This is one of my favorite Harper pics, and one of my favorite lighting conditions to shoot...lots of light. I'm a big fan of over-exposing a lot of the frame to highlight detail in the other half. There was a lot of sun coming through the window, so metering on Harper's darker hair really blew the lighter end of the frame way out. I love the detail on her hands in this one.
We went to Ocean City for vacation, and while I like taking pictures at the beach, the weather is really the driving factor in regards to cool pictures. One evening a HUGE thunderstorm went through - with a ton of lightening. I had never taken pictures of lightening, but had always wanted to. Thankfully the storm lasted long enough to allow me to figure out how the heck to shoot things. I had the best luck with a five second shutter, and an aperture around f11. There was a lot of residual light (I was shooting from a condo balcony), and if I was on the beach, I could have reduced the shutter a little bit. Anyway, the technique wasn't exact...basically waiting for some lightening, tripping the shutter, and then hoping that I got an interesting five seconds. This was the best of the lot. While these pictures would have been a lot more interesting if I had been on the beach to add some waves to the foreground, overall, I was was thrilled with this first lightening experience!
This is sort of like lightening, take two...again at Ocean City this past summer. Who knew that we could see a pretty sweet fireworks display - also from our balcony. The technique was the same - five second shutter just before the firework exploded, and then just hope for something good. This was the best of the bunch.
Huge pile of leaves, a daughter in a good mood, and awesome late afternoon light...what could be better! Harps really liked getting in the leaves, and happened to find the brightest leaves in the pile...amazing! Okay, I gave them to her (after ripping them off a tree), but she gazed up at them with an outstretched arm. Couldn't have posed her any better myself. If I had been thinking, I would have bumped the ISO a bit (maybe to 400) so I could have increased the depth of field. More of the leaves need to be in focus.
Classic shot of Harper...not too much happening technique here - just fill flash and auto metering. I'm a big fan of close up face pictures, and had never seen Harper make a face like this before.
Technically speaking, this picture isn't great. Shallow depth of field, lots of the frame out of focus, but for pure awesomeness, this is probably the best picture I've taken all year. There's kind of Jabba the Hut / Princess Leia thing going on here that's pretty cool. Or sort of a "I'm a drug lord and this is my pet" thing, although I'm not sure who of the two would fill what role in this picture, because all I see is two alpha males!!!
Close up of Harper's hair while we were at the beach. One of the benefits of having a daughter with curly hair...cool photo opportunities of her hair! I think I was somewhere around f22 on this one to get as much as I could in focus. The cloudy day helped with more even lighting.
Just a cool face picture here - Harper getting into the water at the beach. Makes me think of her saying "oooooooooohhhhhh" while I was taking this.
Great Falls is my default mini-photo trip location whenever I want to spend an hour or so taking semi-serious pictures. I went around 10:00 this past December, knowing that I wouldn't have great light, or weather (it was totally clear that day, and about 25 degrees), but needing to spend a little time outside. I took a few neat pictures of some heron, and then set up for some long exposures of the ice-covered rocks along the falls when a kayaker came down the main chute. I managed to get a few shots of him coming down the channel, and figured that was that. However, he came back about 15 minutes later, and I was ready with a telephoto lens. I'm standing just about ten feet directly above him in this picture. Only thing I would change would be the shadow on his face, but that would have been impossible unless it was about four hours later in the day. I really really really like this picture, and every time I look at it wonder how effective this guy's wet (or dry) was on a brutally cold day.
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