Take the time to smell the Dandelions

Yesterday Rachael brought home a Dandelion from Daycare.  Judging by the looks of things it had been in her cubby for most of the day.  But Rachael was very happy with her dandelion so who was I to break it to her that dandelions are weeds.  So she brought it home with her.  Much to her delight she was able to find another dandelion at home...Note to self...time to tidy up the flower bed :).

As a budding Momtographer I saw this as an opportunity.  My goal was to use what I had learned this  week in Momtographie online about aperture and focus points.  Initially I tried to focus solely on the dandelion.  Well a two year old doesn't quite understand the concept of holding something still or being still themselves for that matter so it was onto Plan B....focus on her hands.

1/160, f 1.4, ISO 200.  I love this shot but hate that it came out overexposed.  My ISO is low so I eliminated that as the issue.  I posted this picture in my Momtographie FB group and Beryl, mentioned Exposure Compensation (EC).  Hmm another thing to think about when taking a

picture.  I had not heard that term before.  I had noticed the graph in my viewfinder with a + and - on the other end but had not played around with it much.  I went back to my photo details and discovered that my exposure was +1.7..A ha that explains things.

Those who can, do...those who can't, edit :).  Pic Monkey www.picmonkey.com is a free online photo editor that I was introduced to when I took one of Beryl Young's other classes, Illuminate.  I played around with this morning with this picture.  Lately my quick fix is to convert photos to black and white.

Not Bad



Good





Awesome

My husband and a fellow Momtographie student asked if I would be able to just have the dandelion itself in color and Rachael's entire hand in black and white.  I asked Beryl about this and yes it can be done and she is offering a webinar in August that will show me how to do this.  Time to mark my calendar.

Knowing what I know now about EC...I decided to replicate this photo.  I made sure that my EC was set on 0.  Rachael was game.  She is still loving the dandelions so thanks to Mommy's garden, there were still a lot of them for her to pick today once we got home.  Here is the shot I was able to get today.



Perfection 1/4000, f 2.2, ISO 800

All of the pictures featured in this blog post were shot with my 50mm lens and in Aperture priority mode.