I love that quote by Emerson. And the earth is laughing now, so thought I’d take a minute a do a tip of the day on photographing wildflowers. Not a lot of hard and fast rules here, but a few general things to think about when you are composing your images.
Shutter speed and aperture – IF it is a breezy day and the flowers are moving as you try to zoom in on them, a fast shutter speed (at least 1/200) will help to avoid motion blurring. Also play with your f-stops to decide when you want most everything in focus (use f-stops of 8 to 22), or just one flower with the background blurred (try f-stops of 2.8 to 5.6). There is a sample below from my rose bush using two different apertures to show this difference.
Photograph from different levels – Again it depends on the look you want, but as a general rule if you are photographing small flowers (like the poppies shown below) you will want to get down low so that the flowers become more prominent. If the background is not good you can even get down lower and get the bug’s eye view with sky behind the flowers. But if you want to get just one bloom completely in focus you will want to make sure that the camera is parallel to the bloom (like the close up of the rose which was shot from directly above the bloom). So move around the subject and play with what works best to capture the look YOU want.
Most importantly, leave no trace that you were there. Leave the flowers just as you found them, and try not to trample the plants around you just to get the shot. That way we can all enjoy them while they last, and have our images to enjoy once they disappear for the year. Enjoy!
Greater depth of field using small aperture (f-stop 1/16) Aperture wide open blurs background so flower is clearly the focus here.
I wanted the greater depth of field here so the mountains AND poppies were in focus, so I stopped down to f-22.
Sometimes a "Bugs Eye" view is best (there was a road and cars in the background that I didn't want to see)
I love extreme close ups! But try to keep the lens parallel to the subject on something like this.
I'm not sure what happened nine months ago, but I have been so busy photographing newborns in the last few weeks. I am NOT complaining... babies are a favorite here at Spicer Photography! Throw in a few dogs and I'm lovin' it! We try to capture these images in the first two weeks of life. Here are just a few of the sweet little babies I have had the honor of photographing recently (and a couple of the lucky dogs too!).
Two baby girls getting the love... "I am the baby! Ya gotta love me."
I thought baby "V" had lots of hair (girl on right below), but then along came baby boy "JJ" with the best head of hair I have EVER seen on a newborn.
The first image below is Barkley (from the previous post) featured on the front of the birth announcment... the next one is Lola checking out what all the fuss was about as we were TRYING to set up the pose (I love the looks they are giving each other).
I think this quote from Charles Osgood is appropriate for the parents AND the photographer:
"Babies are always more trouble than you thought - and more wonderful" Well said...
One of my favorite subjects to photograph is dogs. I love dogs, and they always make me laugh. This guy was the perfect subject! Barkley is a Vizsla, and has the best expressions. I met him when I went to his home to photograph a newborn (I will share his image with the baby after my client sends out the birth announcements, but I would hate to spoil the fun for anyone that might wander in here and see it here before the announcement hits the mail, so for now this post is all Barkley). So since the session at the house was for the baby, I asked my client if she could bring Barkley to the studio when she came to see the newborn images so I could take a few images of Barkley just to humor me. So here a few from our little mini-session.
For those of you who know Neela (my assistant during sessions, and a wonderful photographer on her own I might add) here are a few from her most recent session. As a fellow photographer, Neela knows just how hard it is to capture images of children in general, but especially YOUR OWN KIDS! So I try to do these sessions for her whenever possible so that she can actually have images of HER with the kids. Anyway, I thought those of you who know Neela would like to see her with her lovely husband and their two sweet and funny little girls! Enjoy...
My husband and I went for a hike today to see if there was water still flowing in Cave Creek today (after all our rain) and found that the creek was in fact flowing (but not as much as we both thought it would be). Anyway, it gave me my photo for the day... there were a couple water crossings during the hike, and at this one I just loved the colors of the rocks under the water (as I crossed the creek in my bare feet - since I didn't want to hike the rest of the trail in wet boots!). I know those of you that live where water is always flowing in the river beds and creeks may think this is pretty lame as creeks go, but in the desert any water is precious and a reason to celebrate. Can't wait for the spring wildflowers!
I wanted to get a quick shot of this cute little baby (we had just done a larger family reunion and were wrapping things up, but I just couldn’t resist this “over mom’s shoulder” grab shot as she was walking away) but the background was not pretty and the light fading fast, so using a wide open aperture (that is a smaller f-stop number for those of you just starting out) I was able to blur the background and just focus on her face. Learn your f-stops and shutter speeds so that you can quickly make the proper choices to either sharpen or blur your backgrounds based on the look you want to achieve (obviously in landscape images you may want a greater depth of field to get details in both foreground and background, but as a general rule for portraits you want less detail in the background so that the eyes stay on the faces in the portraits. Take your camera OFF the AUTO mode and play with apertures and shutter speeds until it all makes sense for you. Have fun…
I love dogs, and these two cuties came over for a playdate with my dog, so I grabbed my camera for my photo of the day project... enjoy a few of the images from the playdate! Sorry to those of you in cold climates (I grew up in Chicago so I KNOW what you are going through) but it was 70 degrees and sunshine for our playtime here.
How CUTE is that face?!
Jake the wonder dog catching his tennis ball...
Taking a break...
MY interpretation of the above image... the dog LOVES his tennis balls!
A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.
Hi! I'm Pam Spicer... I am the owner and Photographer for Spicer Photography located in far north Scottsdale, Arizona. My specialty is photographing children, families, high school seniors, pets, and executives. I am married to Jerry and we share our home with our golden retreiver KC. Thanks for checking out my blog! I hope you will check back often to see what's new at Spicer Photography. Oh, and it would be really cool if you tell someone else about my work and help spread the word. Thanks!
cherie commented on February 25th, 2010
Pam You captured him perfectly! Thanks :)