Year Two: June 2008

"Dye Dye" to My Thursday Girl

Those of you who followed my blog last year remember that for the last couple of years I have babysat the daughter of my good friends (I used to watch her on Thursdays, hence "Thursday Girl"). Well, those good friends are moving to Chicago, and despite all my pleas, they are taking their daughter with them (I have tears in my eyes as I write this...)

I took this picture of the two of us so she could keep it in her room and hopefully remember me. I'm sure there will be visits, but I will miss her and her parents terribly.

Those of you who have been around young children who are learning how to talk may have figured out the title of this post translates to "Bye bye"--for some reason C., although she can make the B sound, says goodbye like this. (At first I spelled it "Die Die" but I thought that might be a little startling for the title of a blog)

Friends

My good friends just had a baby in April, and when she was about four weeks old I went to take some family portraits. This photo shoot was when I really decided that portraits was not a good way to start my second year of pictures. Portraits involve people, and technically portraits involve people who know you are taking pictures of them (as opposed to candid shots of people, which,at this point in my photographic adventure, I much prefer over formal portraits).

Again I tried to use my tripod, and again I was very uncomfortable. There is too much fiddling that needs to be done to get things just right. With an audience, I think it would have been easier to hold the camera and use a good flash to prevent blur.

After this shoot I thought I would be lucky if I ended up with even one picture that I liked. Although none of them turned out to be the beautiful family portrait I was hoping I would get, I did get some pictures that I felt weren't too bad to post.

Goodwill Style Show

The Goodwill in our area has lots of vintage and antique clothing going all the way back to the late 1800s, and to raise money they put on style shows for various events. My mother-in-law volunteers as a model every now and then, and in May I went along to a church women's tea to take some portraits.

It was fun to see all the clothes, but I think my favorite part of taking these pictures was learning about Photoshop Elements. I have a book that gives all kinds of tips for touching up portraits or other photos, and I spent lots of time editing (which is partly why it has taken me so long to get these posted).

I set up my tripod to get some nice portraits just before the models went out to the "catwalk" (really they just walked around the tables where the ladies were sitting).

It was kind of hectic. The models had to get dressed quickly because many of them were modelling several outfits. I wasn't very comfortable with my tripod (it's still pretty new), so I was feeling nervous. I think I would have done better using my nice flash and hand-holding the camera. Because things were happening so quickly, I ended up just using the built-in flash, and I had to edit several strange-looking shadows out of some of the pictures.