Featured Photos

Photo: Holiday Light Blur

Taking a typical scene from a holiday tree and taking it out of focus.

Back Story

After grabbing daytime holiday photos two weeks earlier, we found ourselves back at the mall to take in some of the holiday lights in their full glory. And I managed to capture one nice, holiday light portrait…

…our son lost interest in posing for the camera. Hey, it happens.

So that’s when things turned a little creative…

Manual Focus Blur

As highlighted in the image at the top of this post, I captured a few images by switching to manual focus and intentionally blurring the holiday lights to create some nice big light circles. Certainly something you can use as a background or something else like that.

Here’s a quick before/after of the same scene both in-focus and then with manual blur:

Super easy and very fun.

Zoom Blur and Body Twist

Next, I put a little twist on things – namely, my camera.

My switching to a longer shutter speed (and dropping the ISO to compensate) I first did a zoom blur opening the shutter and then slowly zooming out while the shutter was open.

Next, I worked the opposite way and instead of zooming with the lens, I held it still and twisted the camera body for shots like this.

Ornament Reflections

Finally, the oversized and reflective globe ornaments on the tree caught my eye. So I literally went around the entire tree looking for different sizes and colors to take shots of my reflection and the scenes behind me (loosely inspired by our shoot in Millennium Park). I then cropped them square and arranged them into a 2×2 collage using Diptic on the iPad.

More Photos

If you’d like to see all the photos from this shoot, check out the Holiday Abstract Shoot gallery.

Photo: Birthday Boy

Our son checking out the remaining presents at his party.

Back Story

After successfully surviving our first year of parenthood, we were excited to host our own baby luau for our son’s first birthday party. It was a little hectic at the moment pulling everything together that during that week, and then playing “host” and making sure everyone was enjoying themselves. But in the end, everyone had a great time and our son handled everything like a champ.

From a photography standpoint, just about all of these were shot with on camera flash, bouncing light whenever I could. There were a few were I tried to bump the ISO up to 3200 on my 5DMKII and reduced noise in Lightroom, but that was only for a few shots that made it.

Also, these shots were from four different rooms during they party, each with their own lighting challenges. The was the same house (my aunt’s house) that I shot my wife’s baby shower last year – except that was during the day and we had great daylight coming in the windows. This party was at night, and I could certainly see a difference, even in the same room as last year!

Photo Gallery

If you want to see more, check out the First Birthday Party gallery in the Photo Shoots section.

Photo: Grandma’s Hands

Grabbing a hold of Grandma’s hands while playing at the dinner table.

Back Story

With less than two weeks before our son’s first birthday, it was time to carve the turkey with my wife’s extended family as we’ve done for so many years past.

With my mom tagging along as well, she had her turn to play with our little guy, and I captured this image during that little exchange. May be one of my favorites from the day, if not the favorite.

You can check out the rest of the photos from the holiday in the Turkey Day gallery, and let me know which one you like the most.

Photo: Close Up

Posing for a quick little head shot.

Back Story

Taken a few weeks back, my son and I did a photo shoot in our living room while giving Mama a break. We started out playing with one of my older camera bodies, but it wasn’t soon before he traded it for one of his stuffed toys, and then just started moving all over the place.

We shot around mid-afternoon, which is when the sun makes its way over our the side of our building where our balcony is. I decided to bump up my ISO to 800 and shoot with natural light rather than breakout the speedlight.

To see more photos from the rest of the shoot, visit the Home Shoot, Nov. 2011 gallery.

Photo: Holiday Photo

A great holiday image in front of a festive, decorated tree.

Back Story

As we try to do every year, we made our way to the mall on Sunday to start our holiday shopping before the madness begins after Thanksgiving.

While we were there, we spent about 10 minutes to shoot holiday photos in front of the 3-story tree they have in one of the courtyards. Even in such a limited time, I still managed to get a few keepers that are just itching to compete for the title of Holiday Card this year. We’ll see how that goes, with so many candidates of our young family taken this year.

You can see more photos from Sunday in the new gallery page – Old Orchard Holiday, Nov. 2011

– Kris