02.03.10

I think that sickness is about to take over the girls. No, no, no! Lucy went to school today, but she came home with watery eyes, constant sneezing and a runny nose. She clearly doesn't feel well. It really resembles allergies, so I am praying that maybe it will be cleared up a tad tomorrow. Justin's allergies have been making him crazy, so maybe???? Lee Lee and Papa are coming on Friday, so I really don't want sick babies.

I made turkey chili tonight and it was really yummy. Justin especially loved it and it was really healthy. It had lots of veggies in it. And, it will feed us tomorrow. Justin loved it so much he said I didn't need to cook tomorrow night because he wanted it again. I have to say, it has been really easy to eat so well since my reformation. Way easier than I would have guessed and I am having so much fun searching for recipes and cooking. I will admit that switching over has been really expensive. But in a few weeks when I have switched most of my foods out for healthier choices, I don't think it will be that much more expensive. But I have replaced most of the stuff in our fridge and pantry, so that is going to be expensive.

I had a few questions about the light in the pictures from my session yesterday, so I thought I would share a little of what I have learned about light to those of you that care to learn something about photography today. All of the pictures from yesterday's session where taken in natural light. No external flash and I used my 24-70mm 2.8 lens. I will say that I would normally use a prime lens for an indoor session where I can get the aperture set to 1.8. But I used the 24-70 because it focuses SO quickly and I knew that I really couldn't go any lower than 2.8 with a group of children. Otherwise the depth of field would have been too shallow and the focus would have been off for at least one of the kids.

The room that we were in had 2 very large south facing windows. Most photographers will tell you that they prefer northern facing windows, but I have learned from my own home that I always prefer light coming from a southern facing window. It just has a warm, even quality about it that I love more than any other light. I will also say that I prefer indoor light over outside light a whole lot of the time. But it is not always easy to make it work indoors. However, when it does work, it is my favorite. Always.

My clients home had incredible light. The windows were really big and they had big wooden shutters, so I could manipulate how it was coming in the room. They were tilting upward to prevent any bright spots of sun coming in the room. It was a sunny day, which was very important, too. The room we were shooting in was very lightly colored. The walls were a light neutral color and there was lots of white in the room. All of the baby bedding was white and the comforter on the bed was white. All of this is good, good, good. Let's all say I was very pleased when I saw this room and even more pleased when the sun agreed to come out because this was the only time in a week that we have seen it.

Even with the great light, I still had my ISO set to 400 because I needed the fast shutter speed with my moving targets. I didn't want a shutter speed lower than 1/250. The great thing about my camera is that it can handle a high ISO very well. The second photo above of Annie has an ISO of 1250, which is really high, but the noise is still really low in the image. If I was just doing the newborn yesterday, I would have used my 50mm or 85mm lens with an aperture of 1.8 and the ISO could have stayed much lower. But an ISO of 400 for my camera is no big deal. However, when I had a D200, an ISO of 400 was so grainy and yucky.

If you want to see the entire sneak peek of this session, go to my NEW photography blog. It is a work in progress. I worked on it for several days, then got sidetracked, and haven't worked on it much more. But bookmark it because this is where all sneak peeks will be from now on.

So, my advice is to find a big southern facing window, get your subject as close to it as you can, and snap away. I bet you will like the results. Here are the camera settings for a few of the images. I always think this is helpful to see when another photographer posts it, so I thought I would share this today. Is this kind of info helpful to those of you that care about photography? Or what would you prefer to hear about?


Light: Kids are facing the windows and I moved the chair closer to the window.
ISO: 400
Aperture: 2.8
Focal Length: 38mm
Shutter Speed: 1/250


Light: This room had large northern facing windows directly to the right of the kids, but it was a darker room than the baby's room, so my ISO had to increase.
ISO: 640
Aperture: 2.8
Focal Length: 55mm
Shutter Speed: 1/200 - a slower shutter speed was fine here because the kids were going to be blurry and the feel of movement was what I was going for


Light: Southern facing windows directly to the right of the kids. See how even and beautiful it is!
ISO: 400
Aperture: 2.8
Focal Length: 70mm
Shutter Speed: 1/250


This is also the light of a southern facing window in the late afternoon. It was coming through a set of french doors, so floor to the top of the door light coming in.
ISO: 400
Aperture: 1.8
Focal Length: 85mm
Shutter Speed: 1/250