera from there, it as I mentioned was freezing cold.

 Times square, oh how I loved times square these two shots (top and bottom) were taken around midnight one-ish and as you can tell its still bright and actually quite busy for that time of night! For the top image my settings were at F22, ISO100 and shutter 4.4 seconds. Now these settings make the image super bright because it was one of the first shots I took and I was still testing settings, but in raw you can bring down the brightness so much its amazing. For the bottom shot my settings were F22, ISO 100 and shutter 1/5 I did tone down the brightness a bit in raw but not much, I swear Times Square could blind a man. For both of these shots I used my remote trigger because just like before the shutter was low and I didn't want any shaking of the camera.

 So here begins the snowy fun! all of these were taken in central park when the snow came in a beautiful cold flurry. So this day was super bright and beautiful and cold so for most of the time I was adjusting my shutter super high to compensate when the sun shone just a little bit brighter trying to blind us with the glorious white snow. So for the above picture my settings were F7.1, ISO 250 and shutter 1/1600. The image below was taken with F7.1, ISO 250 and shutter 1/800. This one ended up a bit bright so I did tone down some of the glare of the ice in the lake and turn it black and white.

 The image above was truly amazing because it was backed in central park so finding a nearly abandoned pathway was like a miracle! So my settings were F7.1, ISO 250 and shutter 1/800 just like the image above it. This is a really great time to show how the sun can be super bright for one instance and not another, you may notice sometimes with your eyes but your camera is way more light sensitive than your eyes. The below image was taken with F7.1, ISO 250 and shutter 1/320, this is a great way to look at how f stop affects depth which was earlier discussed but this is a more real world application to it.

These last two images were taken on the Brooklyn bridge just like the skyline picture was, so it was super cold but so worth it. This first shot was actually the first shot I took on the bridge so my settings were F3.5, ISO 2000 and shutter 1.3s. So because of my ISO being so ungodly high the image was super duper bright so I had to bring it down in raw which turned out quite nicely I think. The next picture was taken at F22, ISO 250 and shutter 10 seconds, this one only had to have the brightness taken down a tad on the road but not much else. And again these shots were taken with my wireless remote so I didn't have to worry about the shaking.

So I hope you liked my little tour of New York I sure enjoyed taking the pictures! If you ever get the chance to go to New York please take me with you! But seriously you should go I loved it and I so want to go back! I would live there if it weren't so gosh darned expensive. If you have any questions about how I did any of these don't hesitate to ask! Also I was thinking of possibly putting some of my prints up for sale so if anyone is interested please let me know, there are tons more pictures on my personal facebook page for more print options.

Thank you!

New York Preview!

Ok so I am finally getting around to going through my pictures from New York! So I haven't gone through them all to write up an actual blog post so I am just doing this to give you a preview and to let you know I haven't forgotten about this blog!

Ok so here are a couple from central park and one from the Manhattan bridge. Hopefully I will have the photos sorted by next week, I have over 1000 to go through! It will probably be separated in a couple different posts but we shall see!