Hello blog friends!  It’s Kim here today with a fun post I hope you will enjoy!  A little while back, one of the Shabby team members thought it would be fun to have a photo swap and share it here with you.  The idea was that we would each send in a photo or photos along with any journaling we would want included on a layout.  Then the photos would be given to someone else on the team and they would create the layout.  Sounds like fun, right?!  It was a chance for us all to take a photo we were looking for a little inspiration to scrap and see what someone else would do with it.

So… here’s what happened when the team swapped photos.  I would say it was a random swap… except that it wasn’t exactly!  I tried when I gave out the photos to give us each something we wouldn’t normally get to scrap.  And the first thing I had to be sure and do was give Jenelle a chance to do a girly layout!  Here is what Jenelle created to scrap a photo of Casharina’s girls.

It looks like Jenelle enjoyed creating this girly layout!  All those bright colors perfectly compliment the photo too.  When I asked her about the experience of scrapping Casharina’s photo, she said “I was so excited to be scrapping pages about girls, but then thought to myself – ‘hang on a minute – I have pretty much no experience scrapping girl layouts – where do I start???  Too much pink?  Too many hearts and bows and flowers??’”  It may be that Jenelle was uncertain at first, but I think the result is perfectly lovely!

Jenelle wasn’t the only one getting to step out of her comfort zone in the photo swap.  I also wanted to be sure Casharina got a chance to do a boy layout!  Here is her layout of fun facts about Rosy’s cute little guy.

Love it!  It’s perfectly boy, but still has Casharina’s style all over it!  Here’s what Casharina said about her experience: “My biggest fear was that she wouldn’t like it, or that I wouldn’t make it boyish enough.  I’ve NEVER done an ALL boy page and I must say it was quite challenging!  Creating a layout for Rosy has inspired me though, as I’ve wanted to do a 10 reasons why/about forever and I couldn’t bring myself to put one together.  But now that I have I’m VERY excited to try one for my girls!!”  Sounds like trying something new for someone else has inspired Casharina to try it for herself too!

Next up we have Rosy, who was given three of my photos from our backyard adventures.  I really enjoy Rosy’s style and don’t think I can pull it off myself, so I was thrilled to see this layout with my photos.

I love how Rosy has taken three photos that don’t look alike (except that they were all taken in my backyard) and pulled them all together in this layout.  She picked perfect colors and elements to do this.  Thank you so much, Rosy, for helping me capture one of our everyday moments in this layout.  I think part of the fun of this photo swap was seeing my pictures all wrapped up in a design with someone else’s style!

Moving on, it was my turn to take on the photo swap challenge.  I scrapped this layout with a photo from Kylie of her cute nieces.  They make such great subjects for a layout, and here’s what I did with the photo.

I have to admit my first thought was that I was intimidated to scrap for someone as talented as Kylie!  AND… the place and event was something I had no idea about since I have never been to Australia!  BUT… part of the fun is in the challenge.  So as a starting point, I used my good friend google to look up Lorne Pier and Australia Day.  And one search led to another (because I’m kind-of a nerd and get interested in learning things).  Somehow I ended up looking more closely at the Australian flag than I ever have before, which led to me having to know why it has the seven-pointed star on it, which led to me having to put one in the layout… you see where this is going!  Point of this story: One of the fun parts of the swap for me was scrapping a photo from something that my family hasn’t done or experienced!

Kylie is up next with another stunning layout, created for Beckie with her beautiful bluebonnet photo.  I laughed when Beckie sent me the photo because I had been thinking of putting in a bluebonnet photo for the swap too.  Seems like both of us were looking for some inspiration for our endless bluebonnet photos.  What a great reason for a photo swap… looking for a new perspective on a layout theme you’ve done a lot of.  Here’s Kylie’s take on a bluebonnet layout.

Kylie said: “I felt the pressure scrapping someone else’s precious pics!! But I loved it…there’s a certain joy that comes with working on a page for someone else!!  I get the same buzz when I’m gift-giving!!”  I love that comment.  Sharing in the photo swap was a bit like gift giving!  And on the other side, you were receiving a gift too!

To complete the circle of our photo swap, we have a layout by Beckie.  She was given the task of scrapping one of Jenelle’s sons as a baby.  Did it take you back in time to when yours were that little, Beckie?

This is a truly sweet baby layout.  Who wouldn’t have been inspired to go sweet with the layout when looking at those big baby blue eyes?!  I love all the different elements Beckie found to cluster around the photos in this layout – a work of art!  Since that is one of the things I love so much about this layout, I found it interesting that Beckie said this: “I had no idea how nerve wracking it would be to scrap for someone else!  When I scrap for myself I just kind of throw it all on there and stop when I think it looks ok.  But I was so worried Jenelle wouldn’t like the page! LOL.  So I kept messing with it, adding stuff, etc.”  Beckie, I think you found the perfect balance with this layout!!

I hope this post gave you all a glimpse into our fun – and left you with some inspiration too!  I think after going through the swap, we all agree with these thoughts shared by Kylie:  “I probably took a bit longer to get started and must have gone through a million different paper combinations before I was 100% happy!  It was also hard to know whether to leave the photos full size or not, and if cropping them would make a difference to the story or the memories.  I also umm’d and ahh’d about the title – big or small??  When you have no real connection to the pics the story-telling through your choice of papers, elements, title options etc is definitely harder – you have to purely rely on what you see in the photo…but that’s half the FUN!!  On the flip-side, receiving a page crafted by someone else is even more exciting!!  When you see it you love it – it’s perfect!  I’m soooo critical of my own pages so it’s lovely to have a gorgeous page with your photos that you don’t find fault with!!”  Thank you for sharing those thoughts, Kylie!  I couldn’t have wrapped up the experience better myself!

That’s all for today, but Kylie will be back on the blog tomorrow to share the Project Scrap 2012 MAY templates!  I know SP’s sneak peek has us all anticipating them… only one more day to go!

KimInspiration, Photography, Uncategorized 5 Comments

Hello everyone, and happy WEDNESDAY!  It’s time for another Focus on Photos…point and shoot style!

I’ve had the pleasure of talking photography on here many times, but have never taken the time to explore ways to help every scrapper get the most from her everyday point and shoot camera.  With these simple tips, you can learn to get the very best results from your basic camera, and maybe even get some creative shots you never expected along the way :)  Ready??  let’s go!

(oh, and for reference, I have the Canon Powershot SD770 “Digital Elph”…about 2-3 yrs old)

1.  READ YOUR MANUAL

Boring, I know.  But there’s just no way around it.  You’ll never know what your camera is capable of unless you read the manual.  Nearly all point and shoots have many different shooting modes and creative settings and you want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth!  If you’re like me and you’ve uh…mis-placed your actual manual… :) …never fear!  All the major camera makers have .pdf manuals available for free download in the “Support” area of their websites.

As you’re reading along, if you find an interesting feature – stop right then and try to access it on your camera.  Most point and shoot cameras use only a few basic buttons and you might be surprised at how easy it is to access these features!  You’ll also remember them better if you’ve practiced :)

For my camera, I realized – after finally reading the manual – that most of the options displayed on the screen have “sub menus” with additional settings available to scroll through with one simple click.  For example, I’d seen a little icon labeled “Kids and Pets” – but after I read the manual I realized it had A TON of special shooting settings:  Beach, Snow, Aquarium, Under Water, and even Fireworks!

2. Know how and when to access the special shooting modes

Learning to rock your point and shoot means that you don’t have to understand the “science” behind ISO, shutter speed, and aperture.  But if you want the best possible images, you really need to know how to access the special shooting modes.  This is your only way to tell the camera how to set the correct settings for you.  Foliage mode in my camera enhances colors!  Snow mode ensures your images don’t have the dreaded blue/gray color cast common in snow photos.  Kids and Pets is particularly good for moving subjects…like kids and pets :)  Knowing how to select the right “shooting mode” for your conditions will ensure that you get the best possible photos!

3.  Sometimes the instructions in the manual really stink

I was very intrigued to finally take the time to figure out what my camera’s “manual” mode is capable of.  What does my manual say?  “Allows you to select settings yourself, such as the exposure compensation, white balance, or my colors.”  Then it tells me how to set it to manual, and that’s it.  nothing else.

huh?

Well, turns out that in manual mode, I can specify a metering mode!  I can set the shutter speed, and even white balance!  The instructions are written to explain the mechanics of how it works, but they don’t begin to explain what the camera is capable of.  So be sure to get out and play, play, play!  (oh, and for what it’s worth…I’ve kind of decided that manual mode isn’t worth the effort on my camera.  Especially with so many special shooting modes available!  I did learn how to use many more features though after I got out and tried it.)

4.  Read about your camera’s focusing modes

You don’t want to leave this to chance.  Understanding how your camera grabs focus is critical to ensuring you get quality shots.  Most point and shoot cameras have a “face detect” focus option, that is a good choice for most all-purpose photo situations.  Be sure to understand how your face detect works if this is the mode you prefer.  My camera even allows me to toggle between numerous faces detected in the image to specify the one I’d like to have in focus.  You want the birthday boy in focus, not the random neighbor standing next to him :)

5.  Check out your macro mode

Hands down, the feature that I was most pleasantly surprised with was my macro mode (for getting very close-up shots).  I love doing macro with my dSLR and find that I’m very naturally drawn to beautiful flowers, interesting bugs, etc.  I rarely scrap them – but I have tons of them on my hard drive, LOL!  I first attempted macro shots with my camera in full “auto”, normal shooting mode and got this:

Then…by simply pressing a button twice to go into Macro mode, I got these!

I hope you all enjoyed learning a little bit about  how to “rock what you got” :)  Thanks for stopping by…SP will be ‘checking-in’ with you tomorrow!!

BeckiePhotography, Uncategorized 2 Comments

Hello Shabby Shoppe readers! This is Rosy, here to “focus on photos” with you today!
Beckie always does a wonderful job in sharing tips on all kinds of ways to use camera settings and editing to make our photos look their best…today, I’m going to look at photography from a bit of a different perspective.  I’m not much of a “technical” photographer, meaning that learning all of the ins and outs or buttons and settings on my camera are not the part of photography that I love the most.  I am primarily a memory keeper and my interest in photography has come as a result of that!  For me, the most meaningful photos are the ones that show our lives, who we are and what we do, right now.  Yes, I’m talking about the candid photos.

I’m going to talk about a few things that I’ve learned, from others and my own experience, about getting those “natural and unposed” shots.

1. Keep your camera within easy reach.
I usually keep my camera in a central area of the house, close to where most of the “action” happens, but out of little hands’ reach.  If something photoworthy happens, I don’t have far to go for the camera (ok, so we have a small house and I wouldn’t have far to go, anywhere I kept it… but you get the idea).  This also applies to taking your camera along when you go places.  Better to have the camera and not take any photos than to not have a photo because you didn’t have your camera!  I know a lot of you may use your phone for these type of “on the go” photos, but my family has gotten used to me taking my camera almost everywhere I go.

2. Keep your camera ready.
I’ve found this helpful when shooting in manual mode.  If you change a lot of settings because of a extreme lighting situation, before you turn the camera off, changing it back to more normal settings will save you some time the next time you grab the camera for that quick candid shot.  Of course, switching to Auto when there’s no time to mess with settings, works as well.

3. Don’t be obvious.
If you want to capture spontaneous action, don’t call attention to the fact that you’re about to take a photo!  Sometimes I’ll even peek out from behind something so as not to disturd the activity that I want to photograph.  Avoid using a flash if at all possible, and remember that your subjects don’t always have to be facing you.  Photos from behind can tell a story too!

4. Anticipate the action.
Take some time to think about what is happening and where you can position yourself to get the best shot.  Waiting on the right moment is important to getting a good photo whether you’re shooting kids at play, someone eating, a group laughing at a joke, etc…

5. Take more than one.
Even if the first photo looks great in the camera, take several!  You’re much more likely to get one you love if you try a few different angles, and often once I download my photos and see them full size, the photo I thought was great isn’t the best one after all.

I will give a note of caution with this one… remember that sometimes participating in the moment/activity is more important than getting that perfect photo.  If your camera is keeping you from fully enjoying and joining in the fun, you might be going overboard.  Take some photos and then put your camera aside and participate!

6. Be satisfied with less than perfect.
Candid photography is all about capturing the “real”.  In real life we don’t always have the perfect lighting, backdrop, or color coordination.  If you’re like me, often the photo capturing the action or moment best, ends up with some less than perfect feature about it.  I’m here to tell you that it’s ok!  You’ve captured the moment, preserved a memory and that’s why you took the photo in the first place!

Thanks for checking in with the blog today.  Kylie will be with you tomorrow to share the MARCH Project SCRAP templates…be sure to stop by and pick them up!

RosyPhotography, Uncategorized 15 Comments

Hello everyone!  Beckie here again, bringing you a little bit o’ photography goodness today :)  I figure it’s time we tackle that photography topic that makes even seasoned photographers shake in their boots…er, I mean high heels…ISO!

A long, long time ago on the blog I did a very basic primer on photography and understanding how ISO, Shutter Speed, and aperture (that f number) work together to capture light to expose an image.  The basic idea is that you want to set those three variables in such a way that your camera meter reads “0″, or it’s perfectly centered between positive (too much light), and negative (not enough light).

ISO is something that many beginning photographers don’t like to utilize in high ranges because either a) they’ve tried a high ISO photo and it didn’t turn out well (lots of noise), or b) they’ve heard from people not to use higher ISOs because their photo will be noisy!  Well, let’s demystify and debunk some of that today!

What I’ve learned about ISO:

1.  It is true that as you increase ISO, you begin to add “noise” to a photo.  How much noise is added and when the noise is introduced (at what ISO range) is somewhat camera dependent.  However, there are things you can do to mitigate noise!

2.  Not all noise is bad.  Seriously.  It’s far better to CAPTURE the moment at a high ISO than to not capture the moment for fear of an imperfect image.  Heck, all the photos from my childhood are either orange, polariods, or glued down into an album that has a plastic cover stuck to it.  So really, put it into perspective – is a tiny bit of noise in an image going to ruin it for future generations?  um…nope.

3.  There are steps you can take to make the noise as minimal as possible.  Let’s look at some of them next!

But first…what is noise?

That, my friends, is noise.  This is a section of a really crappy photo, one shot at a pretty high ISO (ISO3200) that I under-exposed on purpose to exaggerate the noise. I also picked the worst part of the entire image to show you because you can see both types of noise…regular old noise (grainy chunky pixels that shouldn’t be there) and color noise  (colors that don’t belong there – the flecks of pinks, greens, reds, etc that you see around this sample).

Typically you’ll get regular old noise in whiter, lighter portions of an image with the addition of color noise in the darker, shadowed areas.  In this particular example, because it’s that bad, there’s also color noise over the white portion as well.

So…what can you do to prevent un-necessary noise??

NO MATTER WHAT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SHOULD YOU UNDER-EXPOSE THE PHOTO.

That’s pretty much it :)

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you actually should learn that you often have to over expose an image to capture it correctly. Slight over exposure is very easy to fix in editing software with simple sliders in  ACR, Lightroom, even Photoshop (here’s a post that covers basic adjustments in ACR).  And over exposing minimizes noise.

Another key reason why you need to over expose in many cases is that, well, the camera meter can be wrong. Well, it’s basically a computer so it’s never really wrong, but it can definitely tell you that something is “right” when it really isn’t.  There are two main reasons this happens:

1. Your metering mode.  I always shoot in spot meter mode because it takes a small, very specific portion of the image into consideration when it determines whether or not there is sufficient light.  Canon cameras use the area just around the center focal point and evaluate the light to give you a meter reading.   An alternative mode, called evaluative, considers a much larger area of the photo around that center focal point and gives you an “average” value for the entire area considered.  I typically photograph people – my kids – and I want their sweet little faces to be properly exposed.  Because of this, I want the camera to disregard everything around them and make sure the photo is exposed properly for their faces.  So I put the center focal point on their faces, adjust the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed until my meter says “0″, and then I shoot.

In evaluative mode, the area around that sweet little face is considered as well.  So if you have strong backlighting your meter will actually consider some of that brightness and determine that your average light value is higher than what it would get as spot metering on the face alone.  As a result the face will come out darker.  You can find many resources on-line to further (better?!) explain these modes, including your camera manual, but for now stick to spot or partial metering (partial metering is kind of in-between spot and evaluative).

2.  The color of your subject.  This one is really, really important so I’m illustrating it below.  Your camera is designed to give you a meter reading as if you are taking a photograph of middle gray (18% gray).  White reflects nearly 100% of light, black reflects nearly 0% of light, and middle gray is – you guessed it – in the middle.  But the world, fortunately, is not shades of gray.  Here’s a very common example/problem…WHITE.

In the series of photos below, I used spot metering and metered off the large white flower hanging down to your left.

In the far left image, my camera meter said I had the perfect amount of light to capture my image – assuming I was taking a photo of something 18% gray!  But I wasn’t…i was taking a photo of red and white flowers.

So – to prove my point – I changed my shutter speed, kept everything else the same, and took another photo when my meter was to the first dot past “0″.  This is called over exposing by 1/3 stop.  That image is brighter overall, and looks better than the one on the left.  I continued this, reducing my shutter speed to add 1/3 of a stop each time, until by the fourth photo I was one full stop over-exposed (according to my meter!).

The FOURTH shot is the best!  Want to know why?

This screen shot says it all.  My histogram shows that very little data in the image is blown (hitting up against the right wall of the histogram), and the portion that is blown is highlighted in bright red in the image itself.  It’s all stuff I don’t care about!  the back lighting in the window, the bright parts of the reflection on the floor…I’m far more satisfied having the flowers nice and bright even though some of the other portions of the image are blown.

Even if this post wasn’t about shooting at high ISO, it’s really important to know that a good SOOC (straight out of camera) image looks more like the photo on the right than the one on the left.  I could scrap this photo as-is without having to do a single thing to it!  Heck, if I really loved it (which I don’t, LOL), I could print it for my wall and hang it up.  Learning to master white balance and exposure in camera, without relying on editing, is the single most important thing for a photographer to accomplish :)

ok – so now we’re ready to tie this back in to ISO…

Here’s a close-up of the noise from the first and fourth images from the exposure sample above:

The general brightness is just much better in the image on the right, but if you look more closely you can see a few other differences.  The image on the left has color  noise on the bottom portion of the white flower while the image on the right doesn’t.  Also, the noise is much heavier, almost “bigger” looking in the neutral space behind the flowers in the image on the left.  The +1 stop photo has much finer, smaller noise.  And keep in mind – ALL of these images were shot with ISO3200, a relatively high ISO setting!

So – wrapping this up (you’re quite a trooper if you’re still with me, LOL!)…

1. PROPERLY expose your photos.  That sometimes means “overexposing”.

2.  Do not sharpen images with noise – it makes it SIGNIFICANTLY worse. I usually fix noise and then do some sharpening if it’s necessary, but they two kind of counter-act each other to watch closely as you make adjustments.

3.  Learn to use noise reduction in your editing software.  ACR has it, as does LR.  I regularly use the noise sliders in LR to reduce noise.  It’s so powerful, in fact, that it can virtually eliminate the noise altogether.   Here’s a before and after with noise reduction applied:

{After settings in the LightRoom noise reduction panel:  Color +18, Luminance +28).

4.  and final…do your own ISO test so that you know how high  you can go with your ISO with confidence.  Do a test just like I did here!

That’s all I have for you today!  Please don’t hesitate to ask questions or to share your own experiences in the comments section!

Join SP tomorrow for the launch of Project SCRAP 2012! Yay!

BeckiePhotography, Uncategorized 8 Comments

Hello everyone!  Happy December!  Beckie here.

I just LOVE this time of year.  I love the cool (almost COLD!) weather, the scent of burning candles, and the glow of festive holiday lights :)

Last year, almost a year ago to the date in fact, I shared tips for taking photographs around the holidays.  It’s a great “getting started” overview with ideas on how to make your photos from this time of year even more special.  This year I decided to do something a bit different, and to try out a technique I’d seen a few times before but never actually tried…creating shaped bokeh!

We’ve probably mentioned it in the past, but bokeh is “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light“.  It’s the blurry part of an image :)   Turns out, by putting a template over the front of the lens and shaping the light that hits your sensor, you can create some really cool effects with your bokeh.  Ready?  It’s super simple, I promise!

What you need:

• portrait lens (you need something f2.0 or wider (a lower number) for this.  When looking at a lens, you’ll see “50mm 1:1.8, or 30mm 1:1.4″ – we’re talking about the “1.8″ and the “1.4″ part.  If you have those numbers, you’re good.  If your lens has bigger numbers, this technique most likely won’t work very well :(
• black cardstock
• craft knife

Place your lens face-down on the black cardstock and trace around the inner most ring of your lens.  It might take a small bit of “fiddling”, but you simply cut the circle down a bit until it fits within the ring of the lens.  As you can see, I kind of pressed it in there snugly to make sure it stayed in place.  Once you get one ring sized properly, just trace it out a few other times in case you get the fever and want to create a few different shapes.

Once you have your black circles, you need to use the craft knife to cut shapes from the center.  I had a holiday stencil on-hand from years of holiday craft projects, and I used it to trace and cut out a starburst, a star, and a tree.  You could also use a punch if you have one!

Unfortunately I got home every night this week after it was already dark, so please excuse these photos – they aren’t my best!  But what I do love about them is that you can very clearly see how COOL and how amazing it is to actually change the shape of the light (the bokeh) in your photos:

shot at 1/50, f1.4 with my Sigma 30mm f1.4 lens (which rocks, btw!)

Here are a few tips:

• You want your lens to be as “wide open” as possible (the lowest f-stop number your lens supports).
• blurry is better!  In other photos not shown here, I focused on the tree – and the photos had no shaped bokeh because well, there was no bokeh!  The idea is to create blurry light to allow the little lens cover thingy do its work :)  So just manually adjust the focus  and watch the beautiful bokeh emerge :)
• The more blur, the bigger the bokeh.  So play around to find out what looks best!
• Use a tripod.  Or, if you do what I did – which is to temporarily misplace that little thing that screws into the bottom of the camera to allow your camera to snap into the tripod, you can pile up books on the coffee table and very carefully press the shutter button.  LOL!  (I need to find that thing!  hubby will not be happy if I tell him I need another tripod, LOL.  But the pile of books worked OK)

I was SUPER curious to see how the left image  would come out, which was created with the starburst cut-out.  I love the effect it created – but it also created a bit “messier” image.  I think it’s pretty cool!  I know my daughter would love it if I created one with her initials in the bokeh – something I might try over vacation :)

I have better examples of holiday bokeh (and tips on how to create it) in the post from last year, so be sure to check that out also!  And remember that you can just use the bokeh as a background element.  Believe it or not, you can still focus on a person (or a gift, an ornament, etc) in the foreground of your image and it will look perfectly normal – and still have that cool bokeh in the background.

Well, that wraps it up for me today!  I hope you enjoyed this simple little experiment.  And for even more inspiration – check out the shaped bokeh images on flickr!  And stop by the Blog tomorrow for some more festive food fun with Casharina. SP and Kylie will also be stopping by with all the latest on projectSCRAP!

Happy holidays to you all, and best wishes for a healthy and happy new year :)

BeckiePhotography, Uncategorized 5 Comments