The case of the cobbler's children having no shoes | Woodstock GA Children's Photography

Have you heard of the story of how the cobbler slogged day and night making shoes for everyone in the village? And how his own children ran about barefoot ? My kids are sort of in the same boat. Before you run out and buy them shoes for Christmas though, hear me out. They do have shoes. LOTS of shoes! Atleast my 6yo does (she has more than I do atleast). My 1yo isn't walking yet and the pediatrician says, socked feet are best for learning balance. So he has just one pair that we put on, on his birthday. He didn't like them one bit !  So, if you see them running around sans shoes, rest assured its for a very good reason, and dearth of shoes has nothing to do with it. Plus, I'm not a cobbler.

So, my analogy of shoes actually, applies to photography. I was done with client shoots and delivering edited sessions 2 weeks ago. And then I realized I hadn't ordered Christmas cards for our family and friends! Not to mention, we had NO pictures that we could use on them ! Well, nothing "christmasy" atleast unless you count the iphone pictures taken by Mr Miraz Light At Work Photography.

So I finally got my act together and did a mini session. These were shot on a cold rainy day so they were taken indoors. It would have been nice to have done them outdoors but see above for the case of the cobbler's kids. And I did want my kids to have pictures done this year. Something's better than nothing right ? And I made it a point to be in front of the lens for a change. I do want my kids to have pictures of me to look back upon.
Here are a few of my favorites.

She had received this outfit earlier this year from a grandparent. While its two sizes too big, she thought it was festive enough for pictures. Plus tts rare that she likes anything pink so I shot away ...

We have nicknamed my little guy The Duracell bunny. He's always on the go ! His favorite pose to sit in, is this. And he sat that way for only 6-7 seconds.

Babies and toddlers really don't need any toys. He's always content playing with my pots and pans and spoons.

I love this picture (yes thats me!) because I have a 2013 picture of me with my sweet little girl ! Memories for me to pass on to her !

You can find the remaining session images, including a cute naked baby butt here. Go check it out !

PS: I love MCP actions for my indoor highkey images. They make my white background pop !

Textures and What to do with those darn things

For those who know me and my shooting style, I love shooting in natural light. However, I reside in a suburb of Atlanta GA. Which means, the weather outdoors is not always favorable. For about 3-4 months of the year, we have cloudy overcast skies and temperatures that are less than 10 deg C or in the low  40s F. Doesn't make for very warm sunny pictures. In such cases, I resort to adding the "warmth" in post processing using textures. When I first started using textures, I faced a problem. The "texture" almost always never looked good on exposed skin. So I would mask it off. But that many a times defeated the purpose of adding the texture in the first place - to add warmth to the entire photo including the exposed skin. 


Lets take this photo for example of my daughter -





It was taken on a cold dreary day in the middle of December. When taking it, I had wished it was a little sunny but I have no control over mother nature.This was, after choosing “Shade” as the White Balance in camera. So I decided I would need to add the warmth in post processing. i.e. giving the image a more “earthy” look. I thought a texture would do it well and so I chose one of my own making called Dusty Lunar from my Winter Ambiance set. If I did what I usually do, which is apply the texture to the whole image and then mask it off with a soft brush from all exposed skin, it would clearly not help as shown in the image below. The background is warmer but the face is the same.

 So, one day I chanced upon this neat technique. When I want the color of the texture but not the texture itself, what I do is, using either the select tool or the lasso tool (depending on how the face / exposed skin is shaped) , I select the exposed skin and then use the Gaussian Blur filter. That blurs out all/any texture but leaves the color of the layer intact so you get this –

See how that makes her face warmer ? I think this is in keeping with the whole tone of the picture and makes it look less "processed".

Here’s another example incorporating the same technique with my Peach Sundae Texture from my Rustic Memories Textures and Borders set. 

 

  Not sure how to apply a texture? Look up my post on Overlays. The process is the same whether you use Gimp or PSE. 
 

Background Blur

When I first started out, I was always attracted to pictures which had blurred or bokehed backgrounds. Of course, at that time, I didn't know what a bokeh was. A bokeh is basically what the photography world calls the blobs of light that are out of focus. Ever seen a bokeh of colored blobs in a Christmas Ad? A bokeh's shape usually looks round but upon zooming close, you will see, in many cases it is not round. It takes on the shape of the lens' aperture. i.e. depending on the aperture blades in the lens and the shape they take, the bokeh gets its shape. The bokeh also depends on what your background has. If it has a lot of variations in color and contrast, the bokeh might not be very smooth and creamy.

I took the following picture today.

Now you must think it would take a top of the line pro lens to get this creamy background right? Wrong ! I took it with the lens I had bought over 4 years ago with my D40. It doesn't have any of the VR stabilization stuff you would see that today's lenses have and its not even one of those elite "prime" lenses. Its simply a zoom lens. A 55-200 mm lens which is not that big of a deal in terms of lenses today. From the picture, it looks as though Ms Munchkin is standing in front of a studio background. In reality, there was actually a parking lot behind that fence.

So, the trick to get this blurry background, is to have a lens which has a wide aperture. A wide aperture equals a low f-stop. A low f-stop means that your plane of focus (also called DOF or Depth of Field) is very narrow which in turn means everything else other than whats in the plane of focus, will be blurred out. In my case today, I used my zoom lens and lowered the f-stop to as low as the lighting conditions would allow. We're in the middle of winter and today was one of those days when it wasn't biting cold. The weather was in mid 40s and I figured I'd have about 10 minutes of shooting with Ms Munchkin before her fingers and face started getting cold. She did have on 3 layers of clothing - I love layers ! I made her stand about a foot from the fence you see in the background and took the shot.

Once I had it opened in PSE, I brightened it up by using this method. I then used a skin action from MCP's Bag Of Tricks called Magic Powder to even up her skin tone since in reality she doesn't have blotchy skin inspite of what the picture might say. Finally, I used an overlay that gave it a "canvasy" feel. There are several free overlays available on Flickr. I have personally used, and like the ones by  Pareeerica.  As I've said before - you really don't need a top of the line lens or a top of the line camera to take great pictures.

The frame is one of the latest awesome creations by Isabella Lafrance. and can be downloaded for free from her blog.