Scavenger Hunt Sunday

I do love Scavenger Hunts, especially with photos where I don't have to ask random strangers for things I don't actually want to collect.  This week's prompts allowed for a lot of creativity, so it'll be fun to see the other sets, but didn't seem too hard to find.  The hardest part was deciding which one to use, but that might be because I'm allowing myself to relax.  I love taking pictures, but I don't have to learn it all in one year.  I have time to learn and explore at my own pace.  So freeing to remind myself of that and to remember to compare my pictures to my old pictures not to other peoples.  That said, for most of these I went back to my usual, fun, beautiful, and free model.

Stairs:

Sunflower graciously agreed to pose on the "stairs" to her slide.  I wasn't so please later when she insisted the "stairs" were my bed and I need to "nap" on them.  Do you know how uncomfortable ladder rungs are when you try to sit on them?

Macro:

I took pictures of flowers, fruit, and sea shells, but why not choose my little girl's pretty eyes?  Do you see me reflected?  I consider this a selfie~no tripod needed!

Clouds:

Okay, no Sunflower, but it is clouds and they really were glowing reds and orange that night, though lightroom did add the blue drama.

Abstract:

I don't really do abstract.  I am a concrete person in too many ways.  I look forward to seeing all of your photos!  This is the top of Sunflower's head looking down onto her hat and shirt.  The dirt is from the beach today.  So fun!

Smile:

You didn't really expect anything else, did you?  I asked her to show me her pretty eyes in the top left photo.  Not exactly what I meant.  Can you tell which photos are from before her haircut and after I took her to her first haircut in a hair salon?  Yeah, me neither.  I took her to her first real haircut and didn't take my camera...didn't even think about taking my camera.  What kind of Mamarazzi does that make me?

My Random Thoughts

I have spent a lot of time, and I mean a ton of time, editing the pictures I took of my friend's kids last Saturday.  A little too much time, really.  But it has taught me so much, which is the point of doing shoots for friends.  The article I read last week said don't let people push you into business.  You need to decide when the time is right for you.  Now is not the time.  As much fun as it would be to make money on this hobby (because lets face it, money is pretty handy), I do not have time to set up a business, start paying taxes, etc.  More importantly, it feels great that people like, sometimes even love, my pictures.  I would love to share that joy with the people I care about and I would like to practice on other children besides my own.  But if is was a business, my expectations would be higher than what I can currently deliver.  Several reasons--first, I know I want to take pictures of children, and if I have to, their family.  But while the look I love is the natural, play look, I feel that the expectation of a business is a little more.

All I did here was boost the vibrance and a little desaturation on the teeth and whites of the eyes.  Since it is my daughter it only has to make me happy.  And it does because this is the style I love.  Soft, dreamy with sharp eyes and adorable face.  But I cannot get this consistently.  I don't know the lighting enough to purposely position myself to get this background.  This is okay!  It is just one of the things I want to study a lot more before I start charging people for my expertise.  It is also a look I want to know a person likes before giving them 30 images duplicating it!

Not to say it is the only style I like, but if I want to do more studio like images, I need even more practice!  Straight clean backgrounds, angle of natural lighting, being able to back up enough to capture the whole child!  All of those are things I am still in the baby stage of shooting.  No one cares when I only capture one great image of Sunflower among 300 (in fact blog readers are possibly grateful), but that would be different if I was charging money!  No one is going to let me come every day for a week in order to get the 20-40 images I would like for them to have to choose from.

I spent more time on the above image cropping and cloning out distracting elements than in processing the photo itself.  I'd rather just take the image correctly in the first place!  It still isn't perfect, but I hope mom will like it, or the BW conversion of it.  So that is another thing I learned; I need to slow down.  I want to allow children to enjoy themselves and not make them feel anxious about cooperating, but only practice and slowing down will help me properly capture the image I envision.  Not to say I don't enjoy editing, but what I really love is taking the pictures themselves.  Editing is fun and I love the creativity it brings out in me, but only if the proportion of editing in relation to actually taking pictures is reasonable.  The better I get at taking pictures SOOC, the less time I'll need editing the basics and backgrounds, and the more time I can take being creative and having fun.

Not to say I don't want to do photo shoots for my friends.  That I do want to do.  How else am I to learn so many things unless I take pictures of people other than Sunflower?  I loved the shooting time on Saturday.  But I need to set boundaries for myself and expectations of myself that are reasonable and attainable.  Including, I cannot expect every photo to be professional level work when I learned the word aperture 6 months ago.  The above image almost got deleted because I chopped her head and arms so much, but as I went pass it again, I realized, framing close has a great benefit--no distracting elements that need cloning out!  A few presets in LR and a sweet profile shot with 3 color options for mom to love.  I like the desaturated one and if this was my sweet daughter, I might even print it.  Not because it would win an award for best portrait, but because it shows the precious curve of her cheek and nose and the little swirl in her hair, not to mention it represents the active curiosity this little girl has.  When/if I ever make my hobby into a business, it will be when I have a clearer vision, can capture that vision more consistently, and with the goal of getting my clients a photo to treasure.  In the meantime, I'll keep snapping and share what I see in order to bring my friends a little bit of happiness without having the pressure of it being a job.

Liebster Blog Love Award

A few days ago I discovered I was awarded a Liebster Blog Love award by Susan who is in, I think,  California at “Sunflower Status“!  I don't usually do things that resemble chain letters, but Blogs are all about networking.  Plus, I've always had a fondness for Susan, even before she started commenting on my blog, because I've always loved her blog name~Sunflower Status!  With my own precious Sunflower, it seemed like such a wonderful name, especially when I found out Susan's nickname is Sunflower.  Double cool, since she is often posting pictures of her gorgeous sunflowers!  She looked up Liebster to see what it was all about and discovered Liebster is German and translates to “dearer” in English. Dearer is a form of dear, and  it equates to something precious to someone, such as a dear friend.

I in turn am to select five blogs that are precious to me. The catch is that the bloggers have to be considered “new”, based on the number of followers they have.  [Less than 200 followers is considered new.]
Once tagged the Liebster Blog Love winners just need to pay the kindness forward:

1. Link back to the blogger who gave you the award as a thank you.
2. List your top 5 blogs and let them know with a comment.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Enjoy the love.
5. Share the love.

Now I don't want anyone to feel pressured because an award is no fun if you feel pressured, so please know I won't feel offended if the award stops here.  However, I do like the idea of pointing out to what readers I do have some of the less known blogs that are most precious to me--in a photography way.  Though even eliminating the adoption blogs that touch me the most still made the choice difficult--so many fantastic photographers out there!

My fab five nominations are…

Sara at Chasing Rainbows--I love this lady's photography.  So light and beautiful.  Very creative composition and I just feel peaceful viewing her photos.  The fact that she has a little boy and a fabulous blog name are just cherries on top.

Susan at Happy No Ears--This woman's photography and words are always inspiring and thought provoking.  I don't know her personally, but I feel like a piece of her soul is showing in each work of art she shares, and it is beautiful.  I don't feel like I can duplicate her photos because they are all art, but her work encourages me to try harder.  Plus she laughed at my jokes the first time I "cyber" met her and that just makes me happy.

Scott at My Photo Adventures--Precious isn't really an appropriate word, but I do really admire this man's photography.  I enjoy hearing what he is learning in his photography classes and seeing the portraits of his adorable children--the great captures and his very impressive edits.  But his macros just blow my mind.  After seeing all the work he does to get some of them, I feel a little less discouraged about my less impressive results, but I still just love looking at them.

Susan at Forever His--Not only does she take gorgeous pictures of her beautiful family, her words always seem to be full of joy and light...peace in life and Christ.  Her comments are always encouraging and she appears to have a great relationship with her daughter-in-law~something I personally pray for as my 11 and 7 year old boys innocently grin up at me.

Julie at Being Wellblessed--Even though she refuses to go by Sulie in order to help me keep my pattern, I couldn't leave out my precious friend's blog.  She is creative and funny and not only does she take beautiful photos she knits and creates knitting patterns.  Her blog is the first blog I ever read as she is actually a precious friend in real life, too. 

So pop over to these other blogs to meet my "friends" and don't forget to check out the Susan over at Sunflower Status that started it all.  (Julie, she has horses and a garden.)