Photographing My Cards

Posted on | May 13, 2010 | 9 Comments

There is sun in the UK, folks!! I just had to say this since I’ve heard people say that it’s just dreary here with no sun at times. I mean it’s no sunny Missouri (when it’s not raining) or Southern France even but there is sun light in the daytime. Maybe it’s new to me or maybe I’m just a shady kind of gal but I like it. It’s good for my skin tone… tell you more later…

When the girls and I saw the house for the first time the one thing that really got me excited was this bay window. Natural light, baby!! The above was how I set up my little “studio” for all my cards since I’ve been in the UK. For the above setting the end result looked like this post here.

Here’s another card that I took with the above setup courtesy of Miss M:

I made the flower for her but she did everything else herself. This was a birthday card for one of her classmates.

Both cards used WPlus9’s stamps. Ok, isn’t my kid good at trimming or what?

Photography is about light and even if you get or make one of those mini light kits the lightings are usually from the sides and some are also from the top and/or front. So if you can find a window/area that can give you this type of lighting shoot your cards there! The nice thing about my window is that it faces the south-west so it gets nice smooth light for most of the day.

In the evening I do get some direct evening sun which I can use to shoot pictures like this (picture is grainy due to Photoshop post-processing). See how the sun light highlight M’s shoulders:

She’s such an awesome model… and loves her scrapbooks that I made her too {::SMILES}.

Blog/Site Tip: Meebo Bar

Posted on | April 18, 2010 | 1 Comment

Have you seen the little bar on the bottom of my page? It’s pretty cool! The thing is called a Meebo Bar.

Meebo isn’t new. I’ve used it for a couple of years now in my online classes. It’s basically an online chat application. I’ve been using it in my classroom because unlike MSN or AOL the end users do not need to create a username or password in order to chat with me. I can have virtual office hours with my students no matter what chat application they use on a regular basis… or if they don’t use any. Very nice free app!

I don’t see a need to plop in the Meebo JavaScript onto my blog. I mean who’d want to chat with me, right? But if ever need to have a chat application on your site/blog… for example if you have an online store… you can easily add this feature onto your site. It’s just like embedding a YouTube video, pretty easy and free. Just something extra for your customers/guests.

But the Meebo bar I want to try out. I’ve seen it here and there the last few months but I haven’t had a chance to play with it until recently. I have a presentation in a few days and I want to include Meebo in it. Again I am using my blog as a guinea pig.

How does it work? Well, look below and you should see a bar. On the left is has “Share Page” and on the right are different chat applications icons. If you have a Facebook account and one of the other chat apps that are showing go ahead and log in to them. The same if you have a Twitter account.

Now, there are different ways to share. You can click on the “Share Page” and it’ll share whatever URL you’re on to your Facebook/Twitter/Yahoo/Email. Or, if you’re logged in to one of your chat application, that thing will open on the bottom right and you can drop the URL anywhere and you’ll be sharing my page. Try hovering over one of the photo (or video). You’ll see a “drag to share” button. Go ahead, drag the image and the sharing tool will be available. You then just drop the image to whatever your social media tool is and voila. Pretty fun!

Still not making sense? Check out this video:

A larger version of this video can be found here: Screencast

Need an image to test this out? Try this:

Enjoy and if you’re wondering what I used to create this video, I used Jing. It’s free!

Alrighty, going to bed. It’s 2 a.m.! I know I should have gone to bed a long time ago but I’m too into enjoying NOT cleaning, ha ha!

Love + Rule of Thirds

Posted on | February 16, 2010 | 12 Comments

I know it’s past Valentine’s day but love’s everyday, right? Yesterday I did something dumb. I emailed Emma’s teacher and told her that M would be out that day due to strep. Monday afternoon M asked what lunch would be Tuesday (I told her she’s going back to school that day) and I saw the “NO SCHOOL” right under Monday. Wow, I wonder what her teacher thought of that email he he… What kind of stupid things have you done?

So yesterday while Jovie was napping I got this page put together. I finally opened the Crate Paper paper kit that I got at the Creative Keepsake Expo in October. Another simple page. I didn’t cut anything on this page. Everything was cut and paste. Other things I used were Prima dried flower (or whatevere that thing is), K&Co rub-ons, Crate Paper chipboard (different than the paper kit), buttons, twine, and rhinestones.

Photo tip: When I was in college I took photography and graphic design classes. I was a mass communications major and those classes were required. What I learned there was the Rule of Thirds. I’ve used this rule of thirds quite a bit in my photos, esp. the ones I want to scrapbook, because I like to embellish on the blank area, just like what I did below, to the right of M. To me this rule of thirds work two ways. It makes my photos more appealing AND it gives me plenty of room to cake on some embellishment if I want to. Now, are all my photos taken using the rule of thirds? Close but not always. I always post-process my photos in Photoshop/Lightroom, before I print a photo to scrapbook I always imagine in my head what the layout will look like (based on what embellishments I want to use) and crop accordingly. For the below, since the girls are leaning to the left it seemed more natural to have more white space to the right of Emma.

Here’s a close-up of the butterfly and a peak from the side.

And last just another picture of the girls – yeah I know, my strep throat daughter holding her baby sister. This was Monday though, very close to the 48-hr quarantine period. This is my first experience with strep. I thought it’s highly contagious but we’ve been all over each since M got sick Thursday (at least when the Motrin was kicking in – when the Motrin wore off M was sickly looking and feeling). We didn’t know it was strep until Saturday. I did ask for her to not kiss us or share anything that’s been in her mouth (and to watch where Jovie’s hands land on M). So far Jovie and I have been fine. Is it just mild strep?

I hope you all have a great one!!! Take care!

My Softbox

Posted on | February 1, 2010 | 4 Comments

I really didn’t want to make a card last night but I wanted to try out the softbox (photography lighting gadget) that I got for Christmas on a card.

The kit is nice. But putting the softbox together was total pain in my {flabby} ass. On the four sides of the softbox are these rods. They’re straight as can be but if you try hard enough they will bend so that they can fit into the sides of this thing called a speed ring. Well, after much work I got all of the rods into the holes of the ring. Putting the first rod in was easy. The second got a bit tough but manageable. The third made me sweat a bit and the fourth… I had to go for an ice cream break. I almost used the box without the 4th rod in. I didn’t care. I was determined to try it but I finally got it in. How? I broke the manual’s rules. Even though it said to put it together before you hook it up to the light I put the box on the light stand anyways with the last rod loose. Then with all my might I bent the rod and stuck it in the hole. The good news, everything is now put together. The bad news, my softbox is tilted to the right by 45 degrees. Oh well, I ain’t taking that thing apart (takes MORE hand muscles) and put it back together again. How ’bout asking the hub? Well he was out when I did it and despite the crookedness it does work.

So far I love the softbox. I need to set it up now… got to read and experiment. That’ll be fun. I placed the softbox on the left, you can probably tell from the shadow on the right. I like. I can now leave my ISO (film) speed to 200. Why? The higher the ISO the more grain/noise your photo will have. It’s fine if your pics are just small for the web for example but if you want to blow it up, it’s not that pretty unless you want to use the noise for visual effects — which some do and does well. So now I have a little studio kit. I do need a few more things tho, like solid background (white and black for now), flash, and a brolly/umbrella.

Card created using stamps by Stampin’ Up!

Photography Tip: The Eyes

Posted on | January 6, 2010 | 5 Comments

I think being in education makes me want to share whatever I find useful and this is one of them: When you do portrait types of photography focus on the eyes.

This way you can capture crazy crossed-eyes pictures of your kid really really well. HA!

I wasn’t a fabulous photography student last semester but there’s one thing that my instructor said I was already good at: Aiming at the eyes when doing portrait type of photography. The eyes are the windows to the soul so in portrait photography it’s really important that the eyes are crispy clear — unless there’s something else that’s more interesting to focus on and there’s a different story you want to tell.

How do I take this types of pics? I give most of the credit to my camera, the Nikon D300/Canon XTi. They both have a very nice Auto-focus function. If you don’t have a dSLR, point your point-and-shoot to the face, push the shutter down half way to focus, hold your camera steady and click.

If you’re not sure how to set up your AF settings on your Nikon camera, check out Ken Rockwell’s tuts. He’s got a few in there! If you have another brand, open up your manual and should be able to figure it out based on the info on Ken’s site.

When I take pictures of M this is what I do: If the above is what I see inside my Canon/Nikon, I would aim the center of the circle right on her eye. My AF is always set to Tit (read Ken’s tut if you don’t know what Tit is) and I use the center AF sensor. Once the eye (usually the one closest to me) is in the middle of that circle I push my shutter button (that’s the one you push to take pictures) half-way down. I can then shoot the photo or I can continue to hold the shutter button half-way down (to keep the AF settings the way it is) and recompose/reposition the camera. By recomposing the eye is not in the center anymore but since I kept my shutter button pushed half-way down the eye will still be sharp when I get to taking the photo. One thing to keep in mind when you do this is to not back/forward with the camera. You can recompose side-to-side but not closer/further from the subject. Moving in/out will require you to focus on the object again (pushing the shutter button half way down). Once I am happy with my composition I can then push the shutter button all the way down and click! The result:

There is one more tip when you do child photography (personal experience). Do learn to stop when the child has had it with you. Don’t end up with somebody like this: