Halloween Themed Portraits

Sometimes it is fun to do something a little different and fun for different holidays.

We took some individual portraits using some cute Halloween props. But we also created a fun photo manipulation with one of them.







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Photography & The Improving Of The Mobile Phone

It wasn't long ago when cell phones did not even exist. And then, once the mobile phone was invented, it took years before the ability to take photos was incorporated into mobile phones, and once it was, more often the not, the photos taken with mobile phones were blurry and generally not very good. But over time and with the improvements in technology, that has changed. Now, mobile phones have higher pixels for their cameras and are capable of taking some beautifully clear and sharp photos.

Here are three examples taken with my mobile phone which has a 5mp camera built-in.







Additionally, cell phone cameras are very simple to use. Even very young children can take stunning photos using a mobile phone. Here are four examples taken by a 3 year old named Rosie using my mobile phone.









It would be great if you could carry your professional camera around with you everywhere you went every day in order to be able to capture all of those random moments of beauty that you would otherwise miss photographing, but doing so is completely impractical. But with the help of the modern mobile phone, you can still capture theose special photographs even when you have had to leave your proper camera at home.




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Using Nature To Enhance Portrait Photography

Many photographers, when first starting out, lack the resources to buy proper studio lighting and backdrops for taking portraits. But that shouldn't prevent them from taking beautiful portrait photos.

And even when a photographer has all of the necessary equipment, the lighting and the beauty that nature provides sometimes just simply outdoes anything that can be provided by studio lighting and painted backdrops.



Right now, it is Autumn. One of the most wonderful backdrops that can be found in nature during Autumn are the colorful leaves that fall from trees, spreading a carpet of reds, yellows and oranges along the ground.

Children love to sit or lay in the piles of leaves.







They also love to play in the leaves, making some wonderful opportunities for beautiful portrait photography.





Autumn leaves even make a great backdrop for pet portraits.



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Photography - Hobby or Career?

I occasionally join in with Tell The Truth Thursday over at The Redhead Riter's blog.

Today's question is: Do you have a hobby?

I immediately thought of this blog, because, although I occasionally do my photography professionally, it mostly started out as a hobby and I still often go out and take photos merely because I enjoy capturing the perfect picture.

What separates my photography from being a hobby or from being a career? I suppose it would be whether or not I make any money from it. Some people asume that if you call something a hobby, then you are not as good at it as a professional would be, but I have found that is not always true. Some photographers who do photography as merely a hobby are far better than some of the best professional photographers. And I have seen some professional photographers whose work is only average at best.

I think, the reason it is difficult for me to separate the words "hobby" and "career" from one another as I have been striving to combine the two. I really intend to make a living someday out of doing the things I love.

The things I love to do:

1. spending time with my kids
2. writing (mostly on my novel)
3. writing children's stories
4. designing
5. photography
6. create fairy images (although my husband is better at it)
7. crafting (for and with my kids)
8. fitness (lots of walking and hiking)
9. Anything to do with cats

Things I want to learn:
1. drawing/illustrating
2. knitting
3. sewing
4. playing the guitar

and a myriad of other things!

Learning to draw is something that actually pertains to my writing. I have written three children's stories and really want to be able to illustrate them myself. I wrote them for three of my children, and I just think it would be an even more special gift to them if the stories were illustrated by me (or their dad) too. And I have very definite ideas in my head of how I want the illustrations to look. I am just not very good at actually converting those pictures in my mind into drawings. I am also running out of time because my children are getting older and the stories were written for young children. I think one of the reasons I turned to photography as a hobby is because of my inability to draw. What I couldn't capture with pen to paper, I was able to capture through the camera lens.

I am told that learning to knit is quite easy. I am also told that, once you know how to knit, you can quite easily sit down and knit while watching tv or doing something else that doesn't require the use of your hands. I love the idea of being productive during my "down time," of being able to just vegetate in front of the tv and still get something useful made! Of course, it is not something I would be able to do while taking photographs!

I once signed up for a class on guitar playing. It was called "classical guitar for beginners." I was terrible at it! I found out that the class was for people who already played a little guitar and wanted to learn to play classical guitar for the first time, not for people like me who had never played any guitar. Unfortunately, I never got around to signing up for truly beginner's guitar lessons. Oh well, at least my children, years later, got some use out of my guitar and learned quite a bit about how to play! This desire to learn to play guitar, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with my photography endeavors.

The reason I want to learn to sew is quite simple. I am a mom to seven children. It would save me a lot of money if I could mend their clothing when small things need mending, and I would also love to make them new things. Not to mention, if I could sew, it could potentially help me design some props for photography shoots.

What are your hobbies? What new things would you like to learn?

Motion

There are different ways to capture motion in photos. Some photographers like to capture the subject in complete focus with the background showing the blur of motion to show movement as in the below photo.



Sometimes, I capture motion in a photo differently. In the below photo, the girl's face is in focus while her arms, legs and dress are blurred with movement. I like this as it helps show the delight and freedom in her movement and captures the sense of joyful abandon that I discovered in her movements.



There is another way of capturing movement in photos, and that is to keep everything in crisp, sharp focus and let the swing of hair or position of the subject capture the motion inherent in the picture, as in the photograph below.

Photographs, Copyright and Theft

I don't know if this will work to show you, but my husband was browsing the web looking for something unrelated and came across this.

Looks a tad familiar, to this. Don't you think?

(It's a photo of my cat Caspian that my husband took and posted to his DeviantArt account almost five years ago.)

I hate that people think it's okay to do stuff like this!

Let me get beyond my rage about this and give a short lesson in copyright. If you find a photo on the web, that does NOT mean you can use it! Most photos on the Internet are copyrighted and belong to the photographer. It is illegal to use it without permission by the photographer who owns the photo.

There are many places where you can find stock photography to use. Some of those places charge a fee and some offer the photos for free.

Using a photograph that you found on the Internet without the photographer's permission is opening yourself up to being sued by the photographer.

The irony about this particular theft is that DeviantArt, where the thief probably found the photo, actually has a stock photo section they could have browsed. The photographers set different licenses for use on their stock photography there. This photo was not listed as a stock photo and was not downloadable for use. Why do I get the feeling that the person who stole it already knew this?

Update:
Since posting this, it appears that the offending party has removed the picture from their site.

Red Sunflower

Sometimes having the main subject of a photo off-center can give a photo an added beauty.