Learning to shoot from the hip

It is not something I use much, nor am I typically very good at, but I am working on my shooting from the hip. On Saturday it helped. At the UCCC Eggstravaganza I was talking to a friend, but  really wanted a photo of her daughter playing in a sun hat. The girl University City Children's Center where I work, so she knows me. I take lots of photos for the center, but typically this little one doesn't like to be photographed. So I used a very simple, but useful technique I picked up reading some social site.

With the camera at my hip, I hold my pointer finger along the lens because it turns out we are pretty accurate pointers. Then I can shoot away being pretty confident about a decent composure because I know my finger is pointing at what I want the camera to see. The results were pretty good this time.

View the full resolution images and more from the day at my UCCC Eggstravaganza photo gallery.

Olivia in Shades

I needed to get in some practice with high speed sync for an upcoming photo shoot. So what does any dad do but make his kid come help out. Since Mia showed her fashion this morning, it was Olivia's turn. It worked out since she wants a new profile pic with a pair of her mom's sunglasses on. So I pulled out my LumiQuest SoftBox III and played around. Unfortunately the softbox put huge reflections in the glasses, but I did a quick and dirty cloning to fix it. To see more images of my cool, shades wearing daughter, jump over to my Olivia in Shades gallery.

I may have a photo problem

I'm not sure, but today may be proof that I have a slight photo problem. Olivia asked me to get a photo of her science fair project. She, along with her friend Julian (and Julian's dad) built a Rubber Band Heat Engine. Because they cannot take the whole project to the science fair (kinda weird if you ask me) they need a photo showing the project for their display board.

I couldn't just take a simple photo, I have to go a little overboard. Look below to see what I mean. Then jump over to my photography website to see even more, high resolution images.

Photographs for Nonprofit Services Center

Event photography is not my favorite type of photography, probably because I am not good at it. I don't like bothering people and to me, interrupting people to take their picture is very uncomfortable. However, Carmen [@NSCCarmen] is wonderful to me so I will photograph any Nonprofit Services Center event whenever I can. On Friday I got photos from the Missouri Budget Forum. The full gallery is posted on my photography website.

Which is better? Left- in focus or Right- out of focus?

More playing around. An 8 second exposure and zoomed in during the exposure. The one on the left was focused on the center green light while the one on the right was completely out of focus. Which one do you like better?