Friday, January 16, 2009

Some Things Just Cannot be Taught

This year I decided I was going to do something about my lack of photography skillz. My kids are growing up entirely too fast and we really have no photographic evidence that we have children.

Melanie from Beanpaste is a kickbutt photographer and occasionally puts tutorials on her blog on how to "picture" better. Most of them are entirely over my head, she talks about centering your subject and stuff like that. My subjects Never.Stop.Moving. Centering a tornado is tricky. However, she recently said that one key to becoming a good photographer is to take lots of pictures. This is something that even I can do.

I had a sneaky suspicion that taking three to four shots a month is not lots. So, I took my camera into clean-up time the other morning and while directing the chaos removal, took a whole bunch of pictures. 32! That's more than I normally take in two-three months. Out of that I got seven shots that resemble my kids. Please tell me that is normal.

The rest look more like this.












I guess they'll just have to trust us that they had faces as kids. Because we really have no proof.

9 comments:

Christi said...

The only problem with them not having faces is that you won't know which one it is. 15 years from now you will be looking at that picture with your kids and saying, "I am not sure if this is you or your brother. You both wore that shirt. . . ."

As for how many to take, 30 is a good start. If you take the kids somewhere where the lighting is good enough to not use a flash, and get them involved in something (like in a sandbox, or on a swing). You can then take as many pictures as you want and they will hopefully forget you have the camera (I know my kids tend to act goofy when the camera is out). Typically, I take at at least 2 or 3 shots of the same thing but it could also be 15 or so. When I needed a picture of my daughter for a project, I took her for a walk and took about 40 shots. I then had 3 or 4 I liked.

Which reminds me, I need to do that again. I didn't really take any pictures last year.

Dawn said...

I too struggle with capturing really great spur of the moment pics of our family. Instead I painfully have them pose until the point of tears and hope there's at least one great shot of them faking a candid moment!

a Tonggu Momma said...

Wait? Y'all have faces? I just assumed that you were like me, with only a smiley face in place of an actual face.

Heather of the EO said...

Hilarious. I KNOW, it's so hard to be fast enough. I need a super shutter speed or something like that. :)

Knittinchick said...

You'll be the Gramma Moses of photos after you pass away. Until then you can be the Jackson Pollock of photos... you just have to look long enough and you'll get the meaning.

Anonymous said...

What are you talking about. That is a great shot of sprout. That is who he is always running from mom cause he is mostly in trouble. You do really well.
Pa Pa

Char said...

The joy of digital is that nobody has to know how many frames it took to get that one magical picture!! Lol!!Good job, don't give up!

Middle-Aged Moi said...

Tee hee. That's okay. Maybe you could try painting them. With glue. Then they'll sit still....he he he....

HoodMama said...

Hilarious! Love the pictures. I'm with you, my subjects rarely stay still and then, when they do, they make funny faces at me.