A few shots of my adorable great niece while she and her mom were visiting last week. She was busy coloring so I thought I’d snap a few quick shots of her while she was being still. Notice what happens when a 2 year old thinks they are supposed to “say cheese.” They really don’t get the point! My son tried explaining to her “cheese isn’t about yelling the word, it’s for you to make a nice smile.” Still so adorable even when she’s yelling out “cheese!” 🙂
I just love photographing families and children! It is so much fun making kids laugh, engage with each other and trying to capture their relationships. We had such a nice time taking these shots on this gorgeous but chilly fall day. The light and beautiful scenery of the fall makes it such a great time for family and kids photos. Send me an email at aprilbookphotos@gmail.com to schedule photos of your family and/or children!
Whether they are Christmas or Hanukkah, holiday lights just make me smile and I love taking pictures of them. I especially like the images where the lights look really big. Of course I had to include an image where I used camera movement. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to everyone!
The leaves are off of the trees here in New England, so even though things aren’t the most scenic, today’s sunny morning gave me the impetus to get outside and take some photos. Plus I haven’t been out just for the sake of photographing nature in some time, and I was itching to go. As I was trying to decide where to head, I realized that there is a huge wetland preserve right behind where we live that I really haven’t walked through. It’s probably too wet in the spring and summer, but now that the ground is almost frozen I thought I could walk through without sinking. It worked (mostly). Since the wetlands are not really the most scenic place, nor are they colorful right now or covered in snow, I thought I’d play with the images a bit. The first few are made by using ‘intentional camera movement’ as it is sometimes called, which is when you move the camera while pressing the shutter release. Then I worked on the color of the images in Photoshop to make them more visually interesting. Everything you see in these pictures are trees. This technique plus the processing kind of makes it look like the lower portion of the image is grass, but it is all trees. The last two are  shots of the woods with some filters applied, but I like that sepia coloring, it warms the image up from the dreary wintery look. Hope you are enjoying the end of 2012!
What fun we had last week having a few mini-photo shoots at a family gathering. I just love taking photos of children and families. Especially on a beautiful Autumn day and with fun subjects too! Let me know and I’ll take photos of you and your family… it’s that time of year!! 🙂
One of our favorite nights of the year is when our town puts on the fireworks at the beach. A beautiful spot, gorgeous evenings and lots of fun with friends makes for a great night. I could have been a little closer to the water to get better foregrounds in the shots, but these are a few of my favorite shots anyway. Hope you get to enjoy some fireworks as well!
Yes, these photos are of a cactus plant! I had fun shooting lots of pictures of it and these are a few of my favorites. If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know that I really love abstract photography. There is something about abstract photos that is unique and makes the mind work to process what they are. Or not decipher what the photo is, but just look and appreciate the colors and movement in the shot. I do like strong colors in my photos (when they’re not black and white), so I try and process them to take advantage of the colors that were in the original shot. Especially with abstract images, for me a variety of colors and high contrast enhances their look. To make these images, I move the camera while I’m shooting. But for me to like the image, even though they do contain some blur, there has to be some crispness, some area of clarity. Totally blurry doesn’t work for me, although I do see images that other people take that I appreciate even though they are all blur.
All of these images are of a cactus plant that I saw on the hike up Piestewa Peak in Phoenix. In one image I altered the color to more red and oranges to make it different from the others. I do like the curved one because your eye really can’t tell how prickly the original plant was! It was not a cactus that you would choose to touch or get too close to, but for photographing, it worked well!
Have you ever had something you love to do, and even though you found it fulfilling and enjoyable sometimes still couldn’t get yourself motivated? That’s how I’ve felt with my photography over the past month or so. Maybe nothing was visually inspiring to me (where was all of our snow??) or I just couldn’t get myself out to shoot pictures. Whatever the reason, I got motivated again on a recent trip to Phoenix. The scenery and landscape there are so different than in the Northeast where I live. As soon as I arrived, I knew I just had to get out and take lots of pictures, and in particular hike up a peak that I could see from the airport. As usual, when I’m presented with an opportunity, I took many, many shots, but it never feels like enough! I wanted to get out again, but didn’t have a chance.
I hiked up Piestewa Peak, which was right near where we were staying. It was a challenging but fun hike, and the view going up was just beautiful. There were so many people who do this hike every morning for exercise (1.2 miles to the top). What an incredibly beautiful place to have your morning workout!! Certainly beats any gym!  I took a break along the way to take some shots of the view and of the plant life growing around us. I’ll save the shots of the view for my next post and describe where I was when I took the shots and why. Until then, here are some of the plants and flowers that caught my eye along the way. Even that dry landscape can produce some beautiful and interesting flowers and berries!
I think HDR processing of photos makes them look so interesting. Not many of my photos have been processed using HDR (High Dynamic Range), but I have been wanting to try it out. There are many photos out there that are obviously processed using HDR techniques and I think they look amazing. If you aren’t familiar with HDR, it basically makes a photo have an increased level of detail and range of highlights and shadows. Many HDR photos are created my merging together 3, 5 or 7 photos of differing exposures (I just figured out that it doesn’t have to be, though, what a discovery!). Each of these pictures below is a combination of 5 shots, which are exactly the same composition but different exposures. Perhaps these are over-processed, which gives them that ‘extreme’ look. I wouldn’t use this on all of my pictures, but it was fun creating these. I think they almost have a ‘cartoony’ look. Except the purplish one, I think that one looks the most realistic. What do you think of this look?
Did you ever look at a photo and wonder how someone got their picture to look like that? Well I look at photos and think that a lot! Whether it’s the color, texture, or overall feel of the picture, sometimes I just think I can’t get my pictures to look just the way I want. (Those are not the pictures you see here!! :)) I have taken my share of Photoshop classes (still need to learn more) but that doesn’t always do it. Sometimes I discover that it is a filter that makes a picture look so good. Filters are generally created by other people, they are for sale and used to enhance pictures in post-processing. I recently discovered a new set of filters called ‘Flypaper’ that are very interesting. I took some of my pictures from the fall and used a few Flypaper filters on them. These are pictures that I originally was not happy with but had saved anyway, so I didn’t mind changing them and hoping for the best. Â I liked the results with the filters. I think they have an ‘old’ feel to them. What do you think?
April Book Photography | Westport, CT 