For my first mommies with cameras lesson I mentioned the exposure triangle of aperture, shutter speed and ISO.  Of the three, I think ISO is definitely the middle child if you will – the one that needs to wear a black, curly haired wig so that people will notice her instead of Marsha Marsha MARSHA!  So let’s give ISO some love and attention, shall we?

With respect to film photography, ISO numbers (100, 200, 400, etc) refers to how sensitive the film is to light.  With digital photography, ISO refers to the digital sensor’s sensitivity to light.  The same rules for apply whether shooting film or digital – the lower the number, the less sensitive the film/sensor is to light, and vice versa.  Higher ISO numbers are more sensitive to light but subject to more noise in your photos.  (side note – if you have ever seen a photo that seems to have a sandy texture to the actual photo, chances are the photos has a lot of “grain” or “noise”).

Simply put, if you want crystal clear images with little to no grain, you should shoot at the lowest ISO number you can.  But there are definitely circumstances where using a higher ISO would allow you to get a photo you could not otherwise get.  Case in point:

(Aperture 2.8, shutter speed 1/20, ISO 1600 – straight out of the camera)

This photo from last weekend’s wedding was shot at 8:50 in the evening, long after the sun had set.  I didn’t want to use the flash since the ambient light was pretty.  Had I photographed this at ISO 200 my shutter speed would have been very long, which means everyone would be really blurry.  The only way to get this photo was to bump up my ISO setting, so I could have a faster shutter speed of 1/20.

Here is the same image with some basic editing:

Voila!

Whether you have a DSLR or a point and shoot you can adjust the ISO – check your manual for exactly how to do it with your camera.  And the next time you’re in a low light situation and don’t want to use flash, think of Jan Brady, a.k.a. ISO.

Lately, I have been reading many articles and blog posts describing the most mouth-watering recipes.  So for you mommies AND foodies out there, I thought you might want to take some great photos of your culinary masterpieces.

Photojojo posted an article on the ten tastiest food photography tips, and the Pioneer Woman also has some advice for how to photograph food.

Most of the tips overlap, so I’ll just emphasize the two I think are most important for getting great shots of your recipes:

1) Use natural light – I don’t know about you, but I have some funky lighting in my kitchen.  And even though my kitchen is all white, I get a funky yellow cast on all my food photos if I photograph with the lights on.

2) Make sure you have the correct white balance – Because I have funky lighting in my kitchen, I need to double check and re-check my white balance to make sure I don’t get a yellow cast to my photos.  Nobody wants to eat dingy looking food, right?

Happy cooking – and if you have a fabulous recipe send it my way…

Sooo, I realized this morning that (1) it is June, and (2) I forgot to post a mommies with cameras lesson for May.  Sorry about that – I promise 2 lessons this month.  For anyone new to the blog, I post some basic photography lessons and tips once a month – while I was inspired by the moms I meet that have new DSLRs and are eager to learn how to take better photographs, these lessons are for anyone that wants to learn more about photography.

Recently a friend of mine asked me how to take photos where the background is soft and blurry while the subject is nice and sharp.  Today’s lesson focuses on what exactly is that soft, blurry background – bokeh.

Bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur that occurs where the image is out of focus.  In this image, when you look behind the flower, the image is out of focus.  Bokeh is the soft, almost bubble like appearance of the background.  Bokeh is pretty popular as of late – Flickr even has an entire group dedicated to bokeh.  So how can you get better bokeh?

Bokeh is achieved through a combination of factors: (1) how close you are to your subject, (2) your aperture setting (the lower the number, the better for bokeh), and (3) the type of light in the background.  A while ago I found the perfect instructional video on YouTube for how to achieve bokeh – minus the cheesiness and the fact that Rock Star energy drink is the star of the show…

Click here to find out more about what is bokeh – enjoy!

Kauai, 2009

It’s hard to believe it’s already (almost) May, isn’t it?  Once again I have left my MWC post for the very last day of the month…

When we drove home from our trip to Mammoth earlier this month, my husband was kind enough to stop at various rest stops so I could snap some photos of the glorious mountain landscapes.  I have to admit, though, that when I got home and looked at most of the photos I’d taken, I thought they looked just ok.  They certainly didn’t reflect how spectacular the mountains were in person.  So what gives?

There is more to landscape photography than simply pulling up to the rest stop and grabbing your camera – a lot more.  And since many of you mommies (and readers in general) are potentially heading out on vacation this summer, I figured you might want some tips for better “vacation” photos i.e. landscape photos.

Click here to get National Geographic’s quick tips for better landscape photography – and if you just want some travel photography inspiration.  The photos, as you can probably imagine, are stunning.  Scott Bourne, a well known photographer, recently posted these 5 tips for better landscapes over on Photofocus (which has lots of great tips and information for photographers).

My favorite tip from both of these articles?  Pay attention to the foreground when composing your landscape shots.  Landscape shots can be kind of boring without an interesting foreground element.  Try to look for both a gorgeous background and strong foreground when composing your landscape photos.

Hope these tips help you get some gorgeous vacation shots.

So, what exactly happened to the month of March?  I realized today is the last day of the month and I have neglected to post my monthly lesson for all you mommies out there.  And perhaps to add insult to injury, I am wholesale lifting a lesson I posted on my old blog about a year ago.  Please forgive me, but I am rather sleep deprived as I have a 4.5 year old that is (1) unable to use the bathroom at night by herself, and (2) apparently has a very small bladder.  I also seem to have an almost 2 year old that is teething and otherwise not able to sleep through the night.  Good times.

I digress.  I remember when I would first print photos taken on my digital camera and think “whoa, that photo is really yellow.”  Anyone else have that problem?  One possible reason for the yellowish (or in some photos, the blueish) tinge would be an incorrect white balance setting for the lighting conditions.  Say what?

White balance is the process of removing unrealistic color casts in your photos so that objects that appear white in person also appear white in your photo. Here’s an example:

The photo on the left has a bluish tinge to it, but with the correct white balance, the photo on the right is a more accurate representation of the scene being photographed. Proper white balance takes into account the “color temperature” of a light source, such as candlelight, indoor lighting, sunlight, shade, and so on. Your digital camera has an automatic white balance (AWB) setting, but there are situations where a white balance adjustment will produce a much better result.

You might have noticed that some of your photos come out with an orange, blue, or yellow look to them, even though to the naked eye the scene looked quite normal. The reason for this is that images different sources of light have a different “color” (or temperature) to them. Fluorescent lighting adds a bluish cast to photos, whereas tungsten (incandescent/bulbs) lights add a yellowish tinge to photos. Generally speaking, for cooler (blue or green) light you’ll tell the camera to warm things up and in warm light you’ll tell it to cool down.  Your eyes automatically make adjustments for the various types of light present, but your camera does not.

Beyond the automatic white balance setting, digital SLRs (and many digital point and shoot cameras) have the following white balance settings:

(Thanks to Alexis Miller for this nifty diagram).

The next time your photographing in strange or difficult lighting – for example photographing bath time with your kids, or when there is low candlelight as the only available light, play around with the white balance settings and see if that improves the colors represented in your photos.