Thru My Photos

Direct eye contact can be as engaging in a picture as it is in real life. When taking a picture of someone, hold the camera at the person’s eye level to unleash the power of those magnetic gazes and mesmerizing smiles. For children, that means stooping to their level. And your subject need not always stare at the camera. All by itself that eye level angle will create a personal and inviting feeling that pulls you into the picture.

Create greeting cards of your cherished pictures to share with family and friends, from photo birth announcements to a commemoration of the first crawl.

      “Our senses are indeed our doors and windows on this world, in a very real sense the key to the unlocking of meaning and the wellspring of creativity.”

Jean Houston

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Photographs of fireworks are spectacular, colorful, and fairly easy to do once you know the tricks. For best results, you will need: an SLR camera, tripod, cable release, a long lens, and plenty of patience.

Since you don’t know exactly when the fireworks will explode, and you are aiming to capture their trails, you will need to hold the camera shutter open for 2-30 seconds. Compact cameras don’t usually offer this long exposure feature so you will probably need an SLR camera with a manual exposure mode often called ‘Bulb’ (often marked ‘B’).

To get sharp images, you must keep the camera perfectly still. Propping your camera on a wall, car-top or table may suffice, but nothing beats a good, solid tripod. You’ll also need a cable release to activate the shutter without touching and moving the camera.

Waterfront settings are good as you can include the reflections of the fireworks in your shot. Cityscapes, landmarks, or people add context to the shot, but remember that they’ll come out as silhouettes, so don’t include faces or other details. High viewpoints, upwind from the smoke, are usually best. Get there early to secure your spot and select a lens (usually a telephoto) that will fill the frame with trails. Use the first burst to focus the lens (don’t rely on your ‘infinity’ setting).

To photograph the fireworks, open the shutter, wait for some bursts, then close the shutter. That’s it! Take lots of photos (which you can edit later) to get a few good shots. Try different apertures (f8 is the safest) and different zoom settings. Include only a few bursts to fill up the frame; too many will look messy. To reduce the effect of street lighting, cover the lens between bursts with your hand, a black card, or a black cap.

Looking for a truly spectacular shot? You can double-expose your film to include the full moon with the fireworks. (Only a few cameras provide a “multiple-exposure” mode).

•Set your camera on a tripod.
•Connect a cable shutter release or set the remote for taking the shots.
•Lock focus at infinity.
•Set the shutter speed to bulb ‘B’ (the shutter will stay open for as long as you hold it open). If you don’t have this option, set the exposure time to the longest possible - realistically you need 10 to 30 seconds
•Set the aperture (F-stop) to between F2.8 and F5.6. Experiment a little with different settings but I recommend nothing higher than F8 unless you want many bolts of lightning to occur in the one photo.
•Frame the picture where the most lightning is occurring, or where the most spectacular clouds are.
•Observe the lightning for a short while before taking a picture. You will notice that some cloud to ground (CG) lightning strikes very fast (in a fraction of a second it has flashed and gone). Other CG bolts strobe or pulse for anything up to 2 seconds. Sheet lightning (anvil crawlers) sometimes lasts up to a second or more as it spreads across the sky. If the storm is close to you and/or you can see it growing or moving, then exposure times should be at most 15 seconds, or else the cloud will blur (especially if more than one lightning bolt occurs during the exposure). If the storm is a fair way away, you are only framing the storm base, or you cannot see it developing or moving, then exposures can be anything you like! I recommend between 20 seconds and 2 minutes. You can have longer exposure times for higher F stops.

Catch each step of baby’s development—the first smile, the first bath, the first tooth, the first step. Babies change so rapidly, make sure you capture all the milestones before they become history. Or show a day in the life of baby. From the morning’s waking stretch to the evening’s yawns, track your child for one full day. You’ll have a series you’ll cherish for years to come.

“How much of human life is lost in waiting.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and really enjoy it.”

Eileen Caddy

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