Practising Low Lighting Shots

I am currently doing Karen Russell's course which is great the second time around as there is so much to learn. She has put out a "Making the Shot" issue for "low lighting" which can be purchased if you are a past or current student of hers. Based on the fact that past and current students have a basic understanding of photography having taken her class and also it's a bit special and something she has as an "advanced" suppliment to her class for her photography students.

Here's a couple of photos taken of the kids reading in bed last night. These photos are definately an improvement on what I could have taken before reading this 62 page document.

These photos are taken without flash, the main bedroom light is off and only the bedside lamp on while they are reading. I set a custom white balance setting for James room and then a new custom white balance setting for Sienna's room. Both kids were very helpful letting me do some homework and they got to read a bit more of their story at the same time so it was a win-win all round.

Photo Shoot

I am enjoying doing Karen Russell's Photography Workshop for the second year running. It's great to go over stuff you have learnt to keep it in your head and pick up new things as well. My other Aussie friend Di is doing this course as well so it's nice to see another Aussie on the "forum". That being said, I took the kids up the road for a little photo shoot to play with light yesterday afternoon, something I'm still struggling with how to use effectively. I took about 60 photos and the kids, well let me just say the kids are not professional models who do as they are told so I didn't really get totally what I was hoping for. Here are a couple of pictures that I did like from our 15 min session. The bottom photo James was making Sienna laugh. Our only prop was a little Ikea $25 cane chair.

Catch lights in their eyes

My on-line photography course with Karen Russell finishes tomorrow night at 5pm (middnight her time) and we (all the students) are very sad it's over. We are all staying on board with the forum, posting pictures of the day and everything that we have been through is still there with the exception of Karen. Most of her past students stay together as a group on-line which is great. It's been fantastic and Karen was an amazing host/teacher and very accessible and down to earth. The course was everything I expected and more. She isn't teaching a class this fall (that's US talk) as she is going to Greece with Ali Edwards (scrapbooker) and another lady called Jenny Bowland to teach so I look forward to seeing her amazing photos soon on her blog.

I wasn't new to photography when I started the course as I had bought my very first Canon AE1 film SLR when I was 17 years old. I bought it from Ted's Camera Store in the city and it cost me $380 which one about a months pay for me in those days and I was working full time. This was the camera + the twin lens kit lenses. Wages have come a long way since then, but my friend and I were so excited to get cameras and learn how to use them so we enrolled in a photography course at West End and also learnt how to process B&W photos (that's also what you did back then in the dim dark ages....)

I knew that camera inside out and had put hundreds of rolls of film through it until I was over at Southbank at a cafe with a friend of mine who was visting from Perth and the camera dropped onto the ground from the seat and it broke the shutter mechanism and it never worked again. I was devastated and couldn't even bear to throw it away for years.

Fast forward to the digital revolution and I bought my first Digital SLR when James was 8 months old and basically shot in AUTO most of the time. A few years ago I started scrapbooking and reading blogs because of scrapbooking and the whole photography thing was revived for me. I wanted to take better photos and here we are today. So back to why I started this post in the first place and that was to show you the "catch lights" in James and Sienna's eyes in the photos I took of them yesterday. Lighting was a key thing for me to learn and master how to better use it and I'm thrilled with these pictures. I'm hoping to keep improving on this subject because with the right lighting you can do wonders.

Little models and natural lighting

We had a little photography session playing around with natural window light and William was one of our models and didn't he do a great job smiling for us. Libby (his mum) took the bottom two pictures of him and did a great job as she is new to the whole DSLR thing. It was quite funny because he kept rolling over so we had to take a pic, roll him back, take another pic etc. but he was great fun to photograph.

Sienna and Ged were also co-operative subjects and they got together for a little photoshoot themselves. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths!!!!! (ummm.. well maybe that's what the picture looks like). Lots of fun talking photography with Libby and having someone's else's kids to photograph is great.

Completely Indulgent

The first week of photography lessons were posted last night by Karen Russell so I printed them out, cut the paper down to fit the photography binder (given the binder is from the USA), hole punched them and this morning took myself off to a coffee shop for a late breakfast and some very indulgent reading all about photography (kindy and school today for the kiddies). I told you it was being very indulgent and it felt really indulgent too!!! I'm looking forward to completing my first assignment.