newborn - baby b

Just a couple of months after the Baby B Maternity shoot, I was thrilled to go back and meet the brand new Ms. B in person! At just 10 days old, she was a trooper. Again, it was great to take photos with her parents who this time were more than fully prepared with the baby outfits. My favorites are the hand and feet photos.

 

maternity - baby b

My first maternity shoot! This was a ton of fun and the couple was prepared with lots of cute ideas and were game for just about anything. I'd done some maternity photo research online in preparation and the one thing that seemed an absolute requirement for a good maternity shoot was a field of wheat. That's a tall order in San Francisco, but we found the next best thing up on Bernal Heights Park (you know, that beige hill to the south of the Mission that you always wonder about).  Turns out, it's a great place for pictures!

macro class

I had a fun afternoon yesterday in a Macro photography class that Canon offered in downtown SF. They have a great series of classes that are all really affordable and in off-work hours. See the list of classes here. The Macro class was more of a set up of cool things to take pictures of, not really formal instruction.  I was surprised how low sales-y this was, I would have easily sat through (might have even preferred) a half hour on all of the ins and outs of their macro lens line up but they were like, you can borrow this one, sorry it's all we have. Anyway, the lens I borrowed was great, the 100mm f/2.8 L series (think I'll still buy the lower end version of the 100mm). Then around the room they had set ups of a variety of macro situations.

What did I learn? Well, this really is the opposite of portrait photography, it's all about tripods and f/11, f/16 to get as much clarity as possible, not very mobile, not about wide apertures at all.  I also learned how to zoom in while in Live Mode to get crisper manual focus.

The coolest set up by far was water dripping into a pan. This was just a plastic cup with a hole in the  bottom suspended over a black plate with a swirly watercolor on the wall behind it. Tripod in front, remote shutter release. These are mostly at 1/125 sec at f/16.

There was also a set up of a glycerine drop on a leaf, which nicely reflected flowers behind it. However the glycerine had started to sag a little:

Orchids with some water spray, this set up fired off two remote flashes. Remote flashes are still a mystery to me. 

 And if you see me hanging around toy train supply stores it's because of this set up.

the dicarlos

While in Sea Ranch, I was able to take some pictures of my lovely friends and their children. A field of wheat and some dappled oceanside evening light was conveniently at hand.

Miss you guys already!