craft time--tutorial

I've said it before and I'll say it a million more times...one of the things that I love about knowing how to do photography is that it gives me the ability to document each and every thing our kids do without hiring a photographer to follow us around everyday. One of the main reasons I wrote my photography book was to give other people the ability to do the same thing.

For the last 3 years I've kept a family blog and it's so fun to go back and look at the pictures of how our kids have grown and developed and to remember all the special things we've done together. Taking a snap shot is not a bad way of documenting by any means but for me I like to document the details and do it in a creative, pleasing-to-the-eye sort of way.

On our family blog I have so many posts of my kids doing a craft or making a treat or something to that effect. I want to take you through our latest craft project to show you some of the things I do and think about when I'm documenting one of the kid's activities.

First of all, I try to get them to sit by a window. I want to be able to get a good amount of light so I can get a fast shutter speed. I set my ISO up to about 800 for the first few pictures and then as the light got a little brighter (the sun must of come out from behind a cloud), I put it down to 500. You can tell on the first ones that I took with my ISO at 800, they are a little grainer than the last ones where I brought the ISO down a bit.

I like to get a shot of the entire area they are working in. For me it's just fun to remember what the house looked like and what the day was like. In this case when I stepped back to take the picture the window light coming in from behind them caused my camera to greatly underexpose the shot. This was due to the camera metering off of the light outside instead of the kids inside. Not a big deal though. Because I am in aperture prior mode with exposure compensation turned on I simply dial my shutter speed down to let in more light.

First shot SOOC (ISO 800, 30mm, f/3.2, 1/1600th):

After I decreased the shutter speed (ISO 800, 30mm, f/3.2, 1/160th):

As they are working I walk around and take some "action" shots of them:

And some close-up shots of their craft:

Here is where I changed my ISO to 500. You can see the picture is a little bit sharper. (ISO 500, 50mm, f/2.5, 1/400th):

I like to take the pictures as they are but often times I'll have them stop and hold something out for me so I can get a good picture of it. They're used to it by now.

Lyndon didn't last too long with this craft. He ended up putting on 2 pieces of tissue paper and then sat down to enjoy a nice big No Bake cookie. ...my kind of guy.

If any of this sounds confusing to you, you would benefit from reading my photography book!

Check it out here.