Tutorial: How to Take Silhouettes

These photos were taken at an old country church. My friend was throwing a birthday party for her daughter in the church recreation room. I knew the church was special to my friend and I wanted to take a silhouette of her daughter praying in the church window. I took several exposures of my own daughters to experiment. In some I had a completely white background and completely black foreground, but when I looked at the images I liked the photos where you could see some of the color of the blue sky at dusk and a little of that light falling on the subject.





Taking silhouettes is an example of manipulating the camera to get the exposure you want. In normal circumstances the camera wants the subject to exposed correctly, but you don't want it to do that in this instance. So you will have to use the manual setting to override the camera's 'brain'.

To try this take your camera and turn it on spot meter. Point it toward your light source (window or sunset for example) and take a photo. View the image on your camera and look at the settings the camera used (refer to your camera manual if you don't know how to do this). Write down the F/Av (aperture) number and S (Shutter speed) the camera used, then turn the camera to manual. Turn the dials on your camera until you get those same Av and SS numbers on the screen. Your subject should have less light on it than the light behind it. Had the church been very bright or if I used a camera flash this wouldn't have worked. Set your subject in front of the light source, focus on it, and take the photo. You can turn the shutter speed up or down a few clicks to experiment if you want your silhouette more or less defined.



I hope you have fun experimenting! Always feel free to email me with questions if you have trouble. My email can be found in my profile to the right side of this page.

Photo Share: Kittens

The best part of looking at photography blogs is seeing people's photos. Today I'm sharing some kitten photos. Right now is kitten season at the animal shelters/humane societies. They are overwhelmed with the springtime babies. I know our local shelter receives fewer dogs and adopts out more dogs than cats. The numbers are not good for our feline friends.

If you can't adopt consider fostering. We had so much fun fostering these two kittens. We nicknamed the Wolfie and Serafina. Wolfie was the little gray male kitten. He was rough and tumble and just a little ball of fluff. Serafina, a calico girl, was a little older and more reserved. They were such a pleasure. I hope you enjoy their photos.


Wolfie

Serafina







Sometimes...


Wolfie was quite the difficult subject


to capture.







I have to end with my beautiful girl of 14 years, Pepper. She had fur like satin...soft and cool to the touch. I think this photo captures that. Rest in peace, sweet girl.

What's in a Camera?

Would the ultimate digital camera have the most mega pixels possible? Some would think so. The computer market pushes higher pixel cameras at us every year. Yes, pixels are when you want to enlarge a photo or if you want to crop to size, but you can have all the pixels in the world and if the camera doesn't take good photos, the pixels don't matter. The camera's sensor, the lens quality, and the camera's ability to correctly expose the image all combine to determine if the camera is a 'good' one or not. If you want to read about the mathematics of pixels and image size this is a very good site explaining them:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

As I said a good point and shoot can take excellent photos. These are from my favorite point and shoot I've owned:







These are from a 2003 trip to downtown Indianapolis. What megapixel do you think this camera was? The date might help give it a way. These were taken with a 3.2 megapixel camera (Fuji finepix). Now, I realize these aren't 'amazing' photos, but they were clear, well exposed, with great color and I loved that camera. I loved it right up to the day I was taking photos of my dears at the sprinkle park and a little boy shot it with a water canon. It died in my hands. I thought I can buy another. I bought another Finepix, but the later model. It just wasn't the same. I never could find another point and shoot that could compare. I currently have a 7mp Coolpix as my point and shoot. I don't want to talk about it.

Next time you are camera shopping don't let the mega pixels be the deciding factor when choosing.

A word to the wise, if you ever find a camera that takes photos you are really pleased with. Hang on to it! Protect it and cherish it. You might never find another like it.