Family Reunion

Two blog posts in two days? It's a christmas miracle!!

I just went on a family reunion to Zion National park with my extended family. We had a really fun time and I even got out of my comfort zone and...went on a hike! With a baby! Crazier things have happened. I actually really enjoyed myself because it wasn't screaming hot, it even rained on us a little bit so I enjoyed some beautiful scenery. Since I had the baby, I opted to leave my other baby (canon 5d) at home. Oh well. Luckily I had my back up point and shoot camera and got some nice pictures of the canyon.

Here are some pictures of me and my family at our reunion that I took. We opted to take the pictures indoors because it was raining on the day we all got ready wearing our family shirts.

In order to compensate for the lack of light, I used my external flash that I got with my classroom grant from AAE on the giant group pictures. Thank you association of american educators! However, the individual family pictures were looking quite washed out with the flash. I need to experiment more with using the external flash in low light portrait images. Anyway, I decided my ISO just needed to be pumped up to about 1000 in order to compensate for the indoor pictures. So, a little grainy but better than the washed out look. I would welcome any and all tips for the future on using my external flash for better portrait photos - I have a little softbox diffuser for the top but it still washes people out.

Without further ado....the Snow family!!

Group family photo:


I always like to do a silly photo too:


My grandma and grandpa:


My family (courtesy of Andrea!) (We missed Karl, Michael and Vincent!):


My mom and dad (guess if you're in the same family of the photog you get special treatment):


Westovers:


Gills:


Spencers:


Jacksons:


Snows:


I love my family and had a great time in Zion with them!

A Great Day!

I had the opportunity to attend the LDS temple a few weeks ago while some family members of mine were able to take out their endowments and then get sealed as a family for eternity. It was so wonderful to join them on their special day. Here are some pictures that I snapped outside the temple right after!

Idaho Nature

Karl's family owns a big piece of land up in Idaho that they call "The Farm." There have been many talks about if there ever was any sort of apocalypse, zombie or otherwise, that we would hole up on this piece of land with all of our guns and renewable energy sources and live off of the land.

We went up to the farm a few weeks ago and I had Karl take me and the 5d out to practice some landscape photography. I just finished writing the Advanced Photography class for my school and we are going to spend a week on landscape photos and HDR photography. Naturally (no pun intended) I needed some photos of nature.

There's something about getting off your 4 wheeler, sitting in the middle of a field and just listening. It's interesting to not have internet access, cell phone service, netflix, the freeway, and all sorts of other stimuli that we experience daily. I like to go up to this place because it is very beautiful and I like to commune with nature and gain a greater understanding and perspective of what the world is like. The top two are my two attempts at HDR photos.
 

Better late than never!

So my son Dean turned 18 months old recently. Where has the time gone? Who knows but half my brain was lost when I was functioning on very little sleep so you'll have to forgive my laziness because I did not do 18 month portraits. I keep thinking "ugh it is such a pain to photograph Dean" and then I forget. HOWEVER I had the brilliant idea to photograph him when he is strapped in his highchair. HooWAH! I rigged up a little tablecloth background and came up with these pictures. It was one of my more successful shoots with Dean, I think. Will experiement more next time - I was just happy to have some smiles. So without further ado.... PS - this is totally off topic, but we gave up the binky and it wasn't that bad. I think I might have missed it more than Dean did.

Framing, Lines, Patterns and Texture

 I haven't been posting in my blog!  I know I've never been the most consistent or best blogger on the planet, but I have a reason this time!  I received some feedback from my students last semester that they would really like me to do the photo assignments that I assign with them.  Although that means more work for me as a teacher, I thought that was a good idea to hone my skills and to model the assignments and to improve as a photographer and to teach how to critique.  So!  I just posted this to my class photo blog so I thought I would post it here too!

The photo assignment this week is to "spend some time photographing framing, lines, pattern and texture. There will be 8 pictures total, 2 of each of the concepts listed. Make sure to label which image is demonstrating what concept, and post about WHY that image is a good example of that concept."

I brainstormed this week what I could go out and take pictures of to get some really good examples of these concepts. My son turned 18 months aka a year and a half this week so I thought it would be nice to take some pictures of him. However, taking pictures of my son is like trying to nail jello to a tree. He won't look at the camera, he won't smile, and in fact he tries to run away from me when the camera is out! Luckily he's cute so he makes up for it.

I decided that instead of putting him in a cute outfit and placing him in front of a background wouldn't work because 1) he would run away from the cute background and 2) I wouldn't be able to get pictures with framing, lines, pattern and texture in them. So instead I decided to take him to a park in Spanish Fork where there would be lots of great examples of these elements, plus I could just let my son do whatever he wanted.

 Framing --- I think these 2 are my best examples of framing because the main subject is "framed" by the elements around him.  My eye is drawn into Dean in both of these shots because of the way the elements are positioned.

 

 

Lines --- I had lots of examples of good lines in photos.  More lines that pattern and texture.  I liked this one below because it had lots of different lines in it that I thought made up an interesting composition.  The one of Dean on the stairs has a few different lines in it, but I liked that the line on the stairs pointed to where he was crouching and it drew my eye in.

 

 

Pattern - A few times I was pointing my camera through these little grates on the playground and I thought the pattern on this one made an interesting "parent" perspective because this is always what I see when my son is playing on the playground.  The one below belongs to a chain on the swingset which I thought made a really unique pattern.  I did a dark exposure to make it look a little ominous.

 

 

Texture - I saw these woodchips and immediately thought they would make a great texture shot, but couldn't figure out how to shoot them without being bland and boring.  Then I saw Dean's shadow from the swingset and thought it would be a great way to showcase the texture of the woodchips.  I feel like the simplicity of this image makes it more striking.  The texture on the giant plastic bubble below is cool too - I thought it would be fun to put my camera in it and use it as a fake lens.

 

 

Taking pictures on the swings was hard for me! I need to practice my action shots more. I was having a hard time getting a picture of my son in focus. I have lots and lots of pictures that are out of focus. Here is the only in focus picture I have of Dean the whole day where he is smiling on the swings. And he isn't looking at the camera AND my sister's arm is merging into the back of his head. How's that for breaking the rules of composition? Under that there is a cute one where he is out of focus.

 

What do you think?  What did I do well?  What should I try so that I can do better next time?  I think one thing I struggled with on this shoot was that I kept going into the sun and then going back into the shade, so changing my settings every time Dean decided he wanted to go somewhere else was a pain.

Product Photography

I really like shooting product photography - the subject doesn't move and you can really spend time setting up the shot and shooting to perfection. I guess that is the perfectionist and control-freak nature in me. I like how these turned out! What do you think?

Dean's Hat

My best friend Kristi sent Dean a hat for his birthday and today I FINALLY got around to taking some pictures of him in it. When I think about doing a photoshoot of Dean sometimes I cringe inside a little because he is kind of a pain to photograph. He doesn't sit still, he has to be bribed, and he is rarely looking at the camera AND smiling. For example, we went and had our family pictures done by Emily Hartvigsen in November and out of like 200 pictures, Dean was smiling in 2. Finally I just picked a family photo where I looked fabulous (ie unfat) and Dean wasn't smiling. Too bad for him.

Anyhoo...here's some photos of Dean in his darling monkey hat. Hooray for smiling! The photoshoot lasted approximately 7 minutes and involved lots of puffs, marshmallows, re-sitting Dean in the middle of my sheet, and putting the hat back on after Dean ripped it off. Dean decided when we were done with the shoot. I think when you photograph kids, there is a certain element of luck involved. The skill comes from being ready when the shot does come around.