So very cool

I'm sure it will be her favorite of all time:

Purple Rock and Roll.

Because I am the best football mom EVER!!

I am so proud of my son.

Here he is, catching a pass to make a two-point conversion in tonight's game:



It's really a shame not all boys are as lucky, to have a parent like me, to take such awesome photos of their accomplishments. Truly, have you ever seen such wonderful photography skills????

No, I didn't think so.

On second thought, that might be my son. Or it might not. It's so blurry, who would know?

Can anyone even tell??

No, I didn't think so.

Why we don't play with matches (warning, graphic ....)

Although I can rush to assure you that no-one was playing with matches. Or lighters or torches or flame throwers or pyrotechnic devices of any kind. It was an honest-to-goodness, no-fault-of-anyone, nothing-more-than, ACCIDENT.

An innocent accident that can happen when a child (in this case specifically, my 11-yr old nephew, Landon) trips and falls into a fire during a Labor Day celebration at the lake. And a burning plastic water bottles sears to his arm and continues to burn, and his hand and knee suffer the most damage.

So no fault -- no blame. But still, how scary is this???













Things to be grateful for:

That it was not worse.

That we still had an ice chest full of water sitting on the patio to immediately submerge his hand in. Not the most sterile on the planet, but cold ... and full.

That honestly, it was an accident, and no one had to feel guilty for causing the injury through carelessness or disregard for safety.

That he has a 12-yr old female cousin whose first instinct was to scream her bloody head off and alert the adults, one of whom (me) saw it through the window and couldn't quite make my brain work as quickly as my eyes.

That he has an 8-yr old brother who helped pull him from the fire.

That he is still here with us, only a little worse for the wear, and when enough time has passed, he'll have an awesome story to tell about "remember that time I was on fire?!?!"



And on a much, much, MUCH more selfish note, I am grateful for the amazing freaking BOKEH I am getting with my new birthday lens, 50 mm 1.8. Check out these pictures! (assuming the content doesn't turn your stomach .....)

I love birthdays and new photography toys!!

Most of all, I love Landon.

The awesomeness just keeps coming

Since I've already, quite humbly and modestly, if I say so myself, shared with you my total awesomeness in athletic ability, I thought I would go ahead, even though I don't like bragging, even though it's really not my style to toot my own horn, even though I'm actually quite a shy and modest person ......... and show you my awesomeness in photography, as well.

These are all pictures I took this weekend at the lake. In all their un-edited, un-tweaked, un-photoshopped glory.

Try not to be jealous of my mad skillz and talent.

Would you like me to take pictures at your baby's christening, perhaps? Or maybe a graduation or wedding? Because truly, my awesomeness knows no bounds.

As much as I hate feet, you'd think I wouldn't stick them in my mouth so often

Updated to add: Teacher Tom, or anyone else who might have read this and gotten the wrong impression .... I did not at all think this young woman was "trashy" looking ... in fact, I wrote that very thing below. She was adorable .... just so much older looking than twelve that I was taken aback. And promptly stuck my foot in my mouth about it, which is about par for the course for me. :)

*****************************************************

Tonight, I attended the second in a six-week series of classes I am taking at the local vo-tech to learn portrait photography. Tonight's session was about learning to use studio lights and the proper camera settings for traditional studio photography, as well as letting us "practice" posing a model. That's something I have struggled with every time I've ever taken photos for someone else .... we show up, I've got my camera, and they say something along the lines of, "So, tell me what you want me to do or where you want me to stand or sit and what should I do with my hands" and I look at them like they've grown a second head, or like they're speaking a foreign language because truly, I have no clue where to even begin.

Tonight, the instructor brought his daughter along to be our model. The first half of the class she helped him with the computer, viewing images we had all brought in to be critiqued ... then he had a photo session with her, to show us how he would do it as a professional if she came into his studio for portraits. Then we all got to practice with her.

When he was preparing to start his session, he told us how he likes to visit with his clients, especially if this is their first time in his studio, and develop at least a little bit of rapport to help them feel at ease. So while he was putting up the backdrop, and meter-testing each light, and syncing the strobes, he was sort of half-handedly asking her questions as if he didn't know her .... again, just to give us an example.

He started with the standard, "What's your name?" and then "How old are you?"

Now, she had been in the room over an hour already, and although she hadn't spoken much, I could clearly see she was in high school. Not very tall, but with a fairly-developed figure, nicely styled hair, and a full face of makeup. I wouldn't have *guessed* college, but definitely at least driving age. So when she replied, "Twelve", well, I about fell over.

"You're kidding," someone else in the room asked. "You're twelve?"

(Clearly, I wasn't the only one taken by surprise.)

"Yes," she said.

And I said, "Really? Twelve? Are you kidding?"

"No," she repeated, "I'm really twelve."

And then the thought that went through my brain was, "Holy cow, my daughter is twelve, but she doesn't look NEAR as ...." except unfortunately I realized, because everyone had turned to look at me, including the girl, that I wasn't actually thinking those thoughts in my brain, but that they were in fact coming out of my mouth. OUT LOUD. IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.

So I immediately started scrambling for an adjective I could use that wouldn't sound judgmental or mean-spirited. I mean, she was a cute girl, but what I was really thinking was, "My daughter doesn't look near as ......" What? Slutty? Trampy? Old? Developed? Mature? Because she didn't look slutty OR trampy ... she just looked so much more .... so much more ....

"Pretty!" I finally exclaimed. "My daughter is not near as pretty as you are."

And the lady sitting next to me turned and said, "That's not a very nice thing to say about your own kid!"

So I started back-pedaling, and trying to fix it, only it was clear I was just digging myself in deeper.

"No, I mean, she's pretty, too, it's just that she doesn't look so .... um ..... so .... grown up, is all" I finished weakly. Really, there is no good adjective to describe what I was thinking.

And her father, my INSTRUCTOR, heard the whole thing.

POSSIBLY she was so fixed up because she knew she would be having her picture taken twelve hundred times tonight.

POSSIBLY my daughter is a little behind the times, considering she is also twelve and wears no make up at all.

POSSIBLY I will soon be receiving a big fat "F" in Portrait Photography this year.

The Faces of Twelve

Updated to add: Thanks, honestly, for the nice comments. I was thrilled with how they turned out. Not because I believe in my own fabulousness, but because I felt they really showcased her personality and (best of all!!) didn't cost an arm and a leg since I took them myself. (No, we won't consider the cost of lens in this equation .... that's a "gimme") :)

To answer a few questions:

6. Achieving 11: I used my photo editing program (I use Photoshop CS4) and ran a "faded" action. You can do the same thing by using any photo editing program and lowering the saturation of the entire photo. If you don't *have* a photo-editing program, then I have no clue .... basically, if I can't take shortcuts with technology, then I'm lost!

5. Lens: I used my new Canon 85 mm 1.8 lens.

4. Where: Shara, there is an overturned semi (don't ask me, who even knows) in a field next to the Dolese plant on Wilshire between Rockwell and Council. The rust-ish background is the underside of the trailer and the graffiti'd part is the back of the trailer. I'm sure I was breaking every OSHA code known to man by letting her climb on it, but I got the exact background I was hoping for, so it was worth risking arrest, ha!

3. Skirt: purchased from a vendor at the OKC Affair of the Heart craft fair in February. I found TONS in little-girl ballerina sizes, but only one booth, with only one skirt, in a size 8-10. I snagged it, felt grateful when I got home that it fit Brayden, and have been kicking myself ever since that I didn't think to get the person's card.

2. Favorites: Brayden's favorite is number 12. And although no-one asked (ahem) MY favorite is number 11, although I can't choose between the "faded" action (which is what I have in this post) or the original in all its vibrancy.

1. Looks like me: I know, isn't it funny? Although, anyone who has ever seen Brayden's birthmom (Hi, M!! <-- waving frantically) has said she and I could pass for sisters, so I suppose its not too odd that Brayden might look a little like me. Except for when she's in trouble. Then she looks just like Blaine.

Again, thanks for posting your opinions .... its great for me to read them!
**********************************************


Every year I force encourage my children to let me take pictures of them on (around) their birthday. Despite the fact I am falling farther and farther behind, I still consider myself a scrapbooker and like to have the visual documentation of how they grow and change each year.

Brayden's birthday is in February, and while that wasn't a problem in balmy Georgia, now that we live in Oklahoma we've discovered we often have to wait a month or two for weather nice enough for outdoor photography. We had such a day yesterday ....temps in the high 70's, and little to no wind .... a RARITY here.

I was also excited to take her photos this year because I had purchased and Lord knows I needed to justify my new lens. I was really hoping for some quality snapshots.

I'd love to hear your opinions, and I've numbered the pictures so if you'd like to leave a specific comment, I'll know which image you're referring to. For the record, I did not increase color or vibrancy or hue or contrast or anything on any of them. In fact, they came out so vivid that I actually DECREASED the color on some of them ..... guess when you combine the perfect outdoor light with a clear day and a good lens, you get good color ... to the point of kaleidoscopiness ... yes, it is a word. I just made it up.



#1.



#2.



#3.



#4.



#5.



#6.



#7.



#8.



#9.



#10.



#11.



#12.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go perform cpr on my own uterus, because it's shriveled up and crying at the realization of how grown up my baby girl is getting.

The Lens

Since several (several, SEVERAL) of you have asked, I thought I would share with you what kind of lens I bought to help with these basketball photos. I do feel compelled, however, to point out to you it wasn't just the lens. It was ME. My skill, my talent, my artistic ability, my ......... my ............ ok, yeah, it was the lens.

I'm really annoyed, though. You know why? I was going to point you back to my previous journal entries here and here to show you my first few attempts and how lousy they were.

But do you know what I realized? That when I uploaded the photos, the ones that sort of in a way maybe hopefully perhaps weren't totally suck-ish, from the final game of the season, I labled them with the exact same names as the crappy photos I used in the first journal entry. (Wow, I'm really good at this technology stuff, aren't I?) And although I would have suspected my photo host server would have given me some sort of, oh, I don't know, HEADS UP that they were about to over-write all my old pictures, they did not. So now none of my old pictures will show up.

And because I am oh-so-competent and organized, when I got my new hard-drive, I went in and deleted all the photos that (I THOUGHT) I would no longer use, so now I have no way to recall them. You know, I really need a recycle bin for my recycle bin's recycle bin.

SO!!!

All that to say, if you didn't see the first two sets of basketball pictures, you are simply going to have to take my word for it --- they were awful.

Indoor sports, for me, was a tricky balancing act. A quick enough shutter speed to keep things in focus, but then not enough light came in. The lighting in indoor gyms is terrible. A slow enough shutter speed to let in the light I needed, and the action was blurry. I tweaked, I fiddled, I maniupulated every setting on my camera --- I might have even cursed a bit.

After scouring the internet for suggestions, and accosting friend and strangers alike for information, I wound up purchasing an 85 mm fixed lens, 1.8 f/stop. I'm still not sure what the mechanics of that *specifically* even means, but I know the 1.8 f/stop let in enough light that I could get the pictures in focus. The difficult part for me was adjusting to a lens that did not have any kind of zoom. I had to waaaaaaaiiiiiiiiittttttttt for the action to come to my end of the court. And I couldn't really stand at the end of the court like I had previously because that made the action too close to me. So I stood either at an angle from the court, or I stood up in the stands, which I'm sure the people behind me appreciated. A LOT. And I still tweaked and fiddled, trying to decide which setting on my camera worked best, at which size aperature, and which ISO, and which shutter speed, etc ...... and the end of the day came home and STILL messed with them in Photoshop to get them even close to what I wanted.

The cost of the lens at my local camera store was $499. I bought it online from Adorama for $299 --- quite a savings. It's also much better for auditorium pictures, ie, kids giving choir concerts, plays, etc. I'm still on a learning curve there as well, as I try to figure out the best place in the audience to sit (again,the no-zoom thing is hard for me to get used to.)

I think my next purchase will be a Canon L-series lens ... which as I understand it, has the lower f/stop but also has a zoom feature. For now thought, it's out of my price range, and will have to wait. At least until this fall, when Kellen is playing football (like he says he wants to) on a huge football field and I can't get any photos of my precious baby getting his scrawny ass kicked enjoying the game and I TOTALLY will find a way to justify that lens.

At which point I will probably turn to the internet and beg someone to buy this one off me so I can afford to feed my family.

I almost forgot

.... to let you guys know (ie, use this as a vapid excuse to SHOW YOU) the final set of basketball pictures I took of my nephew's team. By the end of the season, I really felt like was starting to get the hang of my new lens. Had I not been such a tightwad and waited until there were only two games left, I could have bought the lens earlier, gotten more practice, and actually improved tons more. Make no mistake, Sports Illustrated is in no way beating down my door. But at least now, if the coach uses the photos in his end-of-season slide show, I won't be embarrassed to face the parents later.

Dear Local Camera Store,

Updated to add: Since a few of you have asked, I bought an 85 mm 1.8/f lens. Its odd to me because there is no zoom .... I am constantly trying to twist the lens to zoom in or zoom out and probably look like I have a tic. Plus I have to stand pretty far back .... normally I stand under the basket and I think this lens might require me to actually stay in the stands. I'm not sure yet about settings or which mode I'll use, but my nephew has an indoor game tomorrow and Kellen has an indoor game Sunday, so hopefully I'll get it figured out and take some good shots at *some* point during the weekend! I would have loved the lens Jim mentions in the comments below, but it was a little more than I could bring myself to spend ......... you know, what with our new (finger quotes) budget that we're on. PS. budgets suck. I should just buy the lens and feed my kids ramen noodles for three months.

*********************************************
Dear Local Camera Store, it should come as no big shock to you that you pretty much have a monopoly on the camera market here in our town. Sure, we can buy cameras at Best Buy or Circuit City or Wal-Mart or whatever, but once a person reaches the point of needing a high-end camera or specialty lenses and accessories, your fine place of business is pretty much it.

And that's ok, because you've made me very happy this past year. I purchased not only a new camera, but a new lens from you, and quite a few accessories to go with each. I thought we had a good relationship .... I thought (sniff, sniff) we had something special.

Something you probably do NOT know is that recently, I've ventured into the realm of indoor sports photography. Actually, "ventured" is possibly not the correct word. Stumbled and drunkenly lurched are probably better descriptions for the crap pictures I've been taking.

But! Last week at Kellen's soccer practice I met a dad from another team who was taking indoor soccer pictures, with the same camera as I have. I bolted over and practically knocked the man down casually sauntered over and asked him what kind of lens he was using. Come to find out, he had been struggling with indoor action photography as well, and had just purchased a new lens. A new lens, that he was having wonderful results with, and was happy to share that information with me.

SCORE!!! I just LOVE when life works out like that.

He told me about the website he ordered from, and my antenna immediately went up. I buy a lot of stuff online ... books, clothes, plane tickets, scrapbook supplies, etc. But I've always been leery of purchasing anything electronic, or with work-y parts, from an online store. What if it the work-y parts didn't work properly? What if it was defective? What if the online company wouldn't honor the return, or turned out to be a sham .... two guys named Leroy and Butch, selling stolen equipment our of their internet car trunk, or the internet version of a pawn shop. (Am I the only one who worries about this???)

So, my dear, dear, local camera store, I researched the lens online to make sure that was what I wanted. Then I came to you instead. And explained what I needed. And you smiled at me, and were happy to help me, because clearly our relationship is every bit as special to you as it is to me.

And then you tried to charge me $200 MORE than the lens cost online.

And when I hesitated, and mentioned how much cheaper it was online .... well, my little camera store, that was when your true feelings for our relationship became apparent.

Because you SNEERED at me. (OK, technically, it was your sales girl, but still ....) You shrugged your shoulders, made an ugly face, and said there was no way you would match that price -- Even though I didn't ask. But you said it in such an ugly way ..... truly, my feelings were hurt, and you embarrassed me.

So guess what? I went home, and took a deep breath, and ordered the thing online. And saved myself TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS.

The lens arrived today. It is in perfect condition, and from what I can tell so far, takes great pictures. I am considering making my next self-portrait Tuesday one of myself, sticking my tongue out at you. But that would be immature.

So let me just say, in a twisted way, THANK YOU for your sneerage. Without it, I wouldn't have had the nerve to break out of your small-town monopoly and venture out into this brave new world. I wouldn't have my new lens, and I wouldn't have this extra money. I'll spend my $200 wisely and happily .... possibly even in your store. Because I almost always like to kiss and make up, and I'm hopeful our relationship can be salvaged. If not, I guess I can always return to my new online boyfriend. But I'm hopeful we can be good for one another, again.

Sound good to you?

Baby Steps Better

Thanks to all of you who were kind enough to post suggestions regarding my dismal attempt at low-light action photography on Saturday. Wow, did the quality of those pictures reek or what?!

After reading the comments, and googling, and you-tubing, and anything else I could think of to find some answers, I headed to Sunday's game with ..... well, if not CONFIDENCE, at least with a semi-formed planned to ..... in a nutshell .... not hopefully SUCK as much.

The comment about my shutter speed not being as fast as my flash sync speed was definitely the most technical and scientific-y and professional sounding. Unfortunately, I had no idea what it meant. But since that commenter's husband has come through with good advice for me in the past, I will definitely be checking into whatever the heck it means for the future.

Short run, though, I knew lighting was my biggest issue. Indoor gymnasiums (and auditoriums, for what it's worth) are just not lit well enough for cameras like mine. I mean, I've seen those amazing photos of Michael Jordan, all "Air-Bud-ish" for thirty feet before slam dunking the basketball .... but *I* sure don't know how to accomplish those sorts of photos.

Saturday's photos, most of which were total crap, were taken on Auto-mode. I knew to do better on Sunday, I was going to have to actually think a little about what I was doing.

First thing, since I can't use Sports mode in the gym with my telephoto lens (not enough light) I went in and changed my camera from one-shot to continuous shooting mode in the hopes I wouldn't have to "wait" on my camera to catch up between shots like I did on Saturday.

I read the suggestion about bumping up my ISO to make my camera less light-sensitive (or more light-sensitive ... I always get that confused) and the comment about changing my white balance to reflect the tungsten lighting in the gym.

So! On Sunday, the first thing I did was change my ISO from 400, where I normally leave it, to 800. Then I put my camera on shutter priority mode and set it at 500. Then I changed my white balance to "tungsten lighting". The boys were promptly turned blue, like little Oompa-Loompas:



Whoa! That didn't work so well! Right back to auto-white-balance we go.

The next shot I got was like this:



About this time I was thinking to myself that things were getting worse, not better, and maybe I should go back to auto mode and simply hope for the best. Then I noticed I had accidentally bumped myself back into AV mode and had it set on a very low number. Whew, that was a close one! I also thought the photos still seemed dark, so I changed the shutter speed to 250.

At this point, after going back to shutter speed priority mode, I decided to bite the bullet and attach my external flash. Like someone mentioned in the comments, I was a little hesitant to do this for fear it would be too distracting to the players. I mean, there you are, going up for the game winning layup, when POP!POP!POP!FLASH!FLASH!FLASH! right in your eyes .... not exactly unobtrusive, know what I mean?

But during warm-up, only one boy fell to the ground screaming "My eyes, my eyes!!!" and since there are ten boys on the team, I figured a 10% loss wasn't too bad a ratio, so I left the flash attached.

A few things I quickly figured out about using the external flash:

Sometimes, especially if the boys were very close, they were overexposed:



If I took the pictures too quickly, the flash couldn't keep up and they were underexposed:



I think this has something to do with the slave mode on my flash, but quite frankly, at this point my brain was about to explode from all the information I was trying to retain, so that lesson is going to have to wait for another day.

I also found it interesting that although I *know* my external flash doesn't reach clear to the other end of the gym, I did get this neat photo of the boys' shadows against the wall. Sort of makes them look like they are playing basketball in a cave, doesn't it?




I wound up getting quite a few photos with too much "noise" .... I assume that's from the 800 ISO. Overall they are ok, just not as clear as I would like:






Of course, the best lighting and equipment and subject matter in the world won't matter if you lack basic photography skills:

Like taking the photo when there is an arm in front of someone's face:




Or taking photos when there is no face at all:




Or even better, cutting someone's head off:


(what really stinks is that actually would have been a pretty good shot, had I not beheaded the poor kid!)


And sometimes --- not regularly, and not nearly as often as I would like, it seemed I was getting the hang of things and a shot or two would turn out .... not totally suckish:







And about the time warm up ended I started thinking, "yes, a little more practice and I might actually figure this bad boy out ....." then the other team forfeited and the game was canceled.

We all packed up and went home.
The end.

(sigh)

I figure if I continue to get baby-steps better each game, then maybe by the end of the season ---- their SENIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE ---- I will be able to produce reliably good photos.

In the meantime, I am considering purchasing a 50 mm "fast" lens for this sort of thing. I've got YEARS of gymnasium shots, evening games, and auditorium photos ahead of me ...... not quite sure how a wide-angle portrait lens can help me take better low-light action shots, but I've seen that recommendation on several sites. Hopefully the good folk at my local camera shop can help me out ..... otherwise, it's probably going to be more of me, blinding innocent 10-year olds with my flash.