POTD - 7/14/08

I finally shot in RAW!!! I've always been afraid to. . .why I don't know so I used Piper as my guinea pig. She is so good and sits right there while I take her pics.

Piper is now 5 months old and officially house trained. She is also doing very well outside and coming when called. So far I don't see any effects of what we were told about Jack Russell (Terrorists), I guess we are lucky because I have heard and seen some bad traits.

Please cc anything! I am having some serious monitor issues. . .again. I had my nephew come over and we worked on it for over 2 hours. Now I feel it's so dark I'm having troubling seeing any color issues. I keep thinking my greys look a tad pink? Oh and I know I blew her out a little, white dogs in sun is tough!



I was trying to be a little artsy here and just have her name tag in focus.

Jaeger

This is my step-son and his girlfriend's new pup. He's 3 1/2 months old and I've been begging them to bring him over so I could take some pics. I've read that it's best that the dog gets some exercise before photographing so my pup Piper and he played for a good 30-45 minutes. Well let me tell you what anyone that says a Jack Russell has a lot of energy does not know about the Dalmation! LOL! Piper (my JRT) has nothing compared to Jaeger. I took him out for some pics and he was still ready to rock n' roll LOL!

We had all we could do to get him to stay put for more than 2 seconds. Besides that as soon as we stepped outside the sun came out. . .figures. Taking pics of a white dog in full sun is not pretty. I was happy with most of the shaded areas but a few of the full sun ones weren't the best but better than nothing.




I'm so mad that I screwed this one up! I tried using ying/yang from TRA but it didn't work too well.



CC is totally appreciated!

6/25/08 - POTD - Summer

Here's a sure sign of Summer. The annual track meet is always the second to last week of school. Each class works as a team and at the end the gym teachers tally up the scores.

The weather was really crappy. It was really dark, cold and windy. So I basically was all over the place with my settings and some really didn't turn out so great, but at least documented some of it.

Here they are getting ready for the softball toss.
Schyler was so excited she won her dash - look at her go!

After all the competition is done they have lunch and then some fun time. Here the teacher calls out a color you are wearing or anyone's birthday in June, etc. and the kids run underneath. The other kids lay across the parachute and try to stop them from getting out. It's fun to watch but yes, some got kicked in the face and others got hit in the eye.


Now, here we are getting down to serious business LOL! Look at their faces! The gym teacher is giving out the scores for each event. Schyler's class got 1st in the dash, relay and long jump but because they tied for last place in the softball toss they ended up second overall - which Schyler was very happy about!
So this is the last entry I will ever make for my daughter's elementary track meet. After Thursday, she will officially be a 5th grader and going to the middle school. It really makes me sad that she is growing up so fast. Tomorrow will be a sad day - they are having their moving up ceremony. I'll be bringing my tissues!

POTD - 6/24/08 - Summer

We have been getting a lot of serious thunderstorms lately. They only last for about 10 minutes and then the sun is back out. I've been wanting to try the whole reflection/puddle thing. I'm not sure if I cropped these correctly?


I think this is my favorite because of the tilt. I love that DD is in her running gear too! She's gotta get running if she's going to run a 5k race with me July 19th! Right Sara & Jenna? ;)

POTD - 6/23/08 - Summer

I would consider myself on theme. . .barely. With Summer you have sun, with sun, you have shadows. I'm never on the otherside of the camera and I have no pics of our new pup and myself. So I took Piper out and tried to get a few shots of us together. I like these type of pics because you still don't have to worry about what you look like LOL!

She behaved better than some children I've photographed. I told her to sit and stay and she did till I was done. I can't believe she'll be 5 months already.

POTD - 6/20/08

Here is my lastest senior, Megan. Turns out her mom was an old high school friend! Anyway mom was telling me that they had already been to two other photographers. They saw my myspace and blog and loved my work and wanted me to photograph her. No pressure there! Third times a charm. Mom also explained that this was also a therapy type session because her boyfriend of 2 years had recently broke up with her. She said that Megan lost all self-esteem, etc.

So while I was photographing her and she was posing herself, I stopped and looked at her mom and said, "boy is he going to be sorry!" They got a chuckle out of that and we all had a great time!


I used super fun action on this and love how enchanting it looks.





I got an email from Mom last night and they LOVE them! She said the ex-boyfriend saw them and he likes all of them but the water shots! We decided he was jealous LOL!

Of course any cc is so appreciated! Thanks!

06/05/08 - POTD - Flash

Back in February I met up with another photographer from NYC area. He was nice enough to come to Syracuse and show me and another photographer how to shoot with off-camera flash. Since then I have never tried it. I never got around to practicing this method on my DD or during a fun shoot. So here I am it's almost 7:00 p.m. and it was already a cloudy day. This senior really wanted the falls in her photos and I could tell that it wasn't going to work unless I tried the flash. Luckily her mom was with us. I set it up and had her hold it while I shot. I can't believe what a difference it made! I definitely gotta practice more with it but I think I can definitely benefit from this.

ISO 400 1/250 f2.8 without flash

ISO 400 1/250 f2.8 - off-camera flash - SOOC
ISO 400 1/250 f2.8 - off-camera flash - with processing
Please cc anything you see. I really would like to learn as much as I can about flash! TFL!