Tell Me Tuesday features one or more of my photos with information on how it came to be. How and where it was taken, technical information, and if any post-processing was done will all be shared.Sometimes before and after shots will be shown.
Then it becomes your turn to critique the photo (don’t worry, I have a thick skin) which can be anything from “I like/don’t like it” to a discussion of how you might have handled the same shot and/or done something differently. Since this is art, anything you like or don’t like is valid. And while I enjoy your praise, it is only your constructive criticism which can help me continue to grow as a photographer.
And finally, you will be given the opportunity to join in with your own Tell Me Tuesday post. It can be any type or topic you like. You don’t need to be an advanced photographer, just someone who takes photos. You don’t need a fancy camera. You don’t need to share the technical data if you don’t want … just how and/or why the photo was taken. We would all love to hear your story. Simply add your link below (and feel free to grab the logo to use in your post).
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Like every grandparent and parent I like to take pictures at birthday (and other) parties. Though I have been taking all sorts of photos for about 50 years, when it comes to parties, I tend to revert to pure snapshot mode – and there really is nothing wrong with that except I know I can (and should) make the most of the opportunity to do something more … at least for some of the shots.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity. It was my daughter-in-law’s birthday party, and the majority of the guests were their friends. At this age, most of their friends are couples with young children just as they are. There is something special in the innocence and exuberance of youngsters, so while I still took my share of snapshots during the day, I also made a conscious effort to make some of those snapshots of the children just a bit more than simply point and shoot.
Of all types of photography, portraiture is just one that I generally don’t do, so none of these were taken under controlled situations with a multi-light set-ups. These pictures were all taken with a Vivitar DSLR AF Flash on a Nikon D7100. The lens was a Sigma 18-250mm f3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM. On the flash I put a Graslon Insight Flash Diffuser with Snap-On Dome Lens. I prefer a diffuser rather than bouncing my flash off the ceiling because of all the variables that are introduced with a “random” wall or ceiling. With a diffuser, I am working with a known entity all the time. These photos were taken with the flash facing directly at my subjects. This has the added benefit of placing that pleasing catchlight in the eyes.
I take JPEG + RAW for all my pictures, giving me JPEGS for immediate use and RAW to work from for photos I want to do something with. In addition, iPhoto at the moment cannot read the RAW files from a Nikon D7100 – though I expect that will be corrected relatively soon. If I would have thought of it at the time time, I would have changed my white balance setting from AUTO to FLASH, but since I have the RAW files, I can – and do – change that in Photoshop.
Generally you will find that these photos have all been taken at the child’s eye level or below, but if a quick opportunity presented itself while I was standing up, and I didn’t think I would capture it if I took the time to bend down, I took the shot from a standing position. Sometimes I was lucky that the child enjoyed having his/her picture taken but I was just as happy when the totally unaware expression presented itself. In each case I have taken the shots so that they were cropped close when the shot was taken, or I cropped them in Photoshop.
Here are some of the shots …
And my favorite from this group was taken after one of my grandsons had just scored a high score on the Wii basketball game he was playing …
I’m Outta Control!!!!
As I mentioned earlier, these are still simply snapshots although there was more thought about them and time taken before pressing the shutter release, but they were all taken with a single flash in the camera’s hot shoe. All were taken handheld as you would any snapshot.
Just because they are snapshots doesn’t mean they still can’t be special!
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So now it’s your turn to critique these photos.
Also, add your Tell Me Tuesday post to the links below. I look forward to seeing your photos and reading the stories behind them.
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Gathered Images 