Ashanali

Yep, that's the right idea Pandii. There are ways to get a dogs' attention. Anyone who has seen me take dog photos can vouch for the horrible strangled chicken noise that I make. Only about 1 in 20 don't look at me when I do it.

Backlighting can be useful when in areas of hard light. You have essentially used backlighting here whether you meant to or not. In this situation, you would slightly overexpose your image to bring up the skin tone. (She's so cute )

long answer I did it back to front. I always liked taking photos but never thought much about photography as a career. I ended up working as a receptionist for the wholesaler of Pentax, Sigma and Hassleblad and had my hands on some very nice gear from day to day. I started playing around with the cameras during breaks and when I left to have my oldest son, I bought a flim slr. I took lots of pictures of Ashley and friends loved them and asked me to take their kids photos... then I was asked to shoot a wedding for one of them and was told, "don't worry, we have a pro photographer there who has said it's okay if you take photos also." So I did, and when the pro photographer said, "that's it, I don't need anymore photos" I asked my friend if I could have ten minutes. The pro ended up shooting over my shoulder and my friend made an album with only my images. So I did a couple of 'mock weddings' - got some girls and boys dressed up and practiced. Then I found two brides who were willing for me to shoot their weddings exceptionally cheap as a folio building exercise. I hated the photos and thought I would have to refund their money - they loved their photos. So I advertised and because I was too cheap, I was incredibly busy... my work was good, i had a handle on composition, posing and capturing the essential moments, however I still had no idea what my camera actually did so I decided to go to TAFE. In one semester I figured out what I needed to know then started to get bored. I entered awards, had a tiny bit of success, dropped out of TAFE. Burnt out with my work. Decided I was never picking up a camera again. Went and worked in mini-labs. That taught me a HUGE amount about colour and exposure. More then tafe did, more than talking to photographers did. You need to be able to look at an image and know within a second how to correct it. Met Alex and he dragged me out (reluctantly) to weddings. Being the competitive people we are, we kept pushing each other to get better and better (and still do). We have been each other's greatest teachers... and then there are the masses of photographers who we now count as friends who are also our mentors. I like shooting people, I like emotion. Weddings (and now births check out the blog ) suit me for this reason. I'm very lucky to do what I do.

In very basic terms, this is the difference between an environmental portrait and photojournalism.

It's still a portrait Portraits essentially capture the character of your subject. You can have environmental portraits that show your subject out doing what they do, like a hairdresser in their salon, farmer in the field, something that tells a part of the story, BUT you would still have them interacting with you as the photographer somehow, they wouldn't actually be working. If they were working, it would go into 'photo-journalism'. This was Alex's entry to the portrait section of Aust Pro Photo Awards in 2008. Just missed out by one point on winning an award.

Huga - just set your camera to portrait mode for portraits. Alternatively I do have the old pentax DSLR sitting here gathering dust if you'd like to play with that? Seriously, it doesn't get used otherwise. Hmmmm... maybe next time we cross paths? I would love to have a go :p no problemo

Don't stress about how it looks on the site - that isn't what the judges will be looking at. The judges will be using the hi-res images you sent.

Huga - just set your camera to portrait mode for portraits. Alternatively I do have the old pentax DSLR sitting here gathering dust if you'd like to play with that? Seriously, it doesn't get used otherwise.

Love it :D

For a portrait, being still makes it a whole lot easier. ETA: Though if they aren't completely still, you might be able to still get something you like.

Yep - the f-stop (the ones with the f in front) are the aperture numbers. The little level that goes from 0.0 to 2.0 and have the - and + in front is your exposure meter. In theory, if the little light is on 0, your image is correctly exposed, if it is in the + range, it will be overexposed, in the - range it will be underexposed. As I said though, that's in theory. There are times when it will be incorrect such as when photographing an all black or all white subject, also there are times when you will overexpose or underexpose on purpose. But that's a little bit down the track.

and I thought I was being mean when I said that. And there won't be a 100's and 1000's mess to clean up this time - next attempt will be outdoors in full sunlight. The ants can have a sugary feast.

pandii,l I haven't forgotten you - we're just snowed under. I only get a chance to duck in here before I have to get back to work. Step one... just use Av mode for now. Switch the dial to Av. Now you will see numbers that look like 4.5, 5.6, 8, 11 and so on. These are your aperture settings. The smaller the number is (1.4 , 2.8, 3.5 etc - your lens might only go down to 3.5 or so) the bigger then opening in your lens is. The bigger the opening is, more light gets in meaning you can have a faster shutter speed (don't worry about that bit for now, your camera will set the shutter speed for you when you are in Av mode). When you see images with the subject in focus and the background blurred, that is called, "bokeh". This happens when you use a small number/ open aperture because so much light is allowed to hit the sensor, the camera doesn't have time to create alot of detail except for the point you are focused on. So if you go up the numbers to something like 22, the camera makes the lens opening much smaller, meaning that the camera needs more light to produce an image, meaning that your shutter speed will be longer. Shooting high apertures is something that landscape photographers will use to capture as much detail in the foreground, mid-ground and background as possible. When using high apertures such as 22 or so, you may need to use a tripod depending on the amount of light available. This is a quick run down on aperture. A good place to start is to set your camera at 400 ISO, Av of 5.6 and sit one of your kids on the ground in a shady spot outside (if you can be in the shade also, it will help). You stay standing and shoot from above and have your child looking into the camera. This should give you good depth of field and nice catch lights in your subject's eyes. From that staring point, alter you Av and see what sort of results you get. Hope this helps.

It means I can do my 100's and 1000's photo again

It worked :rolleyes:

I was able to upload one. The second one hasn't worked :rolleyes:

I'm waiting eagerly for my email now

That's the best looking photo of me I've ever seen. :rofl: I reckon you should frame this one and put it straight into the pool room.

Love them My original idea I wanted to do with the 100's and 1000's was to put all of them in a group but have one slightly in front. Then I wanted to give the one in front a teeny tiny megaphone and have a little sign sticking out of the group that said, "yes! We are all individuals!" But I ran out of time. I ended up getting Pointeeblab to come and help me out by smashing them with a hammer. It didn't work out because I didn't have a fast enough shutter speed. I really needed to be outdoors in full sunlight so I could have a low ISO and a fast shutter speed. Oh well. It was fun smashing them up everywhere. My Dyson had a good workout afterwards. :D

my portrait entry... I did make an attempt with the hundreds and thousands but I wasn't happy with it so not going to enter it.

Thanks Shell The girl is actually KOE VU's cousin.

oh and Blab - I decided to use the photo with the fly in it.

I'll post this because it would be near impossible for anyone to replicate it. Mother in labour yesterday with her support person massaging her back. The only light source was a tealight candle. I would have been lost without the 5D markII at 5000 ISO (obviously for the 'practically black' brief)

Absolutely Pandii... it will have to wait until the morning though. If I start typing a long response now, my neglected husband will keep hounding me to ask when I'm getting off the computer.

Do you think people might notice my new signature?