Hello again, time for another mini lesson on your DSLR camera. So…….do you even know what “DSLR” stands for? It’s Digital Single Lens Reflex. Not that that actually means much….but there ya go. =)  Light travels through the lens and a mirror is used to reflect a portion of that light through the view finder. Enough technical jargon, let’s have a quick lesson.

Your camera has 3 main tools to consider before taking a photo in Manual mode: ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed.

Aperture: this is your “F” stop. It will range anywhere from f1.4 (very wide open shutter, letting lots of light in) on up to f22 (very small opening, letting very little light in).

Shutter: this will range from a very SLOW shutter speed (1/8 of a second or slower) to a very FAST shutter speed (1/4000 of a second).

ISO: Usually ranges from about 200 up to 6400.

Time to take a picture.

First, I set my ISO. ISO controls the light sensitivity of your camera. The higher you crank it up, the brighter the image will be. But, the higher you crank it up, the more grain and less crisp detail you will see in the image. So, it’s a love-hate thing. Let’s say I’m outside during the day at the park and it’s fairly bright out. I don’t need that extra light sensitivity, so I turn my ISO all the way down, which is around 200 on my camera.

Next, I want to set my aperture. What am I taking a picture of? Let’s say my son looking up at me from a piece of playground equipment. I would use anywhere from f1.8 to f5 for a single subject. Aperture controls “Depth-of-field,” which is a tough concept that took me a WHILE to totally figure out. I won’t, I can’t, go into it right now, but when you see a picture of something fairly close up in good, crisp focus and the background is blurry, that is a shallow depth-of-field, which usually requires a larger aperture, such as f1.8, f2.8, f3.2 and sometimes even f4. Notice I said “larger” aperture. Yes, the smaller the number, the larger the aperture. So confusing! So anyway, let’s say I pick f3.2.

Lastly, I need to set my shutter. If I already have my aperture decided on, all I need to do is start changing my shutter, looking at the meter inside my viewfinder until the little black tick mark moves to “Zero” like in the image below. When it moves to Zero, that is your camera telling you you have picked the right shutter number to match the aperture you have picked to make correct exposure. Camera is not always right, but this is a great starting point to learn. If you end up with a shutter speed that is below 1/100….then that is probably too slow and will probably be a little blurry, ESPECIALLY if you are shooting a moving object. If you end up with one that is too slow, you can turn your ISO up a notch or two and see if you can get a faster shutter.

Once you’re at zero, snap your pic! However, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when your kid moves into different light, you will have to re-meter, and possibly move your shutter again to get back to zero.

Clear as mud?

We would love to help you! Feel free to ask some questions. Happy Valentines Day!

I feel like we’ve been waiting on sweet Molly for a while now.  I did maternity pictures for Sarah at Norris back in the fall and it seemed so long until her due date.  There was still Thanksgiving, Christmas, and so much more before her due date.  I’m sure for Sarah the time went by much slower.  I know how anxious she was and those last months seem to drag by.  I was also so lucky to be at the hospital to take pictures during Molly’s birth.  It was an amazing experience!  You can see a slideshow of the pictures here.  You might need a Kleenex or two!

I love newborn photos, that is when the baby is as easy as Molly was.  You never know with newborns.  They basically get to call the shots and you have to work around their schedule.  Molly was 12 days old yesterday and couldn’t have done much better.  She took a few snack breaks and bathroom breaks…one that Daddy was lucky enough to catch.  We kept her nice and warm, while Sarah and I sweated, but it was worth it.  She managed to sleep when we needed her to.  Her brother, Kayle, did great too!  I think he loves being a brother.  I couldn’t narrow the pictures down to one favorite of them together, so I added a few.

Sarah had so many cute blankets and clothes, that we couldn’t get to them all.  We did manage to get some really cute shots!  Molly is so sweet!  I even caught a sweet smile for her Gigi.  I think she loves her new hat and sweater that her Gigi made her.  One thing I have to say is that Sarah has some very talented people in her family!  I saw so many cute hats, blankets, paintings, etc. that her family made.  They should start their own Etsy store!  Thanks again Sarah and Wheat for letting me do newborn photos!  I hope you love them!

~Kristy~

Today I got to do some maternity pictures for one of my oldest friends. Jessica and I go way back to 4th Grade. We have some hilarious memories of Bone-Thugs-n-Harmony, swimming pools and ballparks. She’s due March 2, and they are very excited to meet their little boy, Xavier! I plan to photograph her birth story and I can’t wait to be a part of their special day!
~Amy

Sarah has been a friend of mine since college and I was so excited to be with her and her family for such a special occasion. The birth of her baby!!! It doesn’t get much more real than this. I loved every moment of photographing it! It’s such an exciting time and a great event to have pictures of. On a side note, Sarah was my wedding photographer when I got married. I’ll love those pictures forever! With Sarah’s first son, they somehow managed to snap pictures all day long with no film in the camera. What an awful feeling! So, I am really glad to give her these photos of her second child, to keep forever. Molly Elizabeth was a very cooperative baby and didn’t make us wait too long. I can’t wait to hold her soon!

I really have a good time doing boudoir sessions and I had a lot of fun with Tara.  She was so comfortable and easy to work with. We tried to set something up before Christmas but things got hectic and it didn’t happen.  Luckily, she still wanted to have a boudoir session and I’m so glad she did!  The pictures are gorgeous!  I love also that she didn’t mind me sharing them.  Hopefully, it will encourage others to set up a session.  It really is something any woman should consider.  If you’re not sure but thinking about it, read this article: Boudoir. Valentine’s Day is sneaking up on us quickly, but we could possible squeeze in another couple of sessions.  Let us know if you’re interested.  If not, boudoir sessions also make great anniversary or Birthday surprises!  Thanks again Tara!

What Is Instagram?

I’ll start with the basics- Instagram is a free app for iPhone users.  You can either take a photo like normal with your iPhone camera or take one directly through the app.  This part doesn’t make a difference.  Once you have your photo in Instagram, you have your choice of 11 cool filters that give your photo an edited or vintage-looking feel.  This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it really is!  It takes your boring, nothing-spectacular cell phone picture and makes it instantly cooler!!!  How do you choose a filter?  You play with them all until you find the one that gives your photo the right “look.”  No editing skills required!  These pictures will be saved to your camera roll like all of your other iPhone photos.  Done!  You now have cooler pictures.

Ok, that was the part about Instagram that I already knew and that was pretty much the extent of my Instagram knowledge.  If you want to stop now, that’s good enough.  Enjoy your cool pictures!  But I decided to find out what the whole Instagram community and social part was all about.  Basically Instagram claims, “Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of photos.”  Sounds like something I would like…sharing beautiful photos and fast?!?!  That’s really the hardest part for me normally.  I can take a zillion pictures but getting them from my camera to my computer, editing them, and then uploading takes more work.  I don’t always get around to it.

How Are the Photos Shared?

So, with Instagram, you take the picture, choose the filter, and save it.  Unless you set your account to private, your photo will be instantly added to the Instagram pool of photos.  You also, at the point of saving your photo, have a choice to instantly share that photo on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Four Square, a particular email address, Tumblr, or Posterous (please don’t ask me what the last two mentioned are…that will take more research.)  This is awfully helpful!  Thanks Instagram!  Their take on it is, “Sharing on multiple platforms is a pain – we want to take a picture once, and have it shared (instantly) on the services of our choice.”

What an easy way to share your pictures with all of your Facebook and Twitter friends that care (or don’t care for that matter.)  Once again, this part made sense to me before, but adding people to follow and gaining followers- this is what confused me.  I didn’t solve the mystery, but I found several reasons this can be cool.  I’ll get to those points in just a minute, but speaking of followers, as of now, I have 14 followers!  Wahoo!  My photos, up to this point, have been me taking pictures of my kids or testing how it works.  My photo stream is kind of a mess, but I’ll work on doing better.  Did I mention how to find my mess of pictures?  On Webstagram  or search for @kristysclicks from your phone in Instagram…and I just realized I don’t even have a profile picture.  I will work on that next.

What Is a Hashtag?

This next part still blows my mind a bit- #hashtags. If you are a loyal Tweeter, you know all about this.  I have a hard time putting my mind around these hashtags (I am not proud of this and yes, it makes me feel really old and uncool.)  This is why I’m learning and trying to help educate you and myself.    You can add any hashtag to your photo by adding a (#) symbol before the word you want to tag.  You can put this in your photo caption or add it later as a comment.  For example, if you post a picture at the beach of a beautiful sunset, you may want to call it, Beautiful #sunset in #Destin.  These hashtags add it to a collection of other photos with the same hashtag and make it easier for others to discover it.  The collections of photos will also help you if you want to look at specific things.  If you are searching for bouquet ideas for your wedding, you can search Instagram for “bouquet” and voila; you can now view 6,825 bouquet photos that have been tagged #bouquet by other people.  That’s the simplified version. To read more about hashtags click Here.

I guess my problem is not knowing what words to tag.  You can add 568 tags for one picture if you want (and have the time.)  You can also make any word you want into a hashtag.  It may not have any others in the category, but you can do it if you want. While searching Instagram I found some more meaningful uses for hashtags (or at least they seemed exciting to me).

What Are Some Interesting Hashtags?

Something that caught my eye right away was the Weekend Hashtag Project.  It is basically a photo challenge given every Friday where you can post a photo pertaining to the week’s theme.  Last week’s theme was #somethingoldsomethingnew.  You could, for example, take a picture of a record and an iPod beside each other.  This is where you get to be creative and come up with a cool idea for others to see.  Each weekend is a new topic.  I want to do it!  Anyone else?  Looks like you have to follow “@jayzombie and look for a photo from her announcing the weekend’s project every Friday.”  Last week’s theme produced over 1100 posts.  That’s awesome!  I’m going to try it this week.  I would love to know if anyone else decides to join me.  Just leave a comment with your username so I can follow you.

One other neat hashtag I noticed was #photooftheday.  I think you can upload any photo and add the hashtag #photooftheday to it.  Then one really awesome photo will be selected and featured each day as the official “photo of the day.”  This could be another way to try Project 365 (taking a photo a day but that’s another topic altogether.)  I did see a hashtag #project365 and it had over 14,000 photos listed. Hmm…tempting.

  

This year we will provide some tips and things to remember when breaking out of auto mode and learning to start controlling your exposure. If you got a new DSLR for Christmas, or already have one but pretty much keep it on AUTO or PROGRAM mode, your New Year’s resolution ought to be to try to learn a little bit about using Manual exposure. (For simplicity here, everything that is discussed will reflect NO use of flash).

1. The first and foremost key to getting good photos goes beyond the functions of your camera. It’s learning to look at the light, and figure out what kind of light situation is going to yield a good picture. Have you taken photos in AUTO/PROGRAM mode that just don’t come out right? If you want to take a picture of your kid in your home midday with him or her in front of a bright window, more than likely your kid is going to be somewhat dark, and the window behind him or her will be super bright. Your camera does magical things but regardless of either Manual or Auto mode, it cannot expose for both situations….the dark kid and the super bright window. Here’s an example:

2. LOOK at the light and take note of what kind of light is on your subject and what kind of light is around them (ambient light). Most newer DSLR cameras will take decent pictures indoors without flash IF THERE IS SOME SUNLIGHT coming through the windows.  Some of your homes may have some super bright indoor lighting, and you may be able to use the light from that, but be warned that indoor lighting can produce some strange color casts on your photo. You can turn your ISO up on your camera to help your camera take photos in places where there is not a lot of light, but the more you turn it up, the more grain there will be in the photo (not always bad).

3. After you have FOUND THE LIGHT (insert church bells here!), you will want to try using a manual setting. For a single subject, try placing your aperture at f4, and then from there adjust your shutter speed until you see the little tick mark on your meter move to the middle, or at zero. READ your camera’s user manual for the section on Metering.  Be careful to not choose too slow of a shutter speed or your pictures could be blurry (especially with a moving subject.) A good shutter speed to shoot for would be 1/100 or faster.  If you can’t make it fast enough, crank up your ISO more.

For example, my home has small windows and I live in the woods…..so anytime I take a photo of my son indoors without flash, I pretty much have to place him near the window with the outdoor light hitting his face. Here’s a straight-out-of-the-camera example, where I placed him near the sliding glass door with light from outside hitting him. I used f2.5 and 1/100, with my ISO on 800.

Stay tuned for more mini lessons coming soon!

I know a lot of women out there hear the term “boudoir session” and they begin to sweat.  I’ve heard women say, “I don’t even like to look at myself in the mirror.  Why would I want to see photos of myself half-naked?”  Or others have said, “I could NEVER do that!”  Why not?

First of all, you aren’t getting any younger. Seriously!  You should not wait until you’ve lost those last 5-10 pounds you keep trying to lose either.  Hopefully it will happen but why put things off in the meantime?  One of my New Year’s resolutions is to start living more in the moment, not waiting for that next big “thing” to happen.  Celebrate who you are in this stage of your life.  You’ll be so thankful you did!  You are beautiful now and a photo session will only reinforce that.

Secondly, you will leave your boudoir session feeling like a star!  We’ve actually had clients use that term.  Lots of women show up, not sure what to expect.  You will be the center of attention but in a good way.  We try to give everyone an idea of how the session will work, but it’s hard to know how you’ll feel until you’ve done it.  Most women have more fun than they would have imagined.

During your session, I like to think that we’re both pretty fun and easy to get along with.  We try to share our personal experiences and help you feel comfortable.  We’ll give you ideas of what we’re looking for in the pictures (no modeling experience required.)

Lastly, you will look awesome in your pictures!  We are artists and try to consider what is most flattering for you.  There are tricks we use to hide your “trouble spots.”  We like to ask women what areas they want to focus on and what areas they want de-emphasize.  We usually have a pretty good idea of what women want to see and what they would not love about themselves.  We are women and know if something is not flattering, we wouldn’t like it either.  While editing photos, we ask ourselves, “Would I like that picture if it was me?”  If not, we delete it, and it is never seen again.  Of course, Photoshop does wonders too!  We subtly smooth skin and fix any minor problems for your edited gallery.  You will love them!

So, yes!  A boudoir session really will boost your self-esteem.  Trust us!  Anyone can do it!  We’ve had women receive their galleries and can’t believe that it’s them.  It will leave you feeling better about yourself and you may even start to look at yourself in a new and healthier way.

So what should you expect? 

The session will last 1-1.5 hours on average. You will provide the location for the shoot.  We have women use their own homes, a friend or family member’s home, a downtown loft, or a hotel.  You will want to get ready before your session (make-up and hair.)  Bring 2-4 of your favorite “outfits.”  A few accessories are good to have too. Maybe some heels, pearls, jewelry, a shirt of your husbands or a favorite hat or tie. Simple is sometimes best!  Once we have scouted out the location and decided where to start, you can change into your first outfit and open a bottle of wine if you wish!  Then the fun begins.  We’ll start shooting away as the ideas start to flow and the nerves start to calm.  We always seem to get carried away and have to remind ourselves that there are other outfits.  We will play with lighting and continue shooting until we have enough shots that we will both be satisfied with.

You did it!  Now what?

It typically takes about 2 weeks to get your proofing gallery of edited photos. This will be a password protected online gallery for you to view.  You will then decide what you want to do with your photos.  With boudoir sessions, many women choose to purchase a small custom-designed album. These albums are available in several sizes: 5×5, 5×7, 8×8, 8.5×11, 10×10, with over 30 cover options. Albums start at $150.  We have other women order prints or the full-resolution DVD to make their own album or scrapbook. Want to be a little bit bolder?  Order a canvas or a wall collection of prints!

A few words from past clients:

”I have to be honest and tell you that I got a little teary eyed!! Looking at those pictures made me feel so pretty. Just a wonderful feeling, THANK YOU!! They are beautiful, just an awesome job.”

[These are pictures]  “that I want to show even random strangers.”

“Thank you both, SO much, for an amazing experience! The whole reason I drove to Knoxville just for this, you guys provided, plus more than I could have imagined!!! I will definitely let others know & keep you in mind for anything in the future! I am more than excited to see the photos!”

Expressive Moments Photography/ Knoxville Boudoir Photography

(865)414-6330

info@yourexpressivemoments.com

We always love this time of year and looking back at all of our past sessions!  It’s a little bitter-sweet as we enter our “slow” season.  Being on-location photographers, these cold months slow down our outside sessions, but it’s a perfect time for our basic business housekeeping (too bad I can’t do this to my house.)  Looking back on our sessions we had a few laughs and remembered lots of perfect moments.  That’s what we hope you see when you look at your family pictures for years to come!  Some of our favorites show sweet moments between parents and kids, loving kisses between young couples, goofy moments at weddings, and those looks that don’t need any words to explain.  Now narrowing these down to our favorite 10 is never easy.  We have so many favorite clients (I know, I know.  We’re not supposed to say that but hopefully you know who you are) and so many favorite pictures to go through.  With that said, let’s get to the rules.

Help us pick a winner by voting on our Facebook page for your favorite photo and/or by leaving a comment below telling us why the photo is your favorite.  The photo with the most combined “likes” on our Facebook page and blog comments will win. The winner will receive a free 16×20 canvas (a $180 value) of their photo.

To vote:

Leave a comment below telling us the photo number of your favorite and why it is your favorite. (Keep in mind that all comments must be approved by us before they show up.  This may take a few hours at times.)

To gain an extra vote:

Click here and become a fan of Expressive Moments Photography on Facebook.

Find the “Best of 2011″ contest on our wall.

“Like” your favorite photo (this will count as the extra vote.)

So yes, you can vote twice (once on this blog and once on Facebook.)

Voting will end January 4th at midnight.

Here are the choices:

Photo #1

Photo #2

With all this rain and the holidays, we were lucky to have a nice day for Maddy’s one-year photos.  It was a bit cold, especially once she got covered in icing from smashing her cake.  She really got into it and ended up sitting in her cake by the time it was over.  Did she like it?  I don’t know.  She didn’t really eat any, but she sure had a blast destroying it.  Her mom, Kerry did a great job on the cake.  It looked so cute before Maddy got a hold of it.  I took Maddy’s nine month photos a couple months ago and I can’t believe how much she changed in that short period.  She is really starting to develop a personality.  She’s always done great for her sessions, but she really let her personality shine this time.  She was hamming it up for the camera and full of smiles.  I’m going to miss doing pictures for her every few months.  Happy Birthday Maddy!

~Kristy~