Sometimes It's an Accident

What was supposed to be a happy, fun, quick shoot with my Hannah (basically documenting her prominent shiner) produced a photo that has been very powerful for me. It makes me think of all the children who are the subjects of domestic abuse and simply have no voice. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't like to be a downer but sometimes an image touches you and that's art is truly doing its job. The impact of this image is almost entirely due to the post-processing. Hannah was certainly not in pain or even upset. I'm not sure why she was covering her mouth but somehow in post when I darkened and desaturated, it brought out this image.

{Photo IQ: The simple lesson of this image is to play around. Allow yourself to explore and experiment with images in post. You just never know what you're going to get! In this case, I desaturated and upped the contrast. It really wasn't too much, but it brought out the black eye and the higher contrast made the catchlights stand out more, giving the impression of nearly crying.
I've posted the original image below so you can see the real differences brought on by allowing some fun in Photoshop. What are your thoughts? Can true art happen accidentally?}

Top 10 (or so) of '10 - One-A-Day Android Phone Photos

As you may know, I spent 2010 doing a project I call The One-a-Day Photo Project.  The goal was to shoot an image every single day of the year, with the equipment limited entirely to my Android phone and the apps contained on it. I has so much fun doing it and the blog got worldwide attention.

So here they are, my faves. I know, there are more than 10. I simply couldn't cut it down any further!

LOVE Chicago architecture.

My favorite self-portrait.

Yeah, my daughter is a princess, with or without the crown.

This image is just so clear and colorful that I can hardly believe that it came from a cell phone camera.

I love this one because I'm a huge M*A*S*H fan and saw this Korean War era ambulance just sitting in a driveway one day.

Definitely one of my favorites. Its makes the shopping cart seem like a person to me. I know what it's thinking.

The kind of sky that doesn't come along all that often and I was just thrilled that I had a camera. It was breathtaking.

The console of my car, labeled.

Ocean City, Maryland.

The Utah State Capitol building.

Happy Birthday, Hannah.

My baby girl (and favorite subject) turned two a couple of days ago! I can't believe how big she's getting. She's already smarter than I am and it's only going to get worse for me. I can't believe how happy this kid makes me. She's learning how to tease and likes to give me both barrels. It makes me cry with joy to even think about her. I love her.
If you want to read the sweetest post in the world about her, go to Lori's blog. For me, I'm doing it by images. The slideshow above is made up of some of my favorite images of Hannah's two years. If you can't see it (smartphone people) click here to see the album on facebook.

After the festivities were ended, Hannah came down to my office to show me the pretty new dress Grandma gave her. I was messing around with a couple of radio transceivers with flashes so I had a Canon 580ex II all good to go. She picked up a frame I have lying around and voila!--improvised photo shoot. The light is a little harsh but normally Hannah doesn't stop long enough to eat, let alone let me take her picture. These few frames were about all I could get but below you can see Hannah at exactly two years old.

A Proud Parental Moment

We were at a wedding in Manti, Utah this weekend and I was taking a break to eat something. Hannah started pushing the "Live View" button on my camera. I didn't mind because it doesn't have much of a chance to mess anything up. I leaned into the frame so she could see me on the screen and snap...she took her first photo! I had my second camera on the radio flash system so I used it to take some pictures of Hannah taking pictures.
Every parent secretly wants their kids to be interested in the same things they are. You can't reasonably expect it but I think we all have a repressed desire to force our children to follow in our footsteps. (Some of us repress it better than others.) I'm hoping these pictures are an indication of things to come...don't tell anyone I was smiling.

I loathe phone cameras...

...but occasionally you can get something decent. Thanks to a really cool photo editing program for the G1, I can now make my crappy pictures from my phone look okay. Here's a shot of my baby girl from our recent Yellowstone trip.

Camera phones pretty much are the proof that the megapixels of a camera mean nothing. Crappy hardware and crappy lenses will always mean crappy photos, no matter HOW many pixels there are. I have actually seen decent photos from phone cameras, just not any from any phone I've owned. Let me know if you own a camera phone that takes anything near a clear, sharp photo---I'll believe it when I see it.

Baby Girl

This shot is from what the photography world calls a "self-assignment." I like to call it, "taking pictures of whatever the heck I want."
I teamed up with Andrea Hanks, one of the most fun photographers on the planet, on a session to celebrate the one-year birthdays of our daughters, Hannah and Juliet. Like all self-assignments, this one got pushed aside for the paying customers and would probably never see the light of day if I didn't just retouch one and post it. So here is one of my favorites. I'd like to post more but it's back to work for the people who actually pay me.
We had a strobe with an umbrella on camera left. That's it. The umbrella allows light to bounce around and fill a bit on the back side, especially in a small studio space. The background is Andrea's. I like it.

My Birthday shoot

For my birthday bought myself a few things. I got a radio slave system for remote flashes. I wanted to try out the system, which leads to the main thing I wanted--the chance to do a photo session with my OWN family! I guess the cobbler's children tend to go without shoes, eh?
Well I at least got a few minutes. Wednesday we went out to the Great Salt Lake and played around for about 20 minutes until Hannah (and Lori, but the one-year-old can take the wrap.) got cold. We didn't shoot a ton (we got a grand total of ONE frame of all three of us before the bitter end) but got some fun stuff that I'm going to post as my official birthday post for March 13, 2009.
PS. The sailor outfit was Lori's idea--don't hate me, future Hannah.


Best family ever.

My Baby Girl

I have to post these shots of my baby girl, Hannah. She is my favorite model and probably the most difficult to shoot--she's a year old. Click the slideshow below to see the full-sized photos.