Tag Archives: Gainesville florida studio photographer

Photo Tip: Better Camera Phone Pictures

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Everyone has a camera on them these days – your cell phone. More and more people are going away from carrying traditional dslr or point and shoots in favor of their camera phone for pictures.  Heck, even I do it sometime.  It’s quicker to post to Facebook from my iPhone than it is to download and post from my point and shoot.

Here is the problem, in many cases the pictures & the quality are awful.  Camera phones give you very little control over apature, shutter speed and ISO which are the key components that make up a good picture. Many pictures posted from peoples camera phones are so blurry (camera shake from a slow shutter speed) or so dark you might as well have saved the time to post the pictures.
But don’t fret – I have a few tips for you camera phone enthusiasts that will ensure better pictures.  And you don’t need to be a professional to be able to do this. :)

Tip #1 – Shoot in bright sunny locations.  Part of the problem with your camera phone is it is picking all your setting for you (basically auto on your camera).  In bright sunlight the camera phone will pick a fast enough shutter speed for you to hand hold and get a good sharp picture.

 
Tip #2 – Don’t hold the camera out at arms length.  You are less steady and there is more of a chance for camera blur from your hand not being steady. Keep your elbows in close to your body and hold the camera close to you.

Tip #3 – Steady the camera – if you can, steady your camera up against a wall, rest it on the back of a chair, use something that is solid and not moving.  This should eliminate camera blur.

Tip #4 – Use an app.  There are a million apps out there for camera phones.  Dan Burkholder, a very good fine art photographer and author on photography.  He works exclusively with an iphone for his camera these days and makes super huge prints.  They are amazing.  But he is using a bunch of apps to get these amazing pictures.

Tip #5 – Practice!  Get to know your camera phone and what it can do.  Especially the apps.  Some apps like Hipstamatic have some pretty cool tools, but if you don’t know what they do, you’ll never get good pictures from them.

Tip #6 – Have fun!  You don’t have to be Ansel Adams to get fun memories! (If you don’t know who Ansel Adams is – google him!)

Remember, this is not your point and shoot or your DSLR, but it can be a very fun creative tool just like your camera.  If you know its limitations you can capture some amazing images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

{All of the above images were created using an iphone.}

Making a Difference Part 1

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Ronnie and her husband have lived at 38 Weber Avenue in Sayreville for 42 years.  They have three grown children they raised in this house, their 2 boys have recently been living at home.  Their beautiful ranch style home has been hit by flood waters before, but never like this.

“After the 1992 flood and we fixed the damage on our home, my husband said we should sell.  Other homes in the area were selling for $400,000.  We could buy something small and have a nest egg for retirement.”  But Ronnie had lived there so long.  She has all her friends and family around her, she couldn’t leave.

The night Sandy hit, Ronnie had gone to her daughter’s home about 30 minutes away – but her son and husband decided to stay behind with a friends row boat in the yard incase it got to bad and they needed to get out.  In the dark of night, tidal surge came from the river.    The water inside their home came rushing in.  In a matter of 9 minutes, her husband and her son were in over 4 feet of water and knew they had to get out.  So they headed to the row boat and spent over an hour rowing against the current and wind to get to higher ground.  They got past their elderly neighbors home, she was crouched on her counter top in her kitchen screaming for help.  Then they heard her fall in the water.  They knew they couldn’t get to her, the current was to strong, they needed to get to higher ground where they could call for help.

The next day, Ronnie’s family all headed back to survey the damage.  It was worse than they imagined, it was gone – all gone.  The water in front of their ranch style home at the height of the storm was 11 feet deep.  The water inside there home rose to 4 feet.  Mud, water debris was every where.  And the worse part, the foundation had collapsed in the back corner of the house. All there belongings gone, no furniture, no cloths and they used lots of bleach to salavage the little they could.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You would think that it couldn’t get any worse, well  for Ronnie’s family it did.  Read Part 2 next week….

 

Defining Depth of Field

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In this week’s edition of Visual Literacy 101  -  DEPTH OF FIELD

Your dictionary.com defines “Depth of Field” as a zone in which objects are in sharp focus.

Your depth of field is determined not only by your f-stop in your camera, but also the lens you are using, distance from the subject, focal length and type of camera.  I could get really technical with this subject and talk about perception and circle of confusion but that would take a semester to teach and I want you to read this blog and not be bored.  So we are going to keep it simple, albeit a little long.

Let’s start with Shallow Depth of Field…

“Shallow” depth of field is when only one small point in the image is in focus, as with nature photography or macro photography, and the background and foreground is out of focus or blurry.  Shallow depth of field tends to draw your eye toward the subject (whatever is in sharp focus) and not be confused by the surroundings.  Remember from the last Visual Literacy 101 entry that the thing that is in focus is the subject.  Therefore, being sure your depth of field includes all of what you want the subject to be is CRITICAL!

An extremely shallow depth of field is very seldom acceptable with portrait photography.  One of the biggest mistakes we see a lot of when it comes to this subject is that the point of focus is placed on the wrong area causing important features in the picture to be out of focus. (Look at the twins in the last blog post about focus, the brother is in focus and the sister is not because of shallow depth of field.)

Let me show you some examples of bad depth of field choices in a portrait situation. (Remember, we throw out images that are unacceptable immediately, so finding an example of this from our studio was not possible.  However it was very simple to go on the web and find great examples of this from other people selling themselves as “professional” photographers.)

In a group or family photo where there are multiple rows of people, it is important that the person in front is just as in focus or sharp as the person in the back.

In this picture we took from last year’s Urban Meyer Scramble for Kids, you can see that the shallow depth of field works well.  The foreground is intentionally out of focus, Drew Copeland is completely in focus and then the background is out of focus again.  This clearly shows that Drew is the subject.

This example of a group photo we shot for the Junior League last year.  As you can see, the people in the front row and the people in the back row are all in focus because we used a wide depth of field to ensure focus throughout.

Using a “deep” depth of field is also a problem.  When everything is in focus, it is very difficult to find the subject.  Knowing when and how to use depth of field properly is important.

Our motto at the studio is “Get it right in the camera!” NOT “fix it in Photoshop” like many new photographers.  Many things can be fixed in Photoshop, the question is how well?

Let’s leave it at this, depth of field is an important factor in a recipe for a good photograph.   Next week, we will add exposure to our mix…

What's in a Cloud?

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I am going to add this post which is a little off track, because I have been getting a lot of questions recently about online storage.  Here is a great break down of what is out there.

In the news you are going to hear a lot about Amazon’s new online application “Amazon Cloud Drive”.  What you are not going to hear a lot of is the downside to using this FREE online storage.  Why did I capitalize “free”, remember the adage “if it seems to good to be true, it probably is”, it applies in this case.

Many people neglect to read the terms of usage, because
a) it is to long and wordie to sit there and read
b) it is in such legal terms, you are not really sure what it means
c) you are just to busy and it will be fine, why would they hurt you, won’t it make their company look bad

I admit, I do it every time I upgrade itunes, I just hit agree and go on.  But when it comes to your documents, photos and other sensitive materials do you really want anyone to have access.  If anyone having access to your photos and using them as they may is okay with you, then stop reading.  If it is not, let me give you a small lesson in online storage.

Here is the very first thing you see on the “Clouds” Terms of service:
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY — THIS IS A BINDING CONTRACT
This is a very big hint to the consumer, somewhere in this contract your rights are being abused.  Here is the section I am talking about straight from Amazon’s website

The “You give us the right to access” means exactly that.  You have given them permission to go through your files at anytime for any reason without your permission.  Many people will say “but it is password protected and I am the only one who knows the password”.  They created the software and they have the key to access whatever they want that is on “their cloud”.

Many people do not realize, in Facebook’s early stages, they had the same rights to use your photos in any way they deemed appropriate.  Remember the word “FREE”.  You are using FB for free, if they wanted to create an ad with your image, use your image in their office, change your image, you gave them permission by uploading your photos.  And they didn’t even need to ask.

A few years ago the uproar from professional photographers caused them to change that clause so that they can look, but can’t use photos with out the express permission of the creator.

Another thing about online storage – how long will it be there?  Do you remember Kodak Easy Share?  About 5 or 6 years ago, Kodak and AOL shut down the online printing and storage site. (I assume because it was not profitable)  Many people lost all of there photos and were outraged that they were not given enough notice.  It was announced for over 6 months that the online storage site was going away, but in the sea of junk mail in everyone’s in box, they ignored the messages that it was shutting down. Hence, all their images were gone.

Now that we’ve talked about the bad, lets get to some good.  Mac has had MobileMe which has been a great online storage option for us Mac users, but in June 0f 2012 they are dissolving that for their new storage system icloud (coming this fall).  It is free and supposedly encrypted so you are the only one who can access it.  Again, with free comes issues.  As much as I love Mac, this free form of storage will only work if you are using the newest operating system Lion. With 4 different Mac’s running in our office, I am looking into the next two options for my online storage and back-up.

Other good online storage, Mozy and Carbonite.  From what I know they are heavily encrypted so that no one, even themselves, can easily get access without your permission.  But again, they are not free.

Why am I telling you all this – education.  People are shocked when they find out their rights have been abused, but in most cases they have signed their rights away with a click of a mouse and didn’t even know it.  Online back-up is great because it doesn’t take up space on your Hard Drive.  Hard Drives, thumb drives and portable storage wallets are cheap!  Plus, the only one who can look through your images or documents are people you want to see them.  So protect yourself and think twice before storing important information on “FREE” sites.

IS it sharp vs. ISN'T it sharp

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The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines in focus as: having or giving the proper sharpness of outline due to good focusing.

Out-of-focus images are the bane of modern photography.  Everyone thinks cameras have advanced so much in the digital age that anyone can take a good picture – not so.

The camera is a tool.  Just as an eye surgeon uses a laser during a procedure, it is the doctor guiding that machine properly to correct your vision.  It is not the machine being put on auto-pilot, and without the expertise of the doctor the machine follows default settings which will likely be incorrect a large percentage of the time.   In the same way, a camera just sees patches of light and dark pixels on the sensor, it does not know if you are photographing a child or a flower, what you want in focus, and where you want that focus point to be.  That is where a photographer comes in.  Knowing where to focus is a critical part of photography.

When you look at an image, your eyes are naturally drawn to the sharpest object in the picture.  Therefore, you definitely want the most important part of the image to be sharp.
 Everyone loves the images where the background is “blurry” or out of focus.  As a professional photographer I know what lens combination and aperture to use to get the background out of focus and my entire subject in focus. Let’s look at an example of focus…

This photo is a great example of knowing how to use depth of field to get a great portrait.  All three boys are clearly in focus though they are not on the same focal plane (meaning there faces are at different distances and not right next to each other).  The background is clearly out of focus or blurry as my family calls it.

This is a great example of selective focus which means the photographer decides what part of the image needs to be in focus.  The subjects eye to his ear is in focus but the stuff in the foreground and background is clearly out of focus.

In a portrait the tip of the nose to the ear is what should be in focus, with critical focus (the sharpest part of the image) being the eye, in a candid picture the subject of the event or picture is what should be in focus (ie. a picture of people dancing, the couple (both people) should be in focus and the background should not – it is about the couple) and in a landscape image everything should be as sharp as possible.  All of this is accomplished by understand depth of field.

If you’d like to learn more – please feel free to contact us at the studio, we offer classes and are happy to give people advice on where to go to learn about taking better pictures.

What Makes A Good Picture?

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Just like we were not born with the ability to read words…Most people are not born with the ability to read pictures.

While almost everyone can decide that they like or dislike a picture, they either can’t explain why they feel that way or do not have the terminology to express it.

For the next 12 weeks we are going to teach you visual literacy.  This series of blogs will explain the objective difference between good and bad photographs.  We have shared this knowledge with a few of our friends and have had fun hearing stories about how they had learned to “read” their pictures.

This knowledge will also help you with being able to take better pictures since you’ll be able to figure out technically what is wrong with a picture and can work to correct it.

We highly encourage you to share these blogs with your friends and family on Facebook or just by sending them the link to our blog.  Knowledge is power.  And having the knowledge to know the difference between good and bad can make all the difference in the world to your family photos.

Check our blog every Wednesday at noon, to see the first blog in our series “What Makes A Good Picture”.

2011 Chic Pics

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Here is a few pictures of our baby chicks nestled in the studio, waiting for cute little boys and girls to meet them tomorrow.  Keep an eye out on the blog and Facebook for pictures from the sessions for the next few days.   Do you want your child to meet the chicks, call the studio and set up their session – 352-371-9735.

Free Pictures!  Refer a friend and get 4 free wallets of any picture from your session!

Wall Decor

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I love Jen Blalock.  She is the director of O2B kids in Alachua and is fabulous at her job.  She has a big wall in her home and has a vision of 3 very large pictures, what we call in the art world a triptych, of her children and their little dog Ali(gator).  The dog and the kids came in for our black and white session recently and here is three of my favorite pictures for the Blalock triptych wall.

Many people don’t think of portraits as wall decor.  Wall decor can be anything from a large photographic print, to a series of pictures to, to a painting from your family vacation (hint, hint – I can paint your vacation pictures, the company is called Modern Impressions by Angel).    Feel a straight photographic print is kinda boring?  How about printing an image on silk, or on wood or even metal?  Are you theming the room?  Italy, Paris, Gators?  We may have a painted or photographic picture in our archives that is just perfect for your room.  The options for creating wall decor are endless.

So next time you are redecorating  a room in your home and are trying to find new wall decor, call us!  We are your experts in Wall Decor.

Until next week.

Angel

Daddy & me

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I have to admit this picture just came out so adorable.  The relationship between Brian and his daughter Arden is so sweet.  This portrait is getting added to a collection of 16×20 portraits of each of Arden’s three other siblings in the same pose at the same age that the Wills will be displaying in their new home.

Tender moments like these are very fleeting.  Before they know it, Arden will be enter kindergarten, then off to high school, then college… I think you get the point.  Babies being this size only lasts for an instant in the scheme of life.  It is so important to document all the little fingers and toes, before they grow up.  And I love the fact that the Wills family decided to make such a beautiful, artistic statement about all 4 of their children, by making them decor for their walls.  What a better way to decorate than with big, beautiful, pictures of what you love most – your family!

I have posted a few of the other pictures from this season on our Facebook page.  Please feel free to check them out.  And if you are interested in a “Daddy & Me” session at the studio, give us a call – 352-371-9735.

Until Next week.

Angel

Tag your it!

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Are you ready?

Ready, set, GO!!!!

Introducing our new TAGS! We will slowly be adding tags to our collection, but let’s start with the basics!

Download the Microsoft Tag software to your smart phone http://gettag.mobi, begin the app, and just start scanning.  Each tag gives you information, takes you to a link, sends you a text…

Try mine out first, to get the hang of it, then KEEP WATCHING Facebook and my Blog for more tags.  And, keep an eye out… they are starting to show up EVERYWHERE!

Oh, and when you begin… LET ME KNOW!  Join me… this is a fun ride!
YIPPEE!!!

The new Salazar Family

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Cris Salazar and Denee Carlson tied the knot just before Christmas.  With a small ceremony of friends and family at their house they pledged their love for each other.  It was beautiful.

We LOVE this picture.  It was super important to Cris to get some romantic pictures of them on their wedding day.  (Yes, this is the guy asking for this – don’t you wish all men could be this romantic.  You are a lucky girl Denee!)

Congratulations love birds!  We hope you are enjoying newlywed bliss.

Thanks to Santa and his elf

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We want to put a huge Thank you out to Santa and his elf Randy. We raised a few hundred dollars that we donated to Children’s Home Society to help a family in need this Christmas during our Santa Days.

We posted a few more pictures on our Facebook page.  Thanks again.

Kline Clan

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The weekend before Thanksgiving everyone from the Kline family was home for the holidays.  The family has never had a professional family photo done before.  So we felt very privileged to be the first to capture it.  The core family has expanded to include Michael’s new wife Jessie.  The shoot was a ton of fun, including some rockin’ horse riding.  Here is one of my favorite family pics..

We’ve also included some extra photos of the group on our Facebook Page.

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

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In our over-commercialized society, this holiday gives us a good “teaching moment” to remind children that Jolly Santa Claus, is, in fact, Saint Nicholas, a fourth century bishop of the city of Myra in what is now Turkey.

Saint Nicholas was renowned for his great kindness and his generous aid to those in distress. Traditional celebrations of Saint Nicholas Day in Northern Europe included gifts left in children’s shoes (the origin of our American Christmas stockings). Good children receive treats – candies, cookies, apples and nuts, while naughty children receive lumps of coal.

Today, children still put a shoe outside their bedroom doors (or under the Christmas tree for our office manager Kathy) on the eve of Saint Nicholas Day, and expect to find candy and coins or small gifts in their shoe on December 6th.

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

Family Generations

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Recently we’ve been doing a lot of family pictures that include extended family, like grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins or just all your siblings home for the holidays.  Life changes quickly, take this opportunity to get that 3 generations portrait or a picture with all your siblings.

We are here to help you capture this very special moment.  Whether you want studio, outside or at your house – we can help.  Capture what matters most, FAMILY.

Keep a look out on our facebook page for a most recent family portraits.  Call 352-371-9735 to schedule your family portrait this holiday season.