ASE - After School Exploration: Photography with Sixth Graders

This is the 2009 After School Exploration Photography class! We met once a week after school for six weeks. It was so much fun teaching these creative 6th graders. We met at the school in the library/computer lab which meant that we were able to fit in some lessons on image editing as well as basic photography. We are all standing and sitting in front of the photography show of their favorite images that they created on a gigantic bulletin board in the hallway by the library. The girls thought it would also be fun to have a portrait of themselves as a flower of heads!

Our first class explored depth of field and aperture. Outside we found some good opportunities to show shallow depth of field. In later classes we talked about composition and moved on to shutter speed and how to capture motion. We had a great time learning panning using slower shutter speeds and stop motion using faster shutter speeds. We also roamed the halls and came up with some great abstract images proving that abstract is everywhere!

In the computer lab we used PhotoFiltre, a free downloadable editing software that the school has on each computer. It is fun and easy to use. What do you do with your photographs? Have a show, buy a picture frame, make a scrap book, make a Mother's Day card, decorate your room, decorate your living room. No matter what you do just keep on using your camera! Happy shooting!

Holiday Feeling in Newburyport at Night

It was cold!! But I braved the snow and chilly air for my first winter shoot at night shortly before the holidays. I headed to Newburyport about 4pm toting my camera, tripod and remote shutter release. I wondered about my sanity as I got out of the car and the frigid air hit my nose. I didn't have to walk far for my first shot of the park and the Firehouse Theater. Then I aimed my lens across the street at the walking area. After a short time my fingers went numb and then started to hurt. That made moving the tripod difficult! After just a few minutes my battery started to die. No surprise there! I think I had read about that happening in low temps but what did surprise me was how quickly it happened! Well, I learned a few things: dress warmly, carry a spare battery in an inside coat pocket and preplan your shoot to make the most of the short amount of time. Still, I was pleased with the images and I learned a lot. Happy winter shooting!

Waiting for Spring - snow - black & white - portraits

We wait for spring for a very long time here in New England. It will be cold, snowy, muddy and grey until April!

But wait, it's a good time to learn how to photograph snow, think in black and white or take your camera indoors for some natural light portrait photos or set up a mini studio with crushed black velvet draped behind your subject.

If you take your photography indoors find out about the white balance settings on your camera. Don't forget to change the settings to match the light source you are dealing with or you'll have color correction to take care of later. Another thing to keep in mind is the ISO setting. I don't advise setting the ISO to higher than 400 unless you want grain. Sunny - 100ISO, Medium light - 200ISO, Low light - 400ISO Use your tripod!

Setting up a small studio indoors is really easy with just a few basics. For a backdrop you can purchase a length of crushed velvet (no creases will be visible) or polar fleece to hang on the wall. Use available light from a window or one or two well placed lamps will provide side lighting along with ceiling lighting and get a hot shoe and a cord to connect your flash unit to your camera with a bracket or hold the flash off to the side. Use a diffuser with the flash unit. Use your tripod!

Snow reflects a lot of light to your camera and the lens shuts down to compensate. When that happens the snow looks grey and the whole scene is underexposed. You can over ride this by adjusting your exposure compensation to allow in more light. There is a scale that looks something like this: -3...-2...-1...0...+1...+2...+3 on your camera. Choose a setting on the plus side and keep changing it until you have the exposure you want. Don't forget the old saying, "Expose for the highlights and let the shadows fall where they may."

There are many opportunities for black and white photography in the winter: play with light and shadows, fill the frame with shapes,angles and objects, architecture, machines, basements and attics to name a few.

My other favorite thing to do after the holidays is to really examine all those images that keep piling up in my computer. You might find a great image with a fresh eye and a new crop!

Photo Frame - A Basic How To

My kids (the outside two) and their friends and our dog, Chance, who is hiding because she hates cameras!

Photo Frames - What a great idea! Once you get the hang of it, a digital photo frame is a lot of fun! You can create slide shows with very cool transitions from photo to photo. Display all of your photos from your last vacation or family event. If you are in the market to buy one I recommend doing some on-line research to help you choose. This article in PC Magazine gives great advice on how to buy a photo frame. There are many sizes and a lot of extra features that you may or may not want.
My daughter gave me my little toy for my birthday. It took me a few days to collect and size 65 family photos from the last 4 years and put them together for a digital slide show. Some photo frames have software to compress your jpegs (the only format they accept) to the correct resolution size but some do not. Mine does not. If the photo was too big then the edges of the picture was lost as if I had cropped it. At this point I started reading the manual (always a good idea) and found the resolution size: 480 x 234, which is about 4" x 3" at 100 resolution. This is a good size for a photo that you want to insert into an email - very small! Photos this small lose a lot of sharpness because they just don't have a lot of pixels.
So the challenge is to resize your images to the dimensions that fit the specifications of your photo frame. How can you do this? Use a program for editing photos that allows you to resize your images. And email or call me if you have any problems!
After I resized and saved these jpeg images in a folder that I had named "pix for the photo frame", I copied the contents of the folder to one of the SD cards I use in my camera. All photo frames will take all the popular sizes of cards. The 1 GB cards are fairly inexpensive these days and you can easily overwrite with a new set of images. So you can put together several different slide shows and save them on your hard drive in separate folders.
I took the photo frame with me to Grandma and Grandpa's house for dinner, plugged it in, and shared the photos I had collected of all of us for the last 4 years. Everybody loved it!

Torrey Pines State Park, California

There is nothing like exploring and photographing desert like environments in the spring! It is so exciting to see the color in naturally brown and dry places like Torrey Pines State Park. Just north of San Diego yet still within city limits is this breathtaking natural reserve right on the California coastline. This state park is home of the rare Torrey pine tree and offers miles of beaches and walking trails. The views from the overlooks are stunning. I hope you can feel and see some of the beauty of this place as I experienced it in March. For more information check out their website at http://www.torreypine.org/

I only have space for five photographs per post. If you want to see more pix of Torrey Pines then go to my Flickr site: www.flickr.com/photo/kathleenmilsteinphotography/

Deep Sea Fishing off Plum Island

I love to bring my camera on family outings! It keeps me participating even if what we are doing is not my favorite thing in the world.

What can I say about deep sea fishing? My husband and my son love it! It can be peaceful, frustrating, boring, and exciting! A photographer is always welcome to come along. That's the good thing about photography - even if the activity is not really your "thing", if you bring your camera you are never bored!

We had all the "right stuff" for a potential catch-it-yourself dinner: the boat, the bait, the fishermen, the patience... But somehow we ended up with lobster for dinner!

When you are shooting on the ocean don't forget to bring your lens hood to combat solar flare, a circular polarizer and I suggest fast shutter speeds because everything is always moving. Also, remember that the ocean spray has salt in it, which can be potentially hazardous for cameras. You could use a rain sleeve and you'll find yourself wiping off the filter you use to protect the lens quite often.

If you want to see more shots of Plum Island, Mass. go to my Flickr website:

www.flickr.com/photos/kathleenmilsteinphotography/

Canobie Lake Park at Night

My kids have grown up with Canobie Lake Amusement Park. It is a small, beautifully landscaped and fun, family atmosphere park that feels a lot like Disney World. It began as a pleasure park at the end of the trolley line in Salem, New Hampshire in the very early 1900s. The original roller coaster is still there as well as an exciting new one with a loop de loop! Now this is not on the scale of a Busch Gardens but over the years it has grown to include some really scary rides! And the food is as bad as any amusement park you have ever been to!

Last month when Pearl (http://www.photographybypearl.com/ ) suggested we try it as a night shoot I immediately loved the idea. We headed up there with our tripods and cameras in tow for an evening of fun!

This was the first time I had ever done anything like this. I have not even tried fireworks. I recommend it, though, because there is nothing that will teach you faster about capturing movement with long shutter speeds. The lights are amazing and give some wonderfully abstract effects! If you use an aperture of about f22 the bright white lights will automatically give you a star effect. Try zooming in or out at the same time as the shutter is open for light trails.

So I think I'll head over to the midway at the Topsfield Fair this October and do it again. Happy shooting!