Profile of a Domesticated House Cat

This is my cat, his name is Jolly. He is my favorite kitty! 

As you can see the sun light is coming from the left, I like this angle because when Jolly looks at the sun the pupil in his eyes goes thinner, making jolly look more majestic. You might notice that there is more empty space on the left because you want to give more room for the subject to look, and more room for imagination to what he is looking at.        

Photography Tip: Try and use natural light. 

Thanks for reading! let me know what you think.

First the Worst Second the Best

This is what my Christmas
consisted of my family drinking Coca Cola!
This picture I took when experimenting with the bokeh technique. The definition of bokeh is "The visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image."  Pretty much that means the lights in the background are blurred circles, or in some cases interesting shapes. 
This is the first time I took this shot this way, there are many things wrong with it. The first thing that you may notice is that it is hard to clearly read what it says on the bottle, because I was focusing to so much on the tree light background I forgot to remember to look at the object in front of me. The first time there was no other light in the room but the light from the tree. Also it bugs me that you can see the reflection of the computer screen on the tv. I don't really like the off tilt of the bottle. When I saw the mistakes in this picture I decided to do it again.

THE SECOND! This was my second try doing the same shot with slight changes. The challenge is to have a first picture you like the potential but it just didn't turn out how you wanted, and to try again and create what you wanted. (because photo shop can help, but cant always fix everything.)  First things first I needed to fix the clarity on the coke bottle. The reason why you couldn't see it the first time is because there was no light shining on the front of the coke bottle only one the back, so I put a light behind me to fix that. I also centered it because the light that shines though the bottle looks better when the light is directly behind the bottle, and it just fists into the shape of the tree nicely, and Ta da! I got what I wanted.

Photography Tip: Make sure your object or subject has the proper lighting before you worry about the background.

Thanks for reading and leave a comment if you want! I would love to hear your thoughts!

Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful

More photos from Andrews and Tasha's photo shoot. 

In the first photo, there is a good amount of background trees that I enjoy, I personally like photos with paths, and I think it would be neat to do this photo in the summer so you can see the path more clearly.

The second photo is a classic photo being close up and with both people looking. lots of people prefer these types of photos, even though they might seem easy to set up, I think its a good position to continue to do.

The Third photo is quite similar to the previous one I posted, just from a different angle. I like this angle also because it has more background to it, and the picture is cute! 

Photography Tip: If your going to shoot winter subjects, plan it for warm day! (It was FREEZING -29'C)

Thanks for reading and I would love to hear what you think!

Kissing Candy Cane

Another Picture from Andrew and Tasha's winter photo shoot!
Kissing Candy-cane! I love this photo, because its my sister and you can just tell that they love each other! 
Often times people use empty space to draw your attention to where you should be looking. I chose the picture to be centered because its a vertical picture, and there is enough in the picture to lead your eyes in the need direction.
Its nice to sometimes use props, especially in this case because it frames their lips and shows the viewer what to be looking at. This whole picture resembles love.

Thanks for reading, let me know what you liked or dislike. hope you all are making the best out of winter! 

Andrew and Tasha

I am out visiting my is sister and brother in law for the Christmas Break. Andrew and Tasha Have been married two and a half years now.

This candy cane prop is a common Christmas shot. I chose to frame it like this, because it gets the viewer to look at the hands and candy cane and then then face, makes the picture look more 3D instead of 2D. It just gives the picture extra spice! 

Winter photography is still fairly new to me because I normally take pictures when its warm outside, because when its cold outside I would rather sit in a warm house. This project has pushed me to grow in the photography areas I am not as comfortable in, mainly winter photography and indoor photography. 

The sun as you can tell, is coming from the right, creating a small shadow on Andrews face. I would of preferred without a shadow, but it was very sunny and direct sunlight would cause blinking subjects.

A big difference during the summer and winter is that during the summer standing in a shadow just creates a darker subject, and during the winter the white snow reflects a blue color on your subjects faces when standing in the shadow, so stay away from shadows because they create more of a cold depressing look. Have fun in the sunshine!

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!

Beautiful Mare

This is a photo I took earlier this year, (before the snow) when I was out visiting my sister. Its one of her neighbors horses. Its a beautiful mare and pregnant! Personally I love the look of white flea bitten horses. Again I love the natural look of her, she has no halter or bridal on her face no saddle, and just a pure nature filled background. I LOVE THE COUNTRY!

I want to draw your attention to the color of the sky, it matches closely to the color of the horse many photographers would disagree with the technique I used because generally your not supposed to match up the colors because it usually draws your eyes away from the subject, but I think in this case it suits it well. 
The color of the sky is also darker than the bright blue everyone thinks of. Its white is because it was a cloud covered day, which is perfect photographer weather for the daytime. The reason being is if your shooting when the sun is out on a bright sunny day that will create shadows on your subject. A perfect day with a light cloud cover will make for a photo to have enough light for your photograph but not create distracting shadows.

thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment or suggestions, I would love to hear from you! 

Is it Christmas yet?

Instead of  going with natural light I decided to get into the Christmas spirit and take some unique pictures of Christmas lights.

 So this is what I did, I took my lens off and I cut on two separate pieces of paper in the shape of a Christmas tree and of a snowflake, and taped it onto my camera, this is a easy project to create and enjoy.

 

A few things I learned along the way.

1. When you tape the tree piece of paper on you need to tape it upside down, so the tree point faces to the ground, because my first few pictures were upside down! (I'm pretty sure it has to do with the mirrors on the inside the camera, but I will have to do more research with that specifically.)
2. There is two ways to do this experiment with the lens and without. I chose without, without causes the light shapes to become bigger. (at least bigger than I expected, and harder to fit into frame) 
3. Wear gloves! for these Christmas outdoor pictures, my fingers were getting COLD, its gonna be hard to find a warm pair of finger mittens. 

 

I plan to experiment more with the Christmas lights, I would like to try and make the shapes smaller to get more of it in the frame,

although for the first time doing this project I will say my pictures turned out satisfactory.

I would like to give a shout out to my brother who took the effort to put up new Christmas lights! 

Thanks for reading! hope you enjoyed! feel free to leave comments. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!