More outside fun

It has been fairly nice lately for August, so we have gotten to spend some time outdoors!  The first two pictures were taken this morning around 11am, and the second two were taken this afternoon sometime after 4pm.  I usually only let the kids play outside before about 9 or 10 am and then after dinner, because it is so.freaking.hot here the rest of the day, but we have gotten some extra play time lately!

I have been running all of my pictures through photoshop - I'm not doing much other than perhaps cropping if necessary, increasing the saturation, and sharpening.  I tried and tried to take the food off of Charlotte's face in the second picture, and couldn't get it to look natural.  Sigh.  I'm trying, and improving at photoshop, but I still have a ton to learn!

Charlotte is obsessed with Luke's cozy coupe.  When we are outside, she either wants to play with that or swing.

Her eyes really did sparkle in the SOOC shot, but I played it up a little with photoshop.  Now I'm not sure if I did too much?

Finally, a more natural smile than his "cheese" face!

I was playing around with the artsy look of tilting the camera.  I like how it turned out, although I wish I would have had Luke sit a little further away from the outlet.  Oh well - live and learn!

My kids really are beautiful.  Sometimes I just have to look at them and wonder how on earth I got so lucky!

Shooting in low light

I have gotten pretty decent at shooting outdoors using natural light.  I shoot almost exclusively in manual mode and feel like I have definitely gotten the hang of it.  Indoors, however?  Not so much.  I have to sacrifice shutter speed to get the light I need, and as the mother of a 1 and 3 year old, that doesn't work so well.  I have tried aperture priority and shutter priority without success.  Shutter priority consistently tells me the subject is too dark.  Today, Charlotte was up from her nap before Luke, so I took advantage of her playing quietly alone to fool around with the camera (using her as my subject, of course!).  I suddenly remembered something I had read recently about exposure compensation.  I boosted it a little to the positive, used the coffee table as a tripod (to compensate for the low shutter speed necessary), and started shooting.  I even got a few elusive smiles!

Both of the pictures below were taken with my Nikon 55-200 f/4 lens.

1/15 sec

f/4

ISO 1600

+0.7 exposure compensation

And then big brother woke up, and after a snack of teddy grahams wanted to play with his computer again, so I snapped a picture of him, too!

1/25 second

f/4

ISO 1600

+0.7 exposure compensation

I got lucky today - there was a good amount of light coming through the window, and (more importantly), my children stayed relatively still while I was taking pictures.  This is rare!  While I was able to make these settings work today, I typically need at least a 1/125 shutter speed to stop their motion.

I'll keep practicing.  At least I know it CAN be done!

Splish splash and a new lens

I celebrated my 29th birthday today with a new camera lens from the hubby, some delicious food and excellent company at the Olive Garden, and my favorite 2 kiddos splashing around in the backyard at Gigi and Grandad's house.  With my new 55-200 lens I was able to zoom in to the action from a safe distance and still get some pretty good shots.  I have already run these pictures through photoshop, and all I did was boost the saturation slightly and increase the sharpness a little bit.  My attempts at brightening Luke's eyes in the last picture didn't quite go as I planned in my head - but I'm still learning, so that's okay!

This is, quite possibly, my favorite picture from today.  I love how the swimsuit pops against the background with the splash of red, and I of course love the baby!

Playing together!  I wasn't able to get any decent shots with both faces, so this was as good as it got.

Now there's an evil grin!