Entry for February 17, 2008

Things have been so busy and I have decided that a daily blog may be more than I can handle right now.  So I have decided that I will update my blog once a week, on Sunday afternoons.  This gives me enough time to come up with awesome photo tips for you, and to get the rest of my work done too.

 

Ella’s book has come in!  I am so pleased with the way that it printed.  I think it came out very nice and just how I had pictured it in my head.  Here  is a picture of the book finished.

I tried to get some nice outdoors pictures of Ella this week since the weather was so nice. I ended up with a whole lot of pictures of her back.  I think she still hasn’t quite forgiven me for making her sit for the ABC book.  We did manage to get a couple decent pictures, but I think for now that outside is a little too distracting for portraits.

 I had the wonderful pleasure of photographing a charming couple this weekend.  We hiked up to an old rock quarry on the local Oakwood college campus.  This is where they first met 9 years ago!

  It has been a long time since I have had the chance to photograph just adults and it was so much fun to have a subject that could follow directions! They were willing to try anything I suggested and I got to try out some things I have had in mind for quite a while.  We also had perfect picture taking weather.  A solid cloud covered sky.  Beautiful light!  Here are some from the session.  I am so excited at how these came out.

 

 

And last but not least, here is your photo tip for the week. 

Don’t amputate your children!  Since sometimes we don’t want a full body shot of our subject, we have to crop part of their bodies off.  This works as long as you follow a simple rule.  Don’t crop at the joints.  Ankles, knees, waist, elbows, wrists and neck are all bad places to crop a picture.  When you cut people off at a join, your subconscious mind finds it slightly “off” when you look at the picture.  It is much better to crop between the ankle and knee, knee and waist and so on.  For some reason, most people find a picture more pleasing to look at when it is readily apparent that the limb/body continues on past the edge of the picture.  With a joint crop, I suppose somewhere in our heads a little voice is saying… is there a foot attached to that leg?  I have attached below a few examples of good and bad crops.

Full body                          Cut off at ankles        Correct crop

  

Cut off at knees            Good crop

 One thing to remember when cropping up close in the upper body, is that you don’t want just part of a hand, either cut out the whole thing, or leave it all in.  It is ok sometimes to crop off an elbow, as long as enough of the arm remains in the picture to show that there is a whole arm around there somewhere.  

Good crop, all fingers intact      Fingers chopped off!

 

When cropping real close to the head, never cut off the chin.  It is always better to cut off part of the top of the head than the chin.  Quite a bit of the top of the head can be missing without the picture looking weird, but even a little of the chin clipped off can ruin a good picture.

Chin cut off, looks awkward             Head chopped off- less awkward

 

 

Sometimes you are going to have a picture that you just LOVE that breaks these “rules” and that is ok, rules are made to be broken after all!  But following these rules will help you to understand when it is ok to break them. 

 

Happy Photographing!

Shannon Carlson