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High-Key Photography
There is a term in photography called “High-Key”. The goal of a high-key photo is to overexpose a picture artistically and intentionally by reducing the overall contrast and “smoothing” out the image. This is can be achieved a few ways. How do you think I set my camera for the following shot? (The photo is completely untouched)
What you don’t see in this shot is that behind Caleb is a full height sliding glass door with partially open vertical blinds. The sunlight was hitting this west facing side of the house in the early afternoon and it was very bright. I used my Nikkor 50mm lens and metered* my camera for the darkest point in the picture which was Caleb’s bib and for good measure opened my aperture a step further all the way to it’s maximum of f/1.8. My ISO was set to 200 for maximum quality and my shutter speed was 1/100th of a sec which is just fast enough to stop a calm baby’s motion. Notice how the light has somewhat of a ethereal quality to it? That is because of the nature of how the camera “sees” light. All of the areas that are “bleeding” light are lighter than the area I metered and thus are naturally overexposed creating a softness to the picture. This is a beautiful way to take photos of babies and young children as well as pregnancy photography.
*For questions regarding the technical terms feel free to post comments and I’ll answer them to the best of my knowledge or find out the answers for you!
Photography
Photography. Dictionary.com defines it as “the process or art of producing images of objects on sensitized surfaces by the chemical action of light…”
I would define it as “The art of capturing light”.
A photographer does not have to be a professional with thousands of dollars in equipment. When you capture a moment of time with any camera – be it a disposable camera from Wal-Mart or a $3,000 Professional DSLR, you have become a photographer. I’ve been around cameras for most of my life. I can remember the first camera I ever had as a child was a fisher-price toy with a rotating cube on top. I believe it was supposed to be emulating a 110 camera. Then I was given a nice collection of antique cameras, none of which worked to my knowledge, but I loved playing with them.
Years passed and around the age of 16, my parents bought me a Pentax 35mm SLR camera. It was the basic model but had all of the features I needed to start experimenting. But it wasn’t until about 6 years later when I got my first digital point-n-shoot camera that really started to fall in love with photography. For the first time it didn’t cost me $10 per 2 dozen images to see what I had taken. I could see the image at that moment and even delete it if I didn’t like it. Now I will never begrudge someone their film camera, but I will never go back.
About 4 years ago I purchased a Nikon D70s DSLR camera. For the first time I had a camera that was capable of tackling far more complex scenes. It came with 2 versatile lenses and I started playing and learning. I soon began taking lessons from the father of my brother-in-law’s wife. Does that make him my father-in-law-in-law-in-law? No, but he’s a brilliant professional photographer who has won international recognition for his work. I learned about what Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO meant and how they all interact and affect your image and your ability to capture an image effectively. I’m not what would be considered a professional photographer. I haven’t achieved perfection in all my shots. And I don’t take pictures for a living. But I am passionate about photography and every pro that I know says they are always learning, always growing, and always looking to improve.
Photography is a living breathing organism. It cannot be fully known to anyone because no one person could ever be at every event, every sunrise, every wedding, and every moment in human history. Thus, from someone learning more every day about the world of light and how to capture those moments of wonder and excitement, welcome, and enjoy!
About my equipment:
Camera: Nikon D90
Lenses: Nikkor 50mm AF-D 1.8, Nikkor 18-70mm AF 3.5
Filters: Tiffan Circular Polarizer
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4
See my photography page for the same article and my gallery.
Christmas Morning with the Franks
Before I begin this post, I wanted to say that in response to my last one, the surprise was taking Melissa to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra on the 23rd. We had an incredible time! If you’ve never been, make an effort to go some time, it is the experience of a lifetime!
After a wonderful time spending Christmas Eve with Melissa‘s family we came home, opened our jammies (which is a tradition in our family – to give each other a new set of jammies on Christmas Eve) and read the Christmas story from Luke Chapter 2 to Caleb before putting him to bed.
We got up bright and early at 7:30am to get Caleb up and fed so we could get going with our Christmas morning presents. Without going into details of all that we received, we shall just leave it as we had a fun time opening everything! My wife is so sweet and really got me some wonderful gifts – but the purpose of this story is to tell you about one gift that I gave her in particular. Many of you may already be familiar with The Pioneer Woman who has an enormously popular blog and has written a cookbook and many other things. Well, my darling wife had asked for the cookbook called “Pioneer Woman Cooks” for Christmas and being the loving and wonderful husband that I am (wink) I of course got it for her Santa got it for her. The following pictures tell the remainder of my story.
Opening the cookbook for the first time
Caleb playing with some new toys while mommy reads the cookbook
"Um... Mom? Why'd you stop playing with me?"
"Mom... Mom...Mom...Mommy....Mommy...Mommy..."
"...Mommy?"
"Um... AHEM... Little Person down here!"
"Uh Dad? Mom's ignoring me!"
"Ooooh! A book for me?"
"BAH! This doesn't teach me how to make cinnamon rolls!"
At Last, what he really wanted
"Not again..."
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In all fairness that entire sequence lasted about 2 minutes and Caleb was happily playing the entire time. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity for some great captions!
All in all, we had a wonderful Christmas and I will be posting more fun photos shortly. Have a great evening everyone!
Busy busy
I am sorry for the lack of posts over the past couple days. Trying to get back into the swing of things after having 5 days off is tough as I am sure you can all relate to. Our pictures and stories from Christmas will be up tomorrow (giving myself a deadline always helps!) and I am still working on the photography section of the site so it can be a really great experience for everyone. I can’t settle for anything less than really super spiffy cool! Thanks for reading! And as Pioneer Woman (Melissa’s favorite blogger) always recommends, “tell your readers you love them…” so hey, I love ya’ll!
A Christmas Surprise
Today I’m taking my wife on a date. Parents of young children need to catch this idea. No matter how busy life gets with parenting and school, and activities and all the other numerous things we fill our lives with, we can never forget to date one another. I believe one of the leading causes to the breakdown of the family unit is that after kids, parents start to ignore each other and begin to make their kids the central focus of their lives. This is important as our kids demand much time and energy – but we must never forget that our spouse must come before our children or we risk not only hurting our marriage but even hurting our children as they look to us to properly model healthy relationships.
Remember when you were first dating your significant other? How you’d make every effort to impress him or her and how you were always finding creative ways to spend time together?
Picture of us when we were dating.
Why don’t we do that now? For us men, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of feeling like we’ve “won” our wive’s hearts and now it’s time to focus on providing for her and our family. That is a deadly snare. Yes providing for our family is important but in a poll conducted a couple years ago the pollsters asked women what they would prefer – A husband who was hardly around but provided a significant income and huge financial stability and the ability to buy and do many things, or would they rather live at a lower income level not getting as many financial freedoms but have a husband who is home with them more often and willing to spend his time with the family and with her. What do you think the result of that poll was? Over 75% of the women responded they’d rather have the later. Security is very important to women, but what is even more important is a present husband and father.
And today, I’m going to be that. I’ve been planing a special day for Melissa and I for a couple weeks now. Nothing huge, but just some time before Christmas for us to spend some quality time together. Since she of course reads this blog I can only reveal that it will involve a little drive, food, and a fair amount of walking. But it will be a blast. Hopefully the gorgeous weather we are having will hold and although it’s cold it’s clear and beautiful.
Have you dated your spouse in the last month? Leave a comment with your reply and or thoughts on the topic. Have a wonderful day all of you!
- Child Rearing
- Children
- Faith
- Jesus
- Godly Parenting
- Portraits
- Engagement
- Babies
- Maternity
On Becoming Daddy
Colorado Springs, Colorado