How to Take Pictures of Spring Flowers: Get close. Closer. As close as you can get!

There's nothing like spring time in Michigan.  The light at the end of the tunnel.  We have all been couped up in our cabin-fever ridden homes all winter and now can't wait to get outside and start enjoying the sunshine.  One of my favorite ways to do this is to appreciate the daffodils.  They mark the beginning of spring and they don't last long, so get a picture while you can.  Here is a little tip to getting great flower shots to avoid them from being, well, boring.  If your like me, I hate boring photos.  So lets take pictures that depict how spring really makes us feel: excited that winter is finally over!  We want bright, vivid colors.  A beautiful bokeh of blurs in the background to emphasize the beautiful blooms we see outside in our gardens.  Here's how to get that bokeh.

As you can see by this photo, the flowers just don't pop off the page like the close-up pictures do....BORING.

 To get them to pop and have that pretty, blurry background you need to get closer.  As close as your lens will let you.  The closer your subject is to your lens, and the farther your background is from the subject, the more blurry your background will become.  Hence, flowers look sharper by comparison and they "pop" right out.

This is a shot of the same flower, only closer.  It pops out by comparison to the blurry background.

You can also do this with leaves.  Here is a shot of fresh tree leaves from far away.

Nice, but BORING!


This one's a lot better because it's closer and gives you a point of interest to focus on

The background is far away and blurry just like we talked about.


Here is another way to work with bokeh.  Have blurs not just in the background but in front of your focus point, making pretty foreground foliage.



So that's it for today's lesson.  Be sure to check out my blog at my professional website to see more projects I'm working on.  Thanks for stopping by!

Backlighting: seperate your kid from the background

Hey momtographers, here is a cool tip I am sharing that is sooooo easy.  You know how people use to say "don't take a picture of someone with the sun behind them."  Well, rules were meant to be broken and breaking that rule is totally the hot new trend in photography. I'm seeing this more and more now days so   I'm going to show you how to do it. 

First stand so that the sun is right behing your kid.  The time of day matters.  The closer to sunset or sunrise the better.  That time of day, the sun is right at the horizon shooting across direct sunlight.

If you have camera controls that allow you to go under this mode then select "back lit"so that your kid's face will get well exposed.  If you have a manual camera, set your exposure for the shadows (the darkest part).  If you get the exposure for the face right, you end up with this great outline that highlights your kids hair and sets them apart from the background.

You can also put your camera in "fill flash" mode to expose for the face and fill in the shadows but keep the hair light.  This also gives an extra sparkle in your kid's eye's from the reflection of the flash.

So that's it.   Now you know another very easy trick to making photography that much more fun and interesting.  Until next time, goodbye!



Panning: have fun with your kids while getting great shots

After reading the blogs of mothers who love photography, I've noticed one recurring theme: we struggle to have time for photography.  In fact, it took me 10 minutes to write the previous sentence.  Mother's know what I am talking about.  One arm is holding a baby while the other is wiping the nose of a two-year-old, all while talking on speaker phone and thinking about what we're having for dinner tonight.  So this photography skill is actually a fun one you can do while playing with your kids.  Panning, AKA

"motion blur", is a technique seen mostly in car commercial photography or sports, but when applied to a kid some fun things can happen.  The background of streaky blurs depict movement (what toddlers and kids do so well) while the subject is in focus.  Here's how you do it:

1: Get down at the level of your child.  This method works great for any technique because you get a better angle at eye level, but you get better blur this way

2: One thing you will notice is that I will always shoot in manual mode.  It will give you more control and this method is all about control.  Set your shutter speed as slow as you can go handheld.  I generally like 1/60 of a second to reduce camera shake for anything handheld. However, the above pic was able to be squeezed down to 1/50.

3: The most  important step is to pre-set your focal length.  Do it anyway you want, but this is what's fastest for me.  I generally like to autofocus on something at the spot I will snap the pic in and then turn off autofocus so it doesn't get readjusted during the subject's movement.  Pre-focus on a toy, a book, whatever, as long as it gets your camera to focus on the space that your little one will run in when you click the shutter.  When I know the focus is set in the right length, I tell my little guy to run "on you're mark, get set, GO!" He has a blast, and so do I! 

4: Have your kid run from one end of the room to the other while you are in the middle of his "bee line" and when he comes right in front of you snap the picture while moving the camera parallel to the direction he's heading.  This part is important too, because it makes motion blur possible.

So that's it.  One simple way to make your photos unique and have fun with your kids.  I hope this helps you moms and dads out there and watch for future postings on how-to's of photography with kids.

P.S. and easy way to do this with a baby or with a kid that won't cooperate, is to hold the baby in a sling while turning and clicking the pick. The background is moving while the baby is going at the same speed you are.

To see a blog of recent professional work, go to http://www.miragesbymarilyn.com/blog