birthday party – JWNPhoto.com

Articles Tagged with: birthday party

Shaking It Up With Haiden

This weekend was a busy weekend for me – I had three different shoots, including a birthday party for the niece of one of my dearest clients. Haiden celebrated her birthday with a “Shake It Up” theme, and I was brought on to setup a photo shoot to capture these junior celebrities 😉

My “studio” was setup on the side of a Sullivan’s Island beach house porch. I had an array of hats and accessories for the kids to dress up in. You can see in the photo above that I created the coloring for the background using colored gels on a pair of speedlight flashes. The red gelled light on the right is also making use of the infamous beer coozie snoot. I also added some graphics to the finished portraits to finish them off:

The kids were really into it. I was so impressed with how well these kids played up to the camera. The shots I made were filled with energy and it really made the time fly (even if I had to listen to the likes of Selena Gomez for two hours)!

I also shot the event to capture some of the fun for the family and friends. The weather was perfect for photography – overcast early day light! The rain gods surely held out for this little girl, as the minute the party ended, the sky opened up!

I shot this last shot of the party goers just as the rain started to fall. These kids were so awesome – they even helped me bring my gear to the car!

Happy 7th Birthday Haiden!

Spot vs. Matrix Metering

1/125th of a sec | f/2.8 | 50mm | ISO 200

When a lot of people get a DSLR, a setting that they tend to overlook is the type of metering. Most cameras come set to Matrix metering by default and that’s where it stays. There’s a good reason for that – Matrix metering handles most situations really well. So why would you venture into the world of spot metering?

Shot on the iPhone with Instagram – never mind the goof in the shutter’s reflection

When I’m shooting something like people outdoors or indoors with a very strong directional ambient light source (like a window), spot metering is the way to go. In the photo up at the top of this post, birthday girl Caitlyn smiles for a split second for me. In this type of situation, I’ve got the camera in aperture priority mode, and the metering set to spot. Why? Well, I shoot in aperture priority mode because there are kids hopped up on birthday cake – this means largest possible aperture to get the fastest shutter speed because they are bouncing around like heated up Mexican jumping beans. There is also a huge window wall with the sun blaring right through it. For me this means I need to try to put my subject between the light source and my lens, preferably at a slight angle to get some sidelight.

1/250th of a sec | f/2.8 | 50mm | ISO 200

In order to not have the camera meter for the brighter background, I use spot metering and focus on my subject to get a meter reading off of their face. This will blow out the background, but that is perfectly accepted in today’s photography as it helps isolate your subject. The face and eyes are the important part of these photos, so that is all I care about in regards to exposure.

1/125th of a sec | f/2.8 | 50mm | ISO 200

Matrix metering was designed to address this kind of shooting, but like any automatic mode it lacks the intuitive decision process of the human mind. It will try and properly expose your subject, and a lot of the time it will not get too fooled by the brighter background because it will use a database of different shooting situations to guess what you are trying to do. But, it will try not to overexpose any part of the photo, so there is a chance that it will slightly underexpose your main subject. I know with spot metering that I will get the result I’m looking for each and every time. The real trick is to remember to switch it back from spot to matrix when you’re done shooting!

Everybody’s Working For The Weekend

I spent this past Saturday with my family in typical fashion. We are on a mission for a specific Halloween costume for my daughter that seems to be sold out everywhere, even on the internet (with the exception of eBay sellers doubling the price of the outfit). After checking out 3 different Halloween shops, we called off the hunt and broke for lunch. We then had to pick out a present at the local toy store for one of our little buddies who was celebrating her 6th birthday. When we got home, we found this little squirrel burglarizing our bird feeder. I grabbed my camera and quickly captured this mission impossible moment.

We wrapped up the gift and then headed to the bowling alley for the birthday party. The kids had a lot of fun and I don’t think the six-year-olds had any concept of scoring or even who’s turn it was half the time. Does it matter though with bumper bowling? As long as there were smiles on their faces I think it was very successful! Here’s a set of photos from the party.

After that the kids went to a jump party and the wife and I went to see “The Social Network”, or as I like to call it, “The Pirates of Silicon Valley 2”. It was a very well acted and directed movie – At no point did I find myself thinking they should have called it “Facebookland” after seeing Jesse Eisenberg’s previous acting roles.

Today should be more of the same, with pumpkin patches on our radar. Have I told you how I think October is the best month yet?