A slice of life

About This Photo
Aperture: f/1.8
Exposure: 1/40
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 1250
Lens: 50mm f/1.4

Baby Feet

About This Photo
Aperture: f/2.0
Exposure: 1/40
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 1600
Lens: 50mm f/1.4

Things I want to remember

About This Photo
Aperture: f/7.1
Exposure: 1/60
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Lens: 50mm f/1.4

I love her little hands and her long fingers. I love her luminous skin, the way it feels, and the way it smells. I love the way she grabs things right now, unrelenting, digging her fingers into bibs and burp rags, clutching teethers and toys.

There are a lot of technical reasons I chose this photo -- the colors are amazing, the lighting is perfect, the composition works. Those are all things that you want in any photograph.

But mostly, I choose it because I don't ever want to forget this.

* * *

Lessons Learned or Affirmed:

• Take pictures of anything and everything you care about. Sometimes just walking around with the camera is a great way to learn what strikes your fancy. 
• Don't be afraid to make something  you wouldn't necessarily expect the subject of your photo. A baby clutching a bib? Yeah, why not!? God is in the details, as they say.

Bridge(s)

About This Photo:
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure: 1/640
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Lens: 50mm f/1.4

There's a beautiful park near our home -- within a half mile walk. I love it there, and walk there with Austen as often as I can. Every now and then, I discover something new in the park that I hadn't seen before. It was in a visit just a day before this photo was taken that I walked on a previously untested path and found this bridge.

When I took pictures of it, I tried different apertures and shutter speeds, but had the largest amount of variation with the focus points. You can see how the bridge at the front of the photo is blurrier than the parts of the bridge in the middle of the photo. This is on purpose. I tried different focal points to see which looked and felt best to me. You would most often expect the foreground portions of the bridge to be in focus and the parts behind that to be blurrier. It changes how the photo feels when you switch up what's expected. Instead of the background, the bokeh is in the foreground.

I like it -- I think it points the viewer's gaze ahead, as if to say: take the long view. Don't look just at what's immediately in front of you, but look to what's just a little bit beyond that. I think that's good to do sometimes (in photography, and in life).

* * *

Lessons Learned or Affirmed:

• Even if you don't think it will work, try out different settings and focal points on a given subject. You might be surprised at what you like.
• Foreground bokeh can be difficult to do well. Sometimes it's out of place and feels wrong for a given subject. Go with your gut instinct.

Anniversary

About This Photo:
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure: 1/30
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Lens: 50mm f/1.4

It was our anniversary today (May 23) and as a surprise, my sweetie took the whole day off. We went to our favorite brunch place and followed it up with a trip to the museum that boasts a huge collection of Tiffany glass and other pieces of American art.

These blossoms (which are fake, but I don't really care since they are so very pretty) were there begging to be photographed when I looked up at the restaurant. Blossoms and bokeh? Yes, please!

* * *

Lessons Learned or Affirmed:

• Beautiful surprises await for those who look up or down with the camera lens. 
• Blossoms and bokeh are a match made in heaven. The first photograph of mine that ever won a contest was of some real cherry blossoms, all bokeh-ed out like you see here.

Just a slice

About This Photo:
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure: 1/30
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 400
Lens: 50mm f/1.4

My dear friend Christianne is Austen's honorary auntie (and birthday twin!). The days she comes to visit (like today) are always particularly special for us. They simply adore one another!

I love this photo. Like others I've shared, it puts the viewer's focus on human subjects not on faces, but on limbs. There's a tender and very relational moment being shared here, but it's not to do with faces and eyes.

This is about a baby girl who loves being held, and the arms that love holding her. It's simple, but so powerful. It is love.

* * *

Lessons Learned or Affirmed:

• Sometimes I forget all about the crop tool when I'm processing. I try to frame my shots when I take them such that I won't need to crop, but today I was really reminded that cropping can be your best friend. The shot didn't feel right SOOC -- there seemed to be too much around the periphery and it was distracting. Cropping the image really helped me focus in on the subject of the photo in order to make sure there wasn't anything unnecessary or distracting in the shot. If I can put it this way, having the picture this way just feels better.
• I love being able to capture tender moments like this in unconventional ways. Photography continues to pull me toward aspects of moments like this one that might otherwise be missed.

Focusing on the unexpected thing

About This Photo:
Aperture: f/2.5
Exposure: 1/60
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 200
Lens: 50mm f/1.4

I love baby legs, baby feet, baby toes ... all the baby parts!! When I was incredibly pregnant with Austen, BabyLegs had a huge sale on their legwarmers: 75% off of $75 or more worth of those delectable little stockings. I bought seven pair. I mean, how could I resist?!

For this particular photo, I chose to focus on the legs. Not typical for a portrait, is it? It changes how it feels to look at the baby, making something other than the face the focus of the photo. It's not because her face isn't important (or cute). We can still make out her face, and that she's smiling, but as blurred as it is, it's not meant to be what first draws the eye.

One of the primary reasons for me to take a photo like this is that it draws the viewer's attention to something different and unexpected -- something that's not typically the subject of a portrait.

It draws our attention to new and fun details that we might otherwise overlook.

And sometimes it's fun to draw attention to the unexpected, isn't it?

* * *

Lessons Learned or Affirmed:

• Even if I don't think it will work, I try setting my focus points in different places for photos like this. Sometimes it doesn't work, but sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised with the results.
• Geesh. It's hard to go wrong taking pictures of babies, isn't it?