Another new face in the blog

A co-worker of mine, after seeing my pictures and hearing my idea that I have been gifting my husband a portrait or a picture of theme taken by me for various occasions for the past few years now, wanted to borrow my idea of gifting and give a picture of her daughter to her husband for V-day and wanted me to pictures of her little girl. 

Got to take some pictures of this little girl with V-day theme.

Some back light and soft light shots from the typical golden hour.

A delay by 3 months. 

Spring Flowers

Waited for spring all these months. Now the spring is here with so much of beautiful flowers everywhere, which looks all the more beautiful with sun light.

Taking a portrait in the beautiful mustard fields has been in the to-do list ever since I started taking pictures of my daughter. It will either rain and spoil the day or there wont be the lovely sun light to lighten up the picture or something else, that had stopped me from taking the pictures for the past 3 springs.

This year, got a chance, but the pictures are not up to my satisfaction. I have always had this idea of backlit pictures with yellow mustards lightened up with yellow setting sun. But there was a twist when we arrived at the farm - my little girl refused to get "into" the field - even 4 feet deep without which it could have looked like she standing in front of a pot of mustards. 

So ended up with sun-on-the face shots which lead to too much of yellow on few shots.

Many of them are portraits of daddy-daughter duo which has turned out good.

Posting some portraits and miscellaneous "after-shoot" shots:

The last two are the edited followed by unedited pictures taken with the very last bit of sunlight that came down for that day.

Had plans of visiting tulip garden sometime this spring. But after this session, we weren't sure of how much fruitful that trip would be since the whole time, she was not wanting to get into the field fearing bugs, twigs, thorns and itchy legs. Hopefully for next spring my little one wont be scared of bugs, twigs and scratch her legs when I ask her to get in the field and hoping to extract better poses from her. 

But still she managed to pull the best in the very short time for her mommy. Loving Spring and loving my little Rainbow!!! 

Holiday Shoot!

To put it plain and simple : not one single thing that I wanted went well. But love the outcome still.

I wanted to try the home-made beauty-dish to put up on the flash. I tried, but I wasnt happy with the results. The image quality wasnt bit close to what it was on the site.

Wanted to have shaped bokehs in the portrait. I know I was highly ambitious that too with my little model to do manual focusing with the shape making paper. Sadly I failed in cutting out a shape on first place. I tried several times but in vain. Not one try gave me the perfect size and shape.

Wanted to use the flash and not the light-scoop. Again, I couldnt put up the setting properly with flash to capture the background but only light-scoop  could do that.

Most of all, my ever-so co-operative little model, who was tired. Biggest mistake. Made me decide, no more evening sessions. Nothing after 2 pm. This time, begging wont work, bribing failed miserably and wish I had known a couple more tricks.

Some pictures (actually a lot of take-outs):

The 3 of the above pictures are when my tricks worked. And then...

... started the smile strike. She decided she was done smiling for the camera and then ...

... "I dont care what you do with your camera. I am not even looking at it anymore" ...

... and then with a little bit of success to lighten her mood, she wont stop talking...

... and eating up her prop ( candy cane). I now know that was a wrong choice of prop to give in her hand and ask her smile with it but not eat it! 

And then some more talking and then... HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! 

5 Days of Exotica!

5 days of exclusive love affair with the weather, nature, camera and needless to say the family time. Sharing a bunch of pictures from a recent trip to Maui, Hawaii.

First off, thanks to my husband who did a small research and found out Maui is the scenic island loved most for photographies than other island and we narrowed down on this.

Second off, decided to borrow two lenses, for the trip and left back the basic lens, since I knew I wont be using it as much. Would never regret the decision. It was a little less burden on my shoulders.

Had a variety of subjects to shoot a wide variety, to learn, explore and practice. Had earlier made a list of "to try shots" , in which missed a bunch while I still was satisfied with the unplanned shots that I got.

New love: Lensbaby Composer. Definitely a hard one on my eyes. It is very hard to do manual focusing with my eyesight. And with lensbaby, I felt I dint utilize it to the best since it was all manual focus. But this was very great for longer aswell close up shots of a busy street or a flower. Loved it and would certainly borrow this one more time, provided I practice well and master the skill of manual focusing.

Some pictures that I like the most out of lensbaby composer:

Lensbaby when pointed on a crowded subject like the lavenders, it gives a scattered effect in place of the bokeh which looks lovely than the regular bokeh I would have gotten with my 50 mm lens.

It is also known for zoom burst effect and for producing miniature scenes. A couple of tries on that:

They were just a few yards away yet they appear like lego mini figures!

And some beach sunset shots didnot come with the actual sun since it was a cloudy day but with the beautiful hues of the sunset sky.

The sunset hues from beach with Lanai in the background; with longest allowed exposure to make the water look dreamy. Worth all the risk that we took - it was totally isolated beach on an isolated place and had not a lot of people except a handful who left well before sunset. My heart started racing as darkness started to grip in. But now, I feel it is totally worth. 

Bonus shots that I dint miss to get with the beach wedding that was going on and while the groom and the bride were posing for their photographer:

Used slow shutter speed at various points to get various results:

And few more:

It was a great place to play around with my camera, good that all the cribbing from me for carrying the camera bag + tripod all the way up and down the trails and everywhere else paid back. But again, I have always felt I could have done better and feel sorry for having missed the sunset/sunrise. 

My First Maternity Shoot

Getting back after a very long time.

Finally my camera focused on some one else other than my own family! Got to shoot some maternity pictures of the beautiful and heavily pregnant friend of my mine.

They are simple maternity pictures taken at home with brown and white backdrops. Had always dreamt of doing an outdoor shoot, but when the moment came, I was more than happy that the weather didnot co-operate much. Because, I had by that time started to panic about embarrassing myself with a new person in front of my camera and going outdoors is nothing but multiplying and risking myself with several other uncertainties. That is the same reason for having not gone for couple's shoot but only the mommy-to-be shoot. Again, I wanted to keep the audience minimal to view me getting embarrassed. 

Not a lot of picture details, since they are all straight forward, without a lot of complicated settings and minimal post processing. Just that the negative space around the subject has helped so much. So the pictures are coming out straight:

But by the end of session or to say, even when the session started, I didnot feel the anxiety anymore. Except I started getting greedy about not being able to go out for an out door shoot!