I have been making a LOT of upgrades lately in preparation for the summer photography season. (Read: spending ALL of my deposits). Such is the nature of starting a business…. it won’t be this bad next summer. Most of my investments have involved off camera lighting gear. I’d added a few more strobes, several modifiers, and a set of PocketWizards. That’s all in addition to upgrading my camera to a gripped D90. (Ultimately I plan to shoot with a D700, but it doesn’t fit in my budget this year, maybe next year). I’ll be renting fast zooms for my weddings. I’m hoping that my equipment arsenal will be complete in 5 years or less, to where I’m no longer upgrading or renting, just replacing gear as necessary (and hopefully that’s not too often).

ANYWAY…. I’ve been practicing like a fool with my SB700, sometimes putting it on a light stand in a softbox  (for on location shoots) and sometimes bouncing it off walls/ceilings. For all the examples below, I was in my house and the light was very low due to the rain. You would never know it for how nice and bright these are!

For this one I metered for a few stops below the ambient light and fired my speedlight on TTL mode inside a 20×24 Lasolite softbox, directly to the right of Micah.

For these, I bounced the flash to the size and very slightly behind me – basically I aimed the flash head towards where I would have placed the softbox. When I took this picture of Micah, there was still sunlight in the room.

I really need to gel my flash for tungsten light to get my color right, as you can see in the photo below. It was hard to balance the white light of the flash with the yellow light of the incandescent bulbs in the kitchen. I should have also flipped off the overhead light on the stove, I think.

As you can see, bouncing the flash to the side (not to the ceiling, yuck) can really give you some nice directional light. It’s going to come in really handy  in those dark churches this summer!

Everything I learned about using my flash in this way I picked up from here, my new favorite blog!

This was taken back in October at sunrise on the lake in Milwaukee, WI. So pretty!

Yesterday I decided to finally check out a nearby park that I have heard is a good spot for portraits. About an hour before I planned to leave, my parents called and we arranged to meet up at the park together. I got there about fifteen minutes before they did and tried to do some test shots with Micah. The light and the scenery was awesome and I really look forward to taking families to this spot, but I didn’t get too much of an opportunity to capture it well because Micah kept running away every time I lifted the camera to my face. He totally knew what he was doing, too! I finally just gave up. I don’t think “frustrated” is the right word to use here, since I fully expected him to run away from me every time he saw my camera. I just sort of shook my head and decided that I might as well just enjoy watching him explore.  I got a few keepers, but I really like the shots I got of him playing with his Papa and Grandma!

I just love how you can see the light changing as the sun sets, it was really beautiful!

I did not take a new photo for this week’s theme. Instead I looked back through all the photos on my phone and took way too much time choosing. I couldn’t help it; it was a long walk down memory lane. As I looked through tons of old pictures, I thought to myself…

“Oh I can’t believe how tiny he looked!”

“I totally forgot about that day!”

“Hahahahahahahahaha!!!!”

“What is this?” (Okay, maybe I did not think that, but it’s funny, isn’t it?)

This one is my favorite:

I did a black and white conversion in Photoshop because I do not have a fancy editing program on my non-iPhone. (I have a T-Mobile Dash 3G without the 3G.)

The Story Behind the Cat in the Window

There are several (like 4) stray cats in our neighborhood. I’m not even sure if they are technically stray, but I see them wandering around outside all of the time. When they first started showing up at our back patio window, it was a really big deal. Micah was completely freaking out. He just stayed at the window and said “kitty. kitty. kitty. kitty-cah. kitty. kitty. kitty.” Endlessly. I like to exaggerate, but I’m totally serious. Kitty in the window became a running joke in our house. Don’t say “kitty” around Micah, if you do, he will run to the window and look for it.  The commotion had died down recently since the cats did not come to our house during the whole Snowcastrophy deal, but now that it’s all melted, the cat showed up again today, prompting another “kitty” fiasco. Needless to say, when I came across this photo in my phone, I knew it was the One.

So I thought it would be amusing to share some of the “outtakes” from my mini photo shoot with my sister and her husband this weekend. I (forced) nicely asked them if they would model for me since I wanted some more recent examples of couples’ shoots on my website/Facebook page. If you know my sister, you also know she is very funny! She and Mark kept doing these goofy things and some of the pictures were totally out of focus, probably because I was laughing so much!

f/1.8, 1/500, ISO 100

I’m not really sure what they were trying to convey here… but I think it had something to do with her reaction to my feelings about the next shot.

f/1.8, 1/400, ISO 100

Kelly wanted to do this pose. I said no… after all I wanted these for my portfolio! We did a few other poses and I finally gave in. I did not include this in the set I gave them, though. Mark has the RAW on his laptop if she really wants it. Haha!!

f/1.8, 1/400, ISO 100

This is a perfect example of why you should be super aware of your environment when you are taking a portrait. This might have been super awkward if I had not noticed it and moved them before taking the “real” shot (this was a test shot). The branch acts as a leading line right to their crotch… also…. yeah. Just not a good picture at all! LOL!!

f/1.8, 1/500, ISO 100

This one is cute and yet, this is not a pose you want to duplicate. I did not ask her to hold his head like this (haha!), but I do like how it got a genuine smile out of him. It’s okay, they were still laughing and happy when she put her hands down and that’s how I got one of my favorites:

f/1.8, 1/500, ISO 100