Sunday Snapshot - "I'm Shy"

With August literally just days away, we have been talking a lot about the start of the school year.
There will be lots of new changes ahead for Sarah and Reagan as they will both head to new schools in the fall. Sarah will go to Kindergarten and Reagan will be attending a new full time preschool instead of the daycare we currently use.

As excited as Sarah is for her new beginning, she has expressed a little bit of anxiety as well.
She is afraid she is not going to make new friends......and I said, "of course you will Sarah".
She looked up at me with the prettiest smile and said, "But you know I am shy Mommy".


It took all the strength I could muster up not to laugh, because this girl is anything but shy. She will talk to anyone and everyone. Seriously, you should take this child with you on a shopping excursion. She is what I would consider, very outgoing and is by far, my most outgoing child.

I am sure it is hard for her to know that she is going to walk into a strange room on the first day, but I have no doubt that she will make a lot of new friends. We just signed her up to play soccer on the school team and I am hopeful that her practices will begin before the school year starts, that way she will meet some of her classmates in advance. For now, we are just reassuring her that all will be okay and that once she gets past the first day, all the nerves will fade away.

Camera: Canon 5d Markiii
Lens: Canon 50mm f1.2
The settings for the top photo were:
f 2.0
SS 1/500th
ISO 200

It was an overcast day today, so I had to bump up my ISO just a tad in order to shoot more wide open and with a faster shutter.(even though she was standing still in these photos, just moments before both she and Reagan were twirling, those photos to come later this week) I had the camera resting on the ground and I was lying down there too..... I put the focus point on Sarah's eyes, and clicked the shutter. By shooting on the ground, it changed the perspective and also gave it a cool depth of field or blurry look in the foreground of the shot.

Photos were both processed using Florabella's Classic Color with a touch of Deep Azure and 1968. I also added some texture from Sarah Garnder's Beyond the Lens Texture Set.


Make sure you pop over to Stef's blog to see more Sunday Snapshots.

Sunday Snapshot - "Perspective"

Sometimes it is fun to look at things in a different way.....


We all tend to view things at eye level or from a standing position.


So my goal yesterday at the park, was to look at everything from a different perspective.


It always amazes me how much more interesting something can appear when you do this.


Even though I did not get her face in a lot of these photos, the emotion is still present when you view them.


I shot from down on the ground with camera pointed up and then I climbed up and did the reverse...shooting down to the ground.


Reagan had no clue what I was doing, she was having the time of her life, climbing up the steps, coming down the slide, and running back around through the maze to do it all over again......again......and again:)


I loved the look of concentration on her face here as she climbed up hoping she could reach the monkey bars. Still a little too short!! I rarely center my subjects dead on in a photo, but this one was definitely an exception....it begged to be centered.

I am about two weeks into my latest "push past your comfort zone" class. It is another fantastic group of ladies..... and they are keeping me on my toes(that is why I have been scarce around here). This week we have been discussing rules of composition. The topic of posing your subjects vs just letting them do their thing came up in our forum, so these photos were a way for me to show by example that you can indeed take every day candid types of photos that are non posed and at the same time follow some of the basic photography rules of composition without having to actually tell your subject where to stand and what to do. Since Sunday Snapshots are now about achieving the fundamentals of photography, I figured I would share a little here too!

Camera: Canon 5d Markiii
Lens: Canon 50mm f1.2
The settings for the top photo were:
f 3.2
SS 1/1000th
ISO 100

I was lying on the ground in front of the swing with my camera aimed up towards the sky. I was shooting in the spot meter mode and focused on the bottom of the swing. The fast shutter speed is what allowed me to freeze the motion of the swing.

Photos were all processed using Florabella's Classic Color Set and Sarah Garnder's Beyond the Lens Texture Set.


Make sure you pop over to Stef's blog to see more Sunday Snapshots.

Sunday Snapshot - "Balloon Bath"

A few weeks ago while on pinterest searching for some ideas to use for upcoming photoshoots, I had Sarah in my lap.


We saw a series of photos that was done where the little girl's bedroom was filled with pink balloons.


I was online searching for something to do with a set of young brothers, so this was not exactly what I was looking for....


but Sarah's eyes got very wide and filled with excitement when she saw it.


She asked me if we could try to do something like this here at the house.


It looked like fun and I told her when we had some time, we could give it a try!


Knowing I was on vacation this week, I thought we would give it a shot.


I bought the big bag of pink balloons last Sunday......


and started blowing them up on Monday:)


The original plan was to have two princesses in the tub batting those balloons around.....


but unfortunately the littlest princess was too sick:(


We held out hoping she would feel better and by Tuesday evening, Sarah could no longer wait.


Those balloons were calling her name and she was begging me to let her climb in.


She had SO MUCH FUN that night in her balloon bath!


I think this is the most fun the two of us have ever had with the camera and I believe that comes shining through in every last photo.

Camera: Canon 5d Markiii
Lens: Canon 35mm f1.4 and Canon 85mm f1.2
The settings for the top photo were:
f 2.5
SS 1/250th
ISO 125

These pictures were taken around 7pm as the sun was setting and beaming in the window. The shots with sun flare are real sun flare, it was not enhanced this time:) As for processing, it was on the light side. A little add some drama from Florabella's Classic Workflow Collection along with some slight textures from Sarah Gardner's various collections. Also did a little face work on the close up shots using Florabella's Makeover and Retouch set.

I wish my bathroom would have been white, I think the pink would have popped more against that instead of the beige, but either way, the light is what drew me into this series of photos and of course the sheer joy pasted all over Sarah's face.

As I mentioned in my 4th of July post, Reagan is feeling much better, but while we visited the dr this week, he heard an abnormal sound when he listened to her heart. He scheduled an Echocardiogram which was done at our local hospital yesterday. We are just waiting for it to be reviewed by a pediatric cardiologist and we should have the results early this week. We are hopeful it is a benign murmur and nothing to be worried about..... but I cannot help but let my mind wander as we wait. If you are the praying type, we would appreciate a few prayers on Reagan's behalf. I will keep everyone posted and let you know as soon as we hear back from our dr.


Make sure you pop over to Stef's blog to see more Sunday Snapshots.