Heather & Pat Engagement Session :)

It was a beautiful day :)

This is just a little preview of such a beautiful couple!!

Can't wait until their August wedding!!

Portraits with only 1 light source!

So all of these portraits of my friend Raquel, were done with my canon 50mm 1.8 lens. I love these lens! Plus they are cheap!!

For this blog post, I wanted to share some insight on how to shoot portraits on a budget! I don't have a studio and so I have to improvise. These portraits were done with a light that I purchased at Home Depot. My light was about $20. I put my camera on auto white balance at times and sometimes on Tungsten.

I also don't have a light stand so I used a microphone stand and hung the light from that.

My solution was very simple and it worked! At least I like to think so!

Enjoy!

Cupcakes!

So what do you do when your baby turns 6 months old? Throw him/her a party?? No! Give him a cupcake and take pictures to capture the moment!!

This is Matthew. He's my cousin. And I love him. Hope you will too :)

Enjoy!
I made it into a slide show!

and i'll leave you with my favorite of the day:

My latest Photoshoot

So I went to the park yesterday, Warinanco park & shot a beautiful couple! Kim and Kevin. Enjoy!

PS. just a little tip, when shooting outdoors you need to be very careful about the time of day! If you want the romantic look, like we have here, go for about 2-3hours before dusk until dusk. But if you want the harsh shadows, go for anytime around noon.















Happy shooting!

How to make animations with Photoshop

So it's pretty simple! Grab three-five or however many pictures you want! (But of course at least 2!) After you have chosen your 2-5 pictures (we'll say 2, photo A and photo B,) you bring them into photoshop. After you get your two photos open in photoshop you should see them like this:


Then you are going to copy and paste the 2nd image onto the first one.
(Click the key crtl+A or Command+A on the 2nd image then click on the 1st image and click crtl+V or command+V to paste the 2nd image onto the 1st.)

(You should then have two layers. One layer of the first image and a second layer of the second image.) You can also do this other ways, but this is my way.



Now you are going to go to windows > then animations.


Now you are going to hide the 2nd photo layer.


In the animation window click the button to copy layer.


After you have copied the 1st photo layer, unhide the 2nd photo layer.


(Automatically the animations copied layer should change to the 2nd photo.

Now change the seconds. I use .5 secs. You can try different seconds by just clicking on the seconds you want and pressing play to view your animation.



After you click on .5secs make sure that it says Forever, so it will loop FOREVER :)


Now you are ready to save!!

Save the file as Save For Web & Devices


*(BEFORE I COULD SAVE, I HAD TO RESIZE MY PHOTOGRAPH BECAUSE IT WAS TOO BIG, IF THIS HAPPENS JUST GO TO IMAGE> IMAGE SIZE> AND PUT IN A NUMBER FOR THE WIDTH & HEIGHT THAT'S HALF THE SIZE IT'S SHOWING NOW. MY WAS 66 SO I PUT 33.)

Even when I went to save my image was too big,

so I also saved it to 25% on the lower right hand side. You can change the percentage to whatever will look right for your picture. You can see which percentage would work by changing it also on the lower left hand side. As you can see my percentage is at 25% on both left and right lower hand sides.




Then you save it as a gif file and to whatever name you want to give your animation,


Now you are all done! Enjoy your animation!

Children Portraits!

Oh and it is hard taking photographs of toddlers! They are always on a move! That is why I especially recommend getting a fast lens! (Fast lens are those that have a low f-stop number like 1.8 or 1.4) Anywhoo, I wanted to share a few of my photographs that I took this past Autumn. Hope you enjoy!









Hope you enjoyed!

Taking Pictures of Couples :)

I LOVE taking pictures of people in LOVE! It's great capturing all the lovey-dovey stuff :) So I have (again!) 3 tips of what you should do when taking pictures of couples.

#1 - Make them laugh!
It's very important for the couple you are photographing to be completely comfortable with you. So what I do, is make jokes. I make a fool out of myself. Get to know the couple, talk to them before you start shooting. If the couple is comfortable with you, most likely, you are going to have great, not tense pictures. The candid moments. Some couples are going to be like models, but some (most) won't. They will have forced smiles and forced poses. Making them laugh (no matter what you do) will allow them to truly smile.



#2 - Get in Close
Most pictures of couples that I like are of close ups. The close up of their hands or their eyes. Really closing in on a moment that no one would have focused on, if you didn't ZOOM in on it. Small things always count. His hands on her leg, her feet curling up, etc. Find those moments and close in on them :)
This photo is taken from http://pascallphotography.wordpress.com/


#3 - Know the Couple
I mentioned this a little in the first point, but it's very important to know the couple. When you know the couple you can then take photographs that represent them. Ask questions about how they met, what they like to do, etc. Get a feel for who they are and then take photographs that represent that.