My Grandmother

I did a quick session with my Grandmother over lunch two weeks ago. Isn't she beautiful. She doesn't like to get her picture taken but was willing in helping me practice :).  One of the things she has always said "...make sure you get my best side." Not to worry at all Nanny.

She was talking to me about something and look down, and I ask her to hold it. I love it.

I got her to smile.  That was like the 5th shot :). It is hard to get her to smile on the camera.  Now when I get candid shots, I get great smiles.

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Practice Shots

I took some practice photos of my very beautiful wife a few days ago.  I am trying out different poses I have written down.  I used a bounce flash (old Vivitar flash) with a white card rubber band to it.  I move the card up so that there was a 1" - 1 1/2" lip.   I also have a DIY soft box for my fill light.I have a gray card that I used to take a pre-measured white balance.  I used a Nikon D40x with a 18mm - 55mm lens.  Here are my favorites from the session.

This photo I added just a touch of blue.

The fill light is directly beside her off to the right.  I should have angle it more and brought it in closer.  Though, I did not notice the shadow until it was on my monitor.

Such a great shot.  I found in Aperture, I can remove that shadow behind her.  But with the b&w photo it adds to it (I think anyway).

Several of pictures I was trying out a vignette.  Notice that it took out the shadow behind my wife.  I thought that was pretty clever.

I believe I used my 50mm lens for this next shot.
I want to pick up the LightSphere-II Diffuser Cloud. Hopefully I can get it in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, I am going to cut out the end of an Alcohol plastic bottle and with the help of a rubber band, I have a DIY diffuser.  I compared using the bounce flash without it and with it.  The light seems more even and there are less shadows.  

Several people wanted me to add this photo.  Yes my wife is very beautiful and I am lucky to have her.  I thank God for allowing me to be her husband. :)

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Flickr Photos

As you can see, just added my Flickr badge. Pretty cool. I wanted to actually share some of my favorites from my Flickr photostream. Feel free to visit my Flickr page.

This is our family dog. His name is Merlin.

He loves to sit in the chair but the rule is he is suppose to be in a lap.  Shhh... Don't say anything to my wife......

Merlin and me.

Cemetery in Little Rock. The class I took had a couple of outings and this is some of the pictures from it.

Beautiful color. It was a rainy day and it made for some good lighting.

Feel free to leave any remarks about the pictures.

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