Back in mid December, one of my girlfriends called me to ask for help.  It seems her buddy C wanted some pictures of his Christmas lights to send to his dying mother.  Apparently, when he was a boy, his mother insisted on decorating the tree with blue lights.  The story goes that the blue lights had some reference to the Virgin Mary for her.  I didn’t quite understand that part.  When C was a boy, some of his most vivid Christmas memories involved going to the store and picking out the strands of colored lights.  Apparently, the two of them would sit on the floor in the aisle and pull all the blue lights from all the other strands and put them in the strand they intended to purchase while taking all other colors from the strand to be purchased and putting them in the other strands for sale.  Since his mother was dying, he thought he would honor this memory by decorating the outside of his house with blue lights.  Then he thought he should take a picture to send to his mother since she couldn’t travel anymore.  Both C and my girlfriend attempted to take pictures of the lights on their own but were not satisfied with the result.  So, she called me.

After all this leading up to it, you’d be expecting a house decked out in blue Christmas lights, right?  Nope.  It was a strand that ran along the fence on the side of the house ending with a bush covered in larger blue lights.  Still, it was a chance for me to practice photographing something else so I took it.

Here is what I got.

Just to give you the full effect of what we were dealing with here… I offer you the picture below.  Complete with porch light on that I was trying to work around.

  I tried to see outside the box and change my perspective and all that.  But there is only so much you can do with a strand of blue lights!  Still, girlfriend and C where quite happy with the result and he wrote a poem and framed one of the pictures and mailed it to his mother.  I hope she liked it.

Are you familiar with the continuous shooting button on your camera?  Do you even know if your camera has one?  Let me tell you why you should use this feature.

Basically, when you have this feature selected, you can push the shutter button down and if you hold it there, your camera will continue to take pictures as fast as it can.  My camera will take up to 3 shots per second depending on the shutter speed selected.  People will also sometimes refer to this as burst mode. 

Now, other than in great light for a sporting event, why would you want to use this mode?  If you are a fan of no-flash photography, you have probably encountered camera shake.  You know… you push the shutter button as gently as you can yet the entire image is still a bit blurry because that simple push shook the camera ever so slightly.  If you use burst mode, you push the shutter once, get one or two blurry shots but your hand steadies itself by the third or fourth picture.  This produces a low light, no flash shot that is as clear as you can get it while hand holding your camera.  This is also valuable if you are shooting children who are moving.  Why?  Because sooner or later, they will be still for a fraction of a second and you will already have your camera capturing that moment.  Here is an example from my life.  Last night my eldest son decided to "read" a story to his little brother.  I popped off about 60 shots.  Because they were moving ever so slightly, I didn’t expect to get a fantastic, one-shot photo in little light while holding my camera in my hand.  I was afraid that a flash would make them look at me and distract from the moment and I was afraid the moment would be gone before I set up a tripod (also a distraction).  Eventually, they did look at me anyway, but in the meantime with this method, I got about 5 pictures that are worth having printed for the scrapbook.  The other 55 can be deleted.

You can see a wee bit of blur on my oldest son’s hand pointing to something in the book.  I actually like that because it shows movement and activity as he is sharing the book with his brother.  Still, the faces are clear and the expressions of intensity are there for my scrapbook. 

If you have your camera set in this mode, you can still do one-shot photographs.  It does not require you to shoot a zillion frames every time you pick up the camera.  It’s like a bonus that is good to already have turned on for those once-in-a-lifetime shots that are happening before your eyes.  Try it and see if you can get something good.  FYI, if you have an older point and shoot camera that has a delay between pressing the shutter button and the actual picture being taken, this feature might still work for you but it likely will not be as effective.   

Once upon a time, I was telling my wedding photographer that I would love to be a professional photographer.  He turned around and handed me an empty slide mount and said, "start viewing the world through this.  That is the best advice I can give you.  Learn to view things in frames." 

Since studying up on photography lately, I’ve read that advice in two books and heard it on one video.

If you prefer not to carry a slide mount or an empty frame around with you, here is another option.  You can learn the same thing by practicing your cropping. 

Take a picture that you already have uploaded on your computer.  Preferably one that has a lot going on, but you know there is a "great shot" in there somewhere.  Pull it up in your editing software and play with cropping it.  Don’t crop it just once.  Crop it several times in different areas of the photograph.  Some horizontal and some vertical.  Play.  Do this with several photographs.  The more you do this, the better you will be at "seeing" the picture when you are in the moment and you will have less editing work when you get home.  One of the mistakes people frequently make is looking through the view finder and only noticing what they are trying to photograph instead of looking at the entire frame.  Learning to "see" your picture will help you crop out those undesirable elements in the moment instead of having to do that later.

Not long ago, I was visiting Chris Humphreys’ blog where he had a great tip about using foreground to help add depth, information and impact to your photographs.  He calls it the Sandwich Theory.  I’ve been watching the world around me for almost a month now, looking for an opportunity to practice this assignment.  While watching my son in the bath today, I thought I should take some pictures because the light was so perfect.  This was the first one I snapped.

Although I love it because of his sweet eyes peeking over the edge of the tub at me, it doesn’t really show much of anything to tell you that he’s in the tub without words.  After this picture, I thought about the sandwich theory so I set out to see if I could get one with foreground information.  This was my next shot.

I wasn’t convinced that the faucets were a compelling enough foreground to make the photograph a keeper so I kept going.

Now we have more information.  What could be better than the Johnson’s tear-free shampoo that he is about to outgrow?  I still wasn’t in love with the photo so I took one more.

This one was my favorite.  If you haven’t already clicked on the link to see Chris’ examples of the Sandwich Theory, you should do that now.  He has some fantastic examples.

Have you ever handed your camera over to someone else and asked them to take a picture for you?  Are you usually satisfied with what you got when you take a look at the picture later?  Most of the time, I bet your not.  Here is why.  Most people typically include too much background in the picture.  Background is great if the setting is important in why the photograph is being taken.  For example, if you are visiting Biltmore House in Ashville, North Carolina and you are standing on the front lawn and ask someone to take your picture, chances are you want them to include the 100+ year old castle in the background.  If you are somewhere that the background gives the viewer no further information, chances are you want the frame to be filled with you or your family.  Here is an example from my life.  Bless this sweet lady for taking the time away from her own family to snap a picture for mine but this is the picture she took of us.

Do you have any idea where we are?  Can you really even see much of us in the picture?  About two-thirds of this photograph can be eliminated.  Here it is after being cropped.

Now the focus is on the family.  Fortunately, my camera is a high enough resolution that I can crop out that much of the photograph and still have a good quality print.  Not all cameras are like that.  Also, by cropping it, I eliminated most of the trash can behind my son and myself.  The photographer could have also done that by merely taking about three steps to her left before pressing the shutter. 

This post is not meant to criticize the generous person who snapped this photo for us.  I’m happy to have a picture that includes all five of us – particularly me since I’m usually holding the camera.  It’s only meant as an example of the difference between filling the frame versus too much background.  When you are snapping a photograph for yourself or someone else, consider what is behind the subject.  Is it important in telling the story?  If not, fill the frame with the subject.   

I know I’m revisiting fill flash – again – but I have another example for you.  I’ve read in several places that if your subject is in the shade, you will have a more even light to work with and you don’t have to worry about raccoon eyes from the sun overhead.  Well, that may be true if you are in full shade.  The other day the boys were playing in our pool in the backyard.  Half the pool was in the shade and half was in full sun.  I wondered what effect that would have on my photographs.  I took two shots of my son in the same exact spot -in the shady side of the pool – less than a minute apart.  For one I used the pop-up flash on my camera for fill flash and for the other, no flash at all.  Here are the results.

Obviously, merely being in a shadow is not the complete answer to raccoon eyes in the mid-day sun.  You need to be taking enough pictures in enough situations to learn to anticipate the type of results you can expect your camera to produce.  In the example above, the flash saved the picture.  If I had only taken the no flash picture, I would not have a picture that captures my son’s fascination and excitement with his pool toys.

I think that part of the process of getting better is learning to shoot five more frames after you think you’ve got the shot.  Yes, we’ve all lucked out on occasion and gotten one great shot the first and only try.  However, most of the time that is not likely to be the case unless you are a professional or a well practiced amateur.  Here is an example from my house yesterday.  I took the kids to the pool for a few hours and when we came home, my daughter – the girl who never sleeps – was so wiped out she took a nap.  Since she was sleeping during daylight hours, I thought I’d try to snap some shots of her sleeping sweetness.  This is the first picture I took.  A fine snapshot, but not fantastic.  Also, not terribly flattering to her with the up-the-nose, open mouth look of it.

Frankly, at the time I took it, I failed to notice the unflattering angle because I was thinking sweet thoughts of my sleeping angel.  It wasn’t until I saw it on the screen later that I realized that the angle wasn’t a good one.  After I shot this one frame, I noticed how sweetly she had her hands folded in her sleep so I peeled back the blanket a wee bit to get a shot of that.

Then I decided to walk around to the other side of the bed to try a shot from that angle.

A much more flattering picture of my girl.  After I snapped this picture, I noticed that she had her arm wrapped around her favorite stuffed kitten so I thought I’d try to get a picture of that little detail because someday it will be a nice memory of her at this age.  She’d had the animal in her arms in the hands shot above, but now she’d moved her hand to rest it on her kitty.

I wasn’t satisfied of the way the kitty looked in the frame so I thought I’d try a new angle that allowed my daughter’s sleeping face to be in the same frame with the face of the kitten. 

A much more flattering picture of my sleeping child and it included a sweet detail of her childhood.  This was my favorite picture once I pulled them up on my screen.

My challenge to you when you are photographing your life…  take that first snapshot to make sure you’ve got the moment captured.  Then, if you can, try to shoot at least five more frames to see if you can make it better.   

It happened.  Just like Chuck Delaney said it would in Photography Your Way.  He said that even if you don’t consider yourself a professional photographer you should have business cards with your name on them to give to people when they ask – which he said they would.  I was at my first gig last weekend and within 5 minutes someone asked me for a card.  Unfortunately, I’d ignored Chuck’s advice and I had no business cards.  My reasoning was that I didn’t know what I’d name my business – if I were to get that far.  I was still trying to come up with the perfect name when I should have followed his advice and just had a card with my name printed on it and photographer as my occupation along with all my relevant contact information.  Business cards are cheap enough to have them reprinted when the perfect name comes to you.  In the meantime, have something to hand to a prospective client that is more professional than your digits scribbled on a scrap of paper – which is what I had to do.  Ugh.

Lesson learned.

I learned an important lesson yesterday.  Either I need to get in the habit of resetting my camera back to a favorite standard before putting my camera down or I need to check my settings every time I pick it up.  The lesson from yesterday for me involved shooting pictures of my children attending their first parade in full afternoon sun and shooting all of it at an ISO of 1600.  Everything is dull looking and none of the colors really pop.  This is a picture I took of my two older children jumping up and down waving in excitement to the local fire department as they passed by in their trucks.  As a mother, the picture is a sweet memory in a snapshot.  As a photographer, it could stand to be improved.

I had a friend tell me once that she’d done a similar thing by setting her white balance to tungsten to snap pictures with no flash in her home only to forget to change it and snap about 50 pictures of her kids playing in the snow.  All of the pictures came out blue.  She was so unhappy because she’d managed to get many great shots of her children but they would have all required a great deal of post production editing to make them printable.   

I guess the lesson here is that if you start to play with your various settings, learn to reset them back to a favorite standard each time.

I have a friend who is the Director of Operations for a local auction house that is less than a year old.  She invited me to come to the auction yesterday to get a picture of the lead auctioneer in action for their website.  They are in the growth stages and couldn’t afford to hire an established photographer.  Lucky for them, I’m not an established photographer and I wanted the practice!  Win, win.

Here is my favorite picture of the auctioneer interacting with his audience.

Other than some cropping, it is ROOC.  I found that shooting at 1600 ISO was my best bet even with my Speedlite in action.  That was surprising to me.  Every other setting I tried would have to be retouched afterward to be lightened.  It was a good experience for me to try my camera and Speedlite in a new setting and find out what worked and what didn’t.  Below, you’ll see a little treasure I found for my entry way.  It makes me happy every single time I walk past it.  However, the very best part of the whole day for me was still the experience – especially the shooting.  It was so great to try it and find such enjoyment from a job.  If you’ve never been to a public auction, I encourage you to go.  It is a super fun environment.