Photo Lesson 101

I am not by any means a good photographer. Sometimes my pictures turn out better than others, but that's because sometimes I put extra thought and effort into it. Getting a great photo is not an accident--you must spend time and thought into creating a great photo. I also take a ton of pictures in the hopes that at least 2-3 of them will be great. I know others who read this blog who take way better photos than I do, so they can just ignore my blathering on about stuff.

Since this is my blog, and I can talk about whatever I want to, I'm going to talk about two ways to get good photos today. If you don't care, then fine. But it's blog and I can cry if I want to (or write about whatever I want!)

Saturday morning the girls and I played at a park for about an hour before Macy's basketball game. I have plenty of pictures of them at one park or another, so I thought I'd work on framing first.

There are lines everywhere--jump right out at you lines, and more subtle lines that sometimes take a little longer to see. Lines make great natural frames. When I was taking this one of Macy, I realized the slide was making a natural frame. See how I messed up at the top and didn't frame it correctly?



These next two are better--the green slide fills all the edges, with a nice framing effect.



And no, you can't see their faces. THAT'S OK!!! So many times people think a good picture is someone smiling at the camera. While I love a close-up smiling at the camera, more unconventional photos are good too.



Kaylin was playing "store" and making me an ice cream cone (from the orange cone, of course). Because I was thinking of frames, I saw the lines around the window and Kaylin behind them. Loved that.



Bars make fantastic frames. Normally you wouldn't think to shoot through the bars, but I think it can create a nice effect. If you are a really good photographer, which I am not, you can play around with the apertures and make the bars fuzzier, and Macy crisper. Or the bars crispier, and Macy fuzzier.



Macy was working the drive-through window, and when I went to order my pizza, I noticed the bright red shape forming the window, and used it to fill the frame with her in the middle.



Enough about framing...you get the idea. One of my biggest pet peeves are people who are afraid to get close pictures. i see people all the time taking a picture of someone, say on the couch, and they take it from the other side of the room--think about how much extra stuff you get in that picture.

I love, love, love, love close-ups. They are my absolute favorite.Of course, I don't like close-ups of myself, but that's another story. Check out this close-up of Kaylin's foot--she was balancing it in front of me, and it looked so cute I had to take a picture of it.



And who could resist getting a close-up of this cute, smiling little girl?



Ok, I'm off my high horse. When you take photos, look for natural lines to create frames, and get close. You'll have better pictures for it!