We feel pretty cool that Ashley from Under the Sycamore is guest blogging today! Not only is she a very talented photographer, but this gal can craft like you would not believe. Her blog is filled with unique DIY projects, beautiful photos, lots of tips and ideas, and really sweet stories and adventures from her life as a mom to 4 little ones. She seriously rocks!I asked Ashley to do a guest post dedicated to those that don’t have Digital SLR cameras. She takes awesome photos with her Point and Shoot camera and is going to share some of those tips here with us today. Please welcome Ashley from Under the Sycamore to Lil Blue Boo! 

 

———————–

How to Make the Most of your Point & Shoot Camera

 

It is an honor to be posting here today – as long as it is on photography and not sewing! My best sewing tip would be to buy lots of extra fabric to cover your mistakes! So I’ll stick with a camera related topic. I admit I LOVE my dslr. It is actually hard for me to imagine life without it. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t pick it up to capture some part of my everyday life with 4 kids. However, there are times that it just isn’t practical to lug a dslr with me. It also isn’t always possible for every mom to even own a dslr, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle in regards to your photographs. Today I want to share with a few tips on how to make the most of your point & shoot (p&s) camera – even without much photography knowledge. So here are a few tips...all with my p&s and primarily on the fully automatic mode with the flash off.

By looking for new angles you are able to take something very ordinary and give it some bang. In the photo below I laid on the ground and shot into the afternoon sun as my son swung above me.

This is probably my favorite tip. Every angle you shoot from tells a different story. Lay on the ground, stand on chairs, get eye level with your kids…just keep moving. I wrote a post on my blog on this topic in regards to using a p&s camera, if you want to see more examples go HERE.

 

For most p&s cameras you will get the brightest and sharpest pictures when you are shooting in bright daylight. This type of lighting isn’t always great for a portrait sessions, but for everyday action shots it works nicely. If you are wanting to capture action, plan to do it when you have a lot of light.

 

Since most p&s cameras are fairly small, you can attempt shots that would be a lot harder (if not impossible) with a dslr. In the photo below my son & I are swinging together. I put my camera on the self-timer mode and held it between my collar bone and chin. It took a few attempts, but I got a shot that is unexpected and fun. Please ignore my son’s feet…he has an disdain for shoes.

Without getting very technical…let me explain a bit about ISO. When you have tons of light (bright sunny day) you can use a low ISO number. When you don’t have much light you will have to increase the ISO number. The higher the ISO number gets, the more digital noise (fuzziness, grain) you will see. Increasing your ISO is a way to take a photo without using your flash. In the photo below my flash was off, but my ISO was very high. You can tell the photo is grainy, but I prefer the grain over what this image would have looked like using a flash. If you are curious that is one of my sons at an indoor waterpark.

In the two photos below you will see a huge contrast in lighting. I wanted a pic of my daughter so I just focused on her (pressed shutter button halfway down) and took the picture (pressed it all the way down). The camera took into consideration all the bright light in the background and set the exposure according to that light. When I saw how dark it was I re-shot the picture. On the second photo, I focused on the stroller wheel – pointing my camera down so the sky wasn’t in the screen. After I focused on the wheel I moved the camera up without releasing my finger. Once I had her in the frame I fully pressed the shutter button down. This time the camera set the exposure for the area the stroller was in, leaving the sky overexposed. You can’t see the blue sky in the 2nd photo, but you can see my cutie. I decided the cutie was more important than the sky, the camera had chosen the sky. I did not change any settings on the camera between the 2 photos.

Photography, capturing the moments that make up your days, should be fun. If you don’t own a dslr…don’t let it get you down. Practice with your p&s and learn ways to ‘trick’ your camera into getting the shots you want. Have fun with it!

Ashley & Lisa, thanks for having me! You two are amazing!

We are so excited to have Holly today on the blog! Holly is the fabulous photographer behind Park Ave Photography. She is a pro at boutique photography and working with kids. I’m sure you have seen some of her images in your favorite online stores. She is going to share with us some of her tips for taking pictures of young children! Please welcome Park Ave Photography to the blog!

Like every other parent, I love photographing my children. My oldest daughter, Peyton, was born 5 years ago, and with her birth came this fascination of capturing her every expression and milestone. Okay, okay, I am also guilty of buying those over-the-top outfits and dressing her up like my little doll to take pictures. When Peyton was 18 months, a few online boutiques asked if she would model their clothing. It became something fun for us to do together, and after a few years of doing this, we found a routine for it. It used to take 40 minutes to do a shoot, and I would take over a hundred photos to get only 10 good shots. Now we can go out and shoot 35 great shots in less than 10 minutes. Here are our steps to a successful photo shoot.

Step 1: Plan it all out ahead. Being spontaneous is great, but once a shoot goes bad, trust me, they never forget.

Step 2: What time of day is your child happiest and alert? If it is 2:00, then make sure he/she is fed and bathed by 1:00.

Step 3: The invite. “Hi honey! Do you want to go ____________?” This is where you come up with something fun to do. Some examples would be picking flowers, playing red light green light, seeing how many balloons it takes to fly, hiding objects and finding them, blowing bubbles, counting and feeding ducks at the park, or any kind of pretend role playing.

Step 4: Now that you’ve gotten a “yes” it is time to get dressed and do up the hair. Be sure to talk about how much fun you are going to have and let them know taking pictures is also part of the plan. “I’m bringing my camera so I can take pictures when you fly away with those balloons!”

Step 5: Introduce the reward system. “If you’re a good girl today, we’ll go get some ice cream later.”

Step 6: Pick a location that will be safe and fun with good lighting at the time of day you have chosen. It needs to be a location where they can move around freely.

Step 7: The car is packed up with your camera equipment, a tote with props, wet wipes, drinks, and a change of clothes. Why a change of clothes? The clothes they have on for the pictures may be cute, but when they take them off, it signals that they are all done.

Step 8: Before you try to photograph your child, make sure your camera is on the correct settings. Then forget the camera for a while, and take time to connect and enjoy each other. Whatever event you have planned will set the mood for your photos. What you want to capture are the expressions that are a result of your precious time together (and maybe that really cute outfit too!).

Step 9: When everyone is relaxed and happy, this is a great time to bust out the camera. If you have had a series of bad photo ops with your little one, it may take longer for them to warm up to you. They know what you are up to, but they are willing to play along when they know it’s going to be good for them too. After several fun shoots together, they will soon forget the days of you making them sit, smile, and say cheese.

Step 10: Make suggestions for poses, but let your child lead you. You are simply the admirer here full of compliments and by no means the boss. If he/she wants to be close to you or held, bring a helper to distract and play. Toddlers often look down at the ground and run. Rather than chase them around, have a helper bounce a ball high in the sky or find a location near an airport to get them to look up into the sky with expression. Kids love spotting planes in the air and they can’t help but to smile at them. No matter what, if you get to the point that you aren’t having fun, put the camera away. You never want it to be a bad thing. There is always tomorrow.

Step 11: Shooting between 15 and 40 minutes is about all you should expect. Be sure to shower those babies with hugs, kisses, praise, and a fat reward afterwards.

Step 12: Show them the finished product. My daughters love looking at the silly pictures as well as the pretty ones. We actually have names for certain facial expressions, dance moves, and poses. Most of them are pretty goofy like “The Scuba-Scoob” or “Spanky Hanky”. Someday when Peyton is grown and dealing with real life issues, I’m going to tell her to bust out the Scooba-Scoob, and we will both crack up.

So in case you haven’t looked at it this way, taking pictures with your children can be quality time you spend with them. The best part is, you have the photos to remember those times forever.

So, I’m pretty excited about today’s guest blogger. I have been following Annie of Paint the Moon on Facebook for a while and her photography is ridiculously amazing! Take a look at this…

Lucky for us, Annie sells her actions and textures!! I am a customer of Paint the Moon and I’ve been thrilled with how user friendly her actions are. Here is an example of one of my pictures straight out of the camera on the left, and the edited version using Paint the Moon’s Passion Fruit Tea from the Coffee House Bonus Set on the right. I love the feel of the edited version, and if I can use actions so can you!

 

A little about Paint the Moon…

Paint the Moon offers Photoshop actions to help bring new life to your images and take hours off of your editing time. Offering professional editing tools that help you do everything including extensive retouching, essential workflow edits, and beautiful and unique artistic processing. Using Paint the Moon actions will make complicated processing amazingly quick. Paint the Moon actions are also highly customizable for just the right look and are a breeze to use.

Now, some of you may be asking, “what the heck are actions!!?” Well, I will turn it over to Annie to explain that to you! Be sure to watch the video at the end and there’s a little discount too that will make you VERY happy.

Tell me about Photoshop Actions and How They Can Rock my World!  

by Annie

Paint The Moon Photography

Photoshop actions are simply a recording of all the commands used to create an effect in Photoshop or Elements. They can be replayed at the click of the “Play” button, saving you hours of time in editing as well as creating complex effects with little to no effort. Actions can be used to do simple corrections like increasing contrast and brightening an image, or can do complicated techniques like skin smoothing and selective color popping. They are also a wonderfully easy way to add an artistic flair to your images without needing to go through the tedious steps of creating the look from scratch … black and white looks, vintage looks, intense color pop, you name it. They can take a ho-hum image and turn into a WOW image in seconds, and can save an image otherwise destined for the trash into a keeper.

The first thing I always tell people when trying actions for the first time is “tweak your results.” Not every action will work perfectly straight out of the gate on every photo. Individual photos have different tones, exposures, etc. that can affect how an action will look when finished playing. After clicking play on your action you’ll be left with a series of layers … some simple actions will produce just one layer, while other more in depth actions will leave you with many layers to go in and play with. Take a look at what you end up with … turn layers on and off, adjust the opacity slider on each layer, etc. as you watch how each layer affects your image. Maybe your image is too bright? Well, take a look and see if there is a “Make Darker” layer to help adjust this or a “Lighter” layer that you can turn off or lower opacity on. Is your image not showing enough contrast? Take a look through the action’s layers for a contrast layer, sometimes called pop, and adjust this to your liking. Many actions will have layers that are “creative” additions, such as a “Vintage” layer or a “Haze” layer … you can totally customize your look by adjusting these (on/off or changing opacity).

Doing this extra bit of tweaking at the end of an action will give you a custom look that fits your style and your individual image.

 

And some examples of before and afters to show some of the looks actions can accomplish with the click of a button or two.

 

 

 

Now, a video from Annie at Paint the Moon! You can click on the video for a larger version.

Now, something that will make you very happy! Annie has offered a generous discount to our readers!! Enter blueboorocks for 20% off your entire order until November 5th!! How cool is that!? I’ve got my eye on the Essentials & Miracle Makeover Bundle

Big, huge thank you to Annie for this amazing guest post!! Be sure to follow her on Facebook for updates on new products, tutorials, and beautiful imagery. You will surely be inspired!