Miss Lily at 19 Months Old

Canon 7D, Raw, EF-S17-55mm, 48mm, f/4.0, 1/200, 100 ISO

As you can see, she is really growing up. I was watching her play the other day and she does so much now. She climbs up on her little slide by herself and her feet even touch the ground when she sits in her little plastic chair! I liked this photo of her because you can see some of her little razor-sharp teeth and she is looking at the camera with a smile on her face. I brought the photo into camera raw and made a few adjustments. Then in Photoshop, I did a levels adjustment so the colors would pop. The biggest thing I did was crop it so she is at one side of the image. This looks much better than her being centered. What is she going to think of her new brother Ian coming in December? Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!

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In Her Pretty Red Skirt

Canon 7D, Raw, EFS 17-55 mm, 55 mm, f/4.0, 1/640, ISO 2000

I took this photo of Lily in her pretty red skirt. It kind of looks like a tutu, don’t you think? Maybe she will start dance lessons soon! You can see some of the other photos here. The skirt is a tulle fabic with hearts and a satin lining – very nice. She is looking at Papi (Willie) here and she absolutely adores him. I would say it is very mutual. I took these without a flash so I had to use a high ISO. It produced a lot of grain/noise. I was able to run my anti-noise software and take care of that. I also did a levels adjustment and a slight curves tweak in Photoshop. I am getting positive feedback regarding my senior portrait photos, but so far no new orders. Maybe it is too late in the school year. Well, I will be getting out soon to take more photos. Willie thinks I should go back to doing one a day. Now that Spring is here and the weather will be getting better, that is probably a good idea.

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My First Senior Portrait Album

Canon 7D, Raw, EF57-300, 300mm, f/13.0, 1/60, ISO 100

I recently completed my first Senior Portrait album of Whitney, a student at Edison High School here in Huntington Beach. We had a lot of fun doing it and Whitney and her family were all very happy with the results. Be sure to check out the rest of the images here. For this photo, we were under the Huntington Beach Pier. I used my telephoto lens on my tripod. I enjoy using a long lens for portraits. I made a few adjustments in Photoshop so the image would pop a little bit. I am hoping to get some more business for senior portraits. I do believe this is a very good example of my work.

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Lily at 6-1/2 Months Old

Canon 7D, Raw, EF-S17-55mm, 17mm, f/2.8, 1/25, ISO 1000

I know it has been a while since I posted here. I have been VERY busy, which, of course, is no excuse. Here is my Miss Lily at 6-1/2 months old. She is sitting up and showing a lot of personality. I cropped it to make it more of a close up. I love this expression on her face. Oh to have that skin! I did a levels adjustment to get the photo to pop. I ran some other software to get rid of some grain. I also love the light hitting her face. She is so beautiful.

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A Frowning Lily

Canon 7D, Raw, 55mm, f/2.9, 1/200, ISO 320

Here is frowning Lily at one month old, sitting on her mother’s lap. Maybe she is tired of me taking her picture! For this photo I set my ISO to automatic to see what it would do. As you can see, it went to 320 where I probably would have put it at 500 or maybe higher. This did create less noise, but maybe with the higher ISO the shutter would have been faster. I will check that out next time. I got a new Firmware update from Canon today for my camera. This is my first one – I hope I download it correctly!

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Mother and Child

Canon 7D, Raw, 47mm, f/2.8, 1/250, ISO 1600, Nik Silver Efex Pro Software

 I took this photo on Easter Sunday. We played around a lot by putting Lily in a basket with her bunny slippers and Easter eggs. She also went through three wardrobe changes (not counting some topless ones)! Out of all the photos we took that day, this is my favorite. I did a levels adjustment, noise reduction and then converted it to black and white. I love the different choices you have with the Nik software and there are many options to customize any of the settings. It is fun to play with the different settings. The rest of the images from this day and others you can see here.  I will be adding to and removing photos from this gallery so check back.

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Baby Lily Marie

Canon 7D, Raw, f/8.0, 1/60, 17mm, ISO 2500

She is now six days old in the photo. I used a very high ISO because I didn’t want to use the flash. Inside her little bed in the living room there wasn’t a lot of light. You can see the reflection of the window on her eyes. She is getting very alert and her eyes are attracted to the light. I didn’t remove any noise but I think it looks good. This camera is great! It is doing exactly what I wanted it to do. Next week we are going to take a four generation photo. All I did to this photo was a levels adjustment and a slight temperature adjustment.

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The First Family Portrait

Canon 7D, Raw, 17mm, f/8.0, 1/40, ISO 800

As you can tell, we have a new member of our family. This is Lily Marie and her parents. She was born Monday, March 15 (10 days early). I took this photo and others of the happy threesome. I used a high ISO because I didn’t want to use a flash. I adjusted the white balance in Camera Raw then just a levels adjustment in Photoshop. I will be taking a lot of photos of this little girl for as long as I can. I will try not to bore you too much. But she will be a great subject as she grows up!

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A Great Headshot

Canon 7D, Raw, 50mm, f/11.0, 1/160/ ISO 1600, Fill Flash

Isn’t this a handsome young man? I took this photo as an assignment for a portrait photography lesson. I think it came out very well. Those gray-blue eyes have flecks of gold and yellow in them. This is my son, Larry. I called him this morning and said I wanted to come over and take some head shots of him that I needed. He said ok. When I got there, he was putting together the baby carriage for his daughter who will be here in a month. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.He  didn’t understand what I was going to do because he said, “I would have shaved!” I said the shot is to show his personality and that is what it is doing. They had just gotten home from the mountains a few hours before and were catching up on some chores at home. I haven’t gotten feedback from him yet.  We used natural light in his living room, but I ended up having to use some fill flash because of the shadows on his face. It evened the light out. I do not think a reflector would have taken care of that – the light was too uneven.

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An Environmental Portrait Part 2

Canon 7D, Raw, 17mm f/2.8, 1/500, 6400 ISO

When I was working on my first photo of Mallory, I got the idea to try something else. She was cooperative and willing to work with me. I wanted to show her in three different areas of her environment. I am happy with the results. The only thing I would do differently is have her doing something else sitting on the couch and me using a different aperture. I should have shot it at f/8 or so. Because of the high ISO with no flash, I needed to get rid of the noise. I put the three images together in Photoshop by changing the blend mode and then using a layer mask I finished it off with a little cropping and a layers adjustment.

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An Environmental Portrait

Canon 7D, Raw, 18mm, f/2.8, 1/640, ISO 6400

Wikipedia says, “An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings.” That is exactly what this photo does. This is a young college student, Mallory, who lives in this studio unit. She loves to take pictures and she is always on her computer. She wanted to make sure her pool table got in the photo too. We had a lot of fun taking a lot of photos. I kind of liked this one the best. As you can see, I used a very high ISO (6400) with no flash, just some natural light. I did get rid of some of the grain using a great noise reduction software (Imagenomic). I warmed up the temperature a little in camera raw and then a levels adjustment in Photoshop.

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A Very Nice Portrait Shot

 

Canon 7D, Raw, f/4.5, 1/10, ISO 2000, Fill Flash, Portrait Professional Software

This is a very good friend of mine who I had lunch with today. We met down at Irvine Spectrum and ate at a restaurant there. I was showing her my new camera and I took several photos of her at different ISO’s and with and without fill flash. We both liked this one the best. I brought it into Camera Raw and adjusted some of the brightness and fill light. I am happy with the results and I hope she doesn’t mind me putting it here!

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A Precious Baby Boy

Canon 20D, Raw, 45mm, f/10.0, 1/30, ISO 800

I really wanted to take photos of this baby boy. He is my “great” nephew, born October 28, 2009. I took the photos in his bedroom and luckily it was bright enough that I did not need to use any other lighting. I used a high ISO (800) and then got rid of the noise with a plug-in in Photoshop, along with a levels adjustment. I converted it to a soft sepia tone and added a  vignette. I took many photos and this is my favorite one. The others can be seen on my gallery pages.

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A Young Boy’s Portrait

Young Nate is a very active two year old. I caught this one moment of quiet as he was watching his mother shake some dirt out of his shoes. Doesn’t he have a very sweet little face? It was fun taking photos of him and chasing him around the park. I did get my exercise that day! I have taken photos of dogs at the park that were easier to photograph than little Nate! It has been a while since I have chased around a two year old.

Master Nate Powell, two years old…

I was working on the new computer today attempting to load a bunch of software. I didn’t get very far! I was having trouble with Illustrator and Fireworks, and now I can’t find my MS Office software. I guess I will have to do some searching. I know it is here somewhere! The weather is getting warmer, very summery. We have a couple of fans on in the house. It really makes a difference. We watched The Changeling last night – a very good movie, and sad!

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I Would Like to Introduce Miss Delaney Powell

I met with a friend this morning to take photos of her two year old son Nate. I also took some of his older sister Delaney. She just finished kindergarten and will be starting first grade in the Fall. She has such a long life to look forward to. Isn’t she a cute little girl with freckles to die for? It was hard to get a smile out of her as she was pouting a little because “no one will listen to me!” She was playing and teasing me when I got this shot.

Such a little sweetheart…

We were at Central Park doing the photographs. We were thinking about the beach, but it was pretty warm today and it would have been so crowded and glarey. It would not have worked. I got some great photos of Nate also, but I wanted to share this one with you. It was a summer day today.  There were a lot of people at the park and they were setting up for a wedding later today. While I was waiting for my friends, I took some photos that hopefully I can use for an HDR image. I will look at it tomorrow and share it with you if it works out.

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A Great Looking Couple!

I was going through the 1,200 photos from the wedding of almost two weeks ago, and came across this photo of my nephew Geoff with his girlfriend Randi. You have seen him before in his MG Midget racing around the tracks at Fontana Speedway. Both of them were in the video I posted from the VARA races. Aren’t they a sweet looking couple? They are both so cute! Randi is a grammar school teacher and her students are very lucky to have her! Hopefully she will not become a victim of our “Terminator” Governor’s budget cuts!

Randi Clark and Geoff Monise…

I have some great pictures of them at Blue Skeye Ranch riding the horses. Geoff had never been on a horse before and he was a great sport! My brother Frankie has two great sons – he is very lucky! Geoff and Randi have been together for several years and Willie had the audacity to ask them when they are getting married. They replied in two years. Well, hopefully that will happen and there will be another new member of our family, even though she already feels like  a member of the family. I guess that is enough family stuff for a Friday! Have a good week-end and please come back tomorrow!

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