Recently I took this photo of Addison:
I really love the photo but the ugly BRIGHT orange cone jutting out from her shoulder was a LITTLE distracting to me.
I’ve noticed that often times I can salvage a photo like this without doing heavy photoshop work just by converting it to black and white. Suddenly, the orange photo isn’t so obtrusive and distracting at all:
Addison does this very serious stoic prayer-like routine when its time to make a wish and blow out the candles. She is very VERY serious about her wishes. Even though it was my birthday, not her’s!
Closer to 14 than 13, why can’t time stand still? I love capturing Dalton in black and white because it seems so much more dramatic and that matches perfectly with the drama of being 13.5.
I love this picture in color and B&W but the B&W sort of pierces the soul:
Four pictures I love, four completely different moods.
It isn’t a reflection of their beauty, some kids are just naturally more photogenic than others. I was thinking about this the other day and realized that these are my photography odds (good photos to total photos taken) these days:
Addison: 1 in 100
Noah 1 in 10
Dalton 1 in 10
Teegan 9 in 10
Interestingly this does tend to ebb and flow with the age of the child. Dalton, for instance, has gotten MUCH easier to photograph in the last six months. Addison used to be really easy, now she’s nearly impossible. Teegan spent his first 3 years drooling and running from the nose so he’s making up for it now! ha.
This week’s photo goal was to work on getting good eye contact with Addison. Both she and Noah frequently eye-dodge the camera and it makes me nuts. If you look through my photos, MOST of them involve side profiles of some sort. I want some good pictures where Addison is actually looking at the camera.
Of course we lose the smile for the eye contact. Can’t win ‘em all.
Last summer I shot almost exclusively in B&W but now I can’t stand all those shots. Too much grey, not enough contrast and depth. I’ve played with B&W on and off since then but can never make my pictures look like I want them to look.
I am getting there, slowly but surely.
Before: The Slug
After: The Caterpillar
The story: Addy is very curious about insects and critters. We found this little slug which she found most disgusting. She was not happy with the slug. But when we found this caterpillar she was quite excited. They became fast friends.
* you, too, can join in Stacy’s awesome Theme Thursdays each week. I chose to focus on before & after as it relates to mood. Here’s my Before & After as it relates to post-processing:
SOOC:
Post-processed:
The original was so blown out that I just couldn’t do much with it without taking the time and effort to open up photoshop (whew! I’m panting already from the exhaustion of it all! ha). So I played around with softness, a white matte and desaturated it to about 25%, all through Picnik. My goal was to try to convey the tender moment a little better. I posed it to my blog and was really shocked at the positive response it got since I liked it for about 5 seconds before I decided I didn’t. haha.
Subscribe to the Feed
© 2008 by Nicki Bradley
