One big reason is because I have the pleasure of meeting with a group of women & their children every Tuesday Morning to talk camera talk!  Last week we met at my house for a crash course in exposure and camera settings.  This week, we ventured to the park!  Here are some of the images I brought home.  Can’t wait to see all of yours, play date friends!  (FYI –  Lucy was there too.  My friend Shannon took a lot of pictures of her . Can’t wait to see them Shannon!)

So those were images of the kids in action.  Here’s one of Darby in action!

It’s really been a ball!  If you are interested in joining us, give me a ring!  925-586-7145 or send me an e-mail.

Sara

Here are some of the pictures I captured the other night when I felt brave enough to get out my camera with two toddlers in the tub

I love these pictures so much!  I love Luke’s excitement around the lawn mower, I love the colors, and I love the scale of Luke in comparison…I love that can hardly reach the handles!!!

I knew right when Chris said he wanted to mow the law that I wanted to document him and Luke together in the backyard.  And I knew that I wouldn’t have this opportunity again…Luke was SO excited… so I had to have a strategy.  And it was a really simple strategy that made all the difference.  You wanna know what it was?  Simple:  Be Prepared!!!! So much of photography is just being ready for what’s going to happen next.  Your camera is smart…it can make good decisions about exposure and white balance and all that good stuff.  What it can’t do is decide what moments are worth capturing.  You do that!  And you can do it better when you have thought things through ahead of time.  Here’s what worked for me:

1.  Be ready to go!  The first moments are the most sincere and authentic.  I didn’t want to be hunting for my equipment while Luke was discovering the lawn mower.  I wanted to be ready when he was!

2.  Be ready to move around.  I wanted to get as many different perspectives as possible…I wanted the birds eye view, I wanted the Luke eye view, I wanted a perfectly square image with Luke, daddy, and the lawn mower and I wanted images that just hinted at Chris’ presence.  I moved up, down, around, to the left, to the right…if Luke would have maintainted interest just a little longer, I would have been on my stomach on the grass with the lawn mower coming towards me.  I wanted to capture every angle to see what would strike me later.

3. Be thoughtful:  I tried to think ahead of time about the “father-son” connections I wanted to capture…I wanted the tenderness and I wanted the “let’s get down to work-ness”I tried to think about what kind of connections Chris and Luke might make so I could easily recognize them when they happened.

4.  Be willing to give it up.  One thing I’ve found in photographing my own children is that the kids have to take the lead.  I need and want to have a vision for the kinds of images I’m looking for, but more often than not, I need to just let go of what I am expecting to get and be willing to let them take the lead.  After all, I want to capture what happens, I don’t want to interfere or direct the experience.  About 5 minutes into the lawn mowing experience, Luke said “Too loud, mommy! Too loud!”  From then on, he sat contently on the patio chair and watch Chris as he finished mowing the lawn.  That’s life!  And those kind of unexpected twist make for some really great pictures:

Simple!  Be ready with a plan and then be ready to let it all go!  That’s my strategy.  Try it!  And send me your pictures!  I LOVE seeing them!

Sara

Usually family dinner is reserved for those nights when all 4 of us are home but the other night I had some produce that was going to turn so I decided that even though Chris was working late, we would have family dinner (minus daddy).  

Lucy thought this was a fine idea…it inspired her in a great way!

Check out her handiwork:  (All of the things you see here were arranged and gathered by Lucy, all by herself!  Watch out Martha Stewart!)

This was night that brought out the best in our Lucy girl.  She shined!  She brought a whole new element to family dinner…the next night she added menus to our place settings and insisted on making sure we used the flowers for the center piece again.  It was fun to watch her thrive in this very significant task.  

I know you have those moments all the time!  So I wanted to share with you how I go about thinking through these kinds of pictures.  Here we go!

1.  First, I try to recognize when something is happening that I want to remember.  I force myself to really articulate why I am drawn to in that moment and what I want to remember.  On this night, I wanted to remember Lucy’s creative thinking, her independance, and her flair for the dramatic.  

2.  I am never afraid to tell just part of the story.  I included no pictures of “dinner” because it wasn’t important.  Lucy setting the table, well, that’s the story I wanted to tell!

3.  I try to tell the story by using my 5 senses…what did it look like, smell like, feel like, sound like, taste like…Then, snap away and try to get images that record those things.  What were the important textures?  What were the sounds?  For me, it was the metal napkin rings and the leafy flowers.  It was hearing the kids pray (they pray at the same time, super cute!!) I wanted to capture images that took me right back to the experience so that I wouldn’t ever loose that moment.

4.  Finally, I select images to save/showcase that tell the story so that you don’t need any text.  Anybody ever read Good Night Gorilla?  It’s a wordless board book for children…it doesn’t have any words but tells a complete story.  It’s a wonderful example of how to tell a story just through pictures.  

I’d love to see the images you captured of your favorite family event.  E-mail them to me at sara@saragoetzphotography.com  

Thanks!

Sara

Annie, thanks for a wonderful afternoon!  You did GREAT!!!!

So now for the photo tips!  For me, the easiest way to become frustrated with my digital SLR is to loose track of all of the settings of my camera and how they are set .  For example, maybe you changed the aperture setting the last time you took out the camera and got amazing pictures.  But then, the next time you took it out, you started snapping away – only to be discouraged with the results.  The setting and the circumstance changed, but the camera didn’t…the settings remained the same from the last time you used it.  I know I’ve done that – and it is so frustrating!  The worst thing ever is to start taking pictures and wonder why they are all overexposed only to find that your ISO is way too high.  In order to make sure that never happens to me and to help me start fresh every time, is to go through this little checklist I made for myself.  Print it out and put it in your camera bag!!  Start over every time.  It will make a difference in your images .

Things to check:

1.  ISO settings

2.  White Balance settings

3.  Mode (Am I shooting in aperture, shutter, program?) 

4.  Settings (What is my shutter speed or aperture?)

5.  Memory Card (How many images do I have left? Do I need to use a new one or reformat this one?)

I decided that it’s way more fun to play than it is to do housework!  So play we did.  And in the meantime I took out the camera and had some fun.  Once again, I found myself taking pictures in the middle of the day (probably the worst time to get a beautiful image because of the position of the sun in the sky…) so, I called on every trick I knew.  Last time I shared with you my “open shade” trick.  Which works like a charm, when there is shade.  But since our back yard remodel (yeah for grass!!!) we have zero shade trees.  It was full sun and all of the challenges that come with it. 

The first challenge of full sun is the shadows.  The sun makes your subject have dramatic raccoon eyes and causes a lot of “visual distraction” (or, in other words, a lot of clutter) in the pictures.  So, in order to combat the shadows, you have to embrace them.  Check out this image:  I made sure Luke’s face was completely in the shadows so everything was evenly lit.  I also made sure that the sun was at a 90 degree angle to my camera so I wasn’t shooting directly into the sun…Look how cute his little smile is!!!!!

I saw the image on the LCD screen and I really liked it.  But there were two things I wanted to try to change.  First, I wanted to get his eyes a little more open (it was a challenge because to get at that angle I actually had to stand on top of our planter box and look down…a challenge for getting right into the eyes…) and I wanted to freeze the water.  So, to do that, I made a switch on what I wanted to tell the camera to do.  I shifted my camera off of aperture priority (I started our little photo session wanting to tell the camera to keep the aperture set around 5.6 because it was so bright) to shutter priority.  I wanted to freeze the water – and in order to do that I had to tell the camera to open the shutter for a really short amount of time.  You see, when the shutter stays open for a long time, your cameras’ sensor records all of the movement that goes in front of it.  And when water moves, it doesn’t look like drops, it looks like a steady stream.  I wanted the drops, so I told my camera to keep the shutter open for only 1/1000 of a second and let it choose my aperture.  That way it would freeze the movement and turn the stream of water into little drops.  Here’s what I got:

Isn’t that so much fun!  It’s even better to get to play with water in your diaper in January!  

If you are enjoying these photo tips but would like some one on one instruction, give me a call.  I’d love to be your “photo coach” and go out and take pictures with you sometime!  Or, if you have a group of friends, let’s make it a mini photo workshop.  That sounds like it’s almost as much fun as playing in the water in your diaper in January

sara

If Abbey’s first year has flown by to me, I can’t image how quickly it went by for my brother and sister-in-law.  It’s been so much fun watching Abbey reach all those milestones: rolling over, sitting up, solid food, standing up, first tooth – all of those exciting events that make the first year one of the most precious.

In honor of her first birthday, Lesley and I took Abbey to the park.  And boy did we have a ball!  Abbey was as cute as cute can be and had so much fun discovering and exploring.  First, Lesley dressed her up in this darling little pink birthday dress – complete with black leather Mary-Jane like soft soled shoes and pink ruffle but tights.  But after a few portraits, we had an outfit change to jeans and a sweater – much more conducive to the wanderings and explorations of a 1 year old.  Check out her pictures (and read on for some photo tips!):

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this one…check out her eyes!!!  and the color of her lips…and those teeth!!!

I love the motion on this one:

I couldn’t get enough of this mosaic tile wall – neither could Abbey

And of course, a mirror is always fun!  Check out her tongue!!

The park had this foammy like padding all around – it just happened to be the same color as Abbey’s eyes…

Between our schedules and Abbey’s schedule the only time we could meet was 1:00 in the afternoon.  Yikes!  That’s probably one of the worst times of the day to take pictures!  But when you are working with the schedule of children, sometimes you don’t get to pick your portrait times.  So, here’s my best tip to get great lighting during the middle hours of the day:

Find open shade.  Open shade is when you are in the shade but you look up and see the sky.  There you’ll be sure to get even, diffused lighting.  All of Abbey’s pink dress pictures were done in open shade.

You see, your camera makes the best decisions when the lighting is even and diffused.  It can get a little confused when there are some really bright parts of a frame and some really dark shadowy parts.  You see, when your camera is in “Auto” or “program” mode, what it does is look for the average light – it calculates shutter speed and aperture by trying to find the middle or the average exposure for the light coming in.  When it’s really bright and really dark, the average exposure isn’t going to look anything like you are trying to photograph – the camera isn’t going to calculate the exposure for the light very well.  But, if everything is similar to begin with, the average exposure is going to be right on.

So the best photo tip I can give you is to find open shade – and keep it simple for your camera – even when you are shooting in Aperture or Shutter Priority.

I’d love to see the great pictures you are taking!  Send them to me at sara@saragoetzphotography.com

Happy Shooting everyone!!!

Sara

That’s exactly what I did last week.  And it was a ball!  I rarely give myself the treat of simply enjoying my camera when we are on a vacation so spending an entire day only taking pictures I wanted to take was really, a vacation in and of itself!  Here’s Disneyland as seen by Sara – (and two lessons about aperture all bundled into one really long blog post!)

Lesson one:  The higher the f number, the bluer the sky:

Did you know that the bigger the f number, the bluer the sky?  It’s true!  If you want a really blue sky, use a big f number.  I set my camera aperture to f4 (I wanted to go bigger but it was so bright that I couldn’t because it was too bright) and framed these lampost flowers against the sky so I could only see the sky.  Isn’t that fun!

Look what happened here:  this time I was in a different position to the sun so I could set my aperture higher – f10.  Look how blue the sky was!  We had the best weather and I wanted that to show in my pictures.

Lesson 2:  The higher the f number, the more “sunbursty” the sun looks:

Here I really wanted to capture the geometric nature of Space Mountain – and I wanted to show the way the sun was peaking over the tower balancing out the vertical elements.  So, I positioned myself so the sun was in the very top right hand corner of my view finder and I set my camera to f22 so I could have a blue sky and a strong sunburst.  The aperture did the rest.  The high aperture created that sunburst effect.  

Here it is again:

This time I wanted the sun to mimic the sculpture.  I used f22 again to create this image. 

Finally, I wanted to incorporate all of these sunburst images with people enjoying the part…not just the architecture/scultpural elements.  So, I took advantage of my dad and Lucy riding Dumbo:

Lucy is still a little bit too short to really pull off this image!  But I like how Dumbo is flying, you can see my family, and the sun is bursting in the top corner.  Super fun!

I had so much fun photographing Disney – I could go on and on!!  But for now, I’ll just leave you with my favorites of Lucy and Luke:  (Just a note, for all of these I used as low of an f number as I could.  Usually that was around 3.2…but I tried to go lower if I could.)

Luke meets Cruella:  (In this one, f1.8 was too much light…so I used f3.2)

Lucy watches and rides the Carousel (this one was actually f3.2)

f1.8

This is my niece:  baby Abygail! (f1.8)

f1.8

(Chris took this one of Lucy on the tea cups.  Isn’t she stunning )

So here’s your homework:  Go out and have fun!  And while you are out having fun, decide what you want to capture…is it the blue sky?  Is it a sunburst?  Is it the people you love enjoying life?  Is it all three of those things together?  Then, decide if you want a high f number (blue sky, big sunburst, not a lot of blurr) or if you want a small f number (less saturated sky, no sunburst, lots of blurr).  Tell you camera what you want!  And send me your pictures.  I love seeing all of them!

Sara

Do you want to know how I thought it through?

1.  I found an area with tons of diffused (really even) light

2.  I choose to use my 50 mm lens (a 50 mm is considered a prime lens because it doesn’t zoom in and out…it generally yields really sharp and beautiful images) because clarity was my goal.

3.  I set my aperture to 1.8 and let the camera set the shutter speed.

4. Because I was using such a big aperture and I was going to have so much blur (see this post), I made sure I was ONLY AND ALWAYS focusing on his eyes

5.  I dressed him is something really simple and comfortable.  In fact, I really wanted him to be in this cute little hat, but he didn’t want to so I didn’t fight it.  What I really wanted was a great smile.

6.  I added in a little tush-ey dance for a great laugh

7.  And I took a lot of pictures!!

I mentioned that clarity was one of my goals for these images….that’s because we are going to choose one to enlarge to 47 x 47″ and hang on our family room wall.  Which one would you choose?  We can’t decide!!!

I remember when Chris and I bought our first digital SLR. It was way cool. I loved holding it. I loved the sound the shutter made when it oh so quickly took a picture. I loved the LCD on the back and how much fun it was to see right then and there the image I had captured. I loved importing the files into iPhoto and scrolling through all the memories stored on that memory card. I loved everything about it.

Except my pictures. They weren’t exactly what I was hopping for.

Which really shouldn’t have been a surprise. In all honesty, I had NO idea how the darn thing worked. (gasp!!!) The manual was a joke – the 273 pages filled with 6 pt. font might as well have been in Greek for all I could understand. I tried to play around with the menus, but I really didn’t have a clue what I was changing, or if I should be changing it, or – heaven forbid – how to ever change it back. I actually remember going back to the camera store with some prints (that I wasn’t happy with) and my camera and asking what I needed to do to get better pictures! I had an amazing piece of digital technology at my fingertips, but it might as well had been a disposable camera. I couldn’t use it to save my life.

I’m wondering if any of you reading this are in the position I was a while back. Maybe you just got a super doper brand new piece of amazing digital technology – but are not quite sure how to use it for all it’s worth.

I know that as a mom – I want to have exceptional pictures of my kids. Not just a few from the times you hired a professional photographer. But lots of pictures. Tons of pictures. More than you could possibly know what to do with.

If you have a digital SLR and want to learn more about it – this blog post is for you!

In fact, in the near future there will be a lot of blog posts just for you! I am venturing to share with you some of what I learned as a novice photographer so that you can grow in your skill and technique with your new (or not so new) toy. It’s gonna be a lot of fun!!!

If you are feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry! It’s gonna be basic. And It’s gonna be applicable. And I don’t really like numbers very much so it won’t be heavy on the math end of things. I want to keep it basic and simple, and share with you the things that helped me transform my images from poor/mediocre to the kind I want to hang on my walls.

So are ya ready for lesson number one? Here we go:

1. Find a good light source.

2. Switch to “A” or “aperture” priority.

When I say good light source what I really mean is even. That means the light is diffused – it’s coming through a window, for example. Rather than a strong beam like from a flashlight or a spot light, the light covers a large area evenly. This happens naturally early in the morning and in the evening – when your shadows are the longest. Find that kind of light source because your camera can make the best decisions when the light source is even and you won’t have to worry about the angle of your subject to the light. It just cuts out some of the complication

Easy so far! Right?

The second step is to switch your camera to aperture priority. It’s a little scary, I know. But this is the part of the lesson where I stop to say it’s Okay to fail. It’s Okay to take some bad pictures. I personally have taken a TON of bad pictures. That’s how you learn. So don’t worry about getting it right…just resolve to get it better. It’s just a camera – and you can always switch it back to auto. But for now, let’s take some risks and see if they pay off.

You know that little wheel/dial on the top of your camera? Turn that until it is pointing to “A” and you are on aperture priority. When you are on aperture priority you are going to set the aperture and the camera will choose a shutter speed (The shutter speed is how fast the shutter opens and closes…that’s a whole other lesson. For today, let the camera take care of that.) Keep in mind that the aperture is also the f-stop number.

What’s the aperture? Well, technically it’s the devise that determines how much light the lens allows to hit the digital sensor. But really, all you have to worry about is this:

The lower the number of aperture setting = more light on the digital sensor and more blur in the background.

The higher the number of the aperture setting = less light on the digital sensor and less blur in the background.

Easy, easy, easy!!!

Each lens has a different aperature range. For some – the lowest setting it has is 3.5, for some it’s 2.8, and others it’s 1.8. Just remember, the lower the number, the more light and the more blurr.

Now, how should you choose your aperture? Well, there are lots of things to consider – but really, it has to do with the kind of mood you want your final image to have. Check out these two images from an engagement session I just did.  You can see the light was evenly diffused – it was foggy and a little rainy.  I didn’t have a strong “beam” of light I had to contend with.  It made things a little bit more simple.

For one image, I wanted a dreamy, kind of surreal feeling to it. So, I set my aperture really low. (f1.8):

Then I wanted an image that really brought out the trees behind them and kept those somewhat in focus. So, I set my aperture to f10 and this is what I got:

I didn’t move them at all, they stayed in the same place, in the same pose. Just by changing the aperture, I was able to create two entirely different images. The aperture is an extremely powerful tool you have in creating different moods in your images. How much fun is that!?

(By the way – don’t they just make the cutest couple!!!  Erika, I can’t wait for your wedding!!  It’s going to be fantastic!)

So now it’s your turn! Did I forget to mention you have homework? Well, here it is…find a location with lots of diffused light. Then, take some pictures on aperture priority – and play around with the f-stop number. Then, if you want, e-mail me your favorites (please, no more than 3…) I’d love to see and celebrate your craft with you!

This is going to be fun.  I would love to get a few people practicing and learning together – a cohort, if you will – so forward this blog on to anyone else that you think might want to learn more about photography!  We are going to have some fun projects and competitions (with prizes, even!!!)  So break out your camera and let’s get to work!