true boy tales: Sometimes I pretend to be a photographer...

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Sometimes I pretend to be a photographer...

....and sometimes people believe me. A couple of my friends recently asked me to take their family photos and I happily obliged. It's fun to play pretend. (If you don't care about photography, you may want to skip this post. And if you do, I would love constructive criticism from anybody who's been at this longer than me!) It's amazing how much I learn after I look back through photos. I'm talking about composition since I'm still using my camera on Auto. I got a lot of good advice from some of you about learning to use my camera in manual mode through YouTube videos. Which I think is great advice. But the problem is, I have such little free time (and when I do, I like to use it for reading or blogging) so I just haven't gotten around to it. Well then a very good friend of mine told me she signed up for a class with a photographer who she knows and who's work she really likes so I bit the bullet and signed up too! It's on November 30th. I'm really excited about it. I need concentrated time to learn and I'm just not going to carve out that time for myself.

I will preface this with, I know my editing skills are sorely lacking. I just use picmonkey.com and do the best I can with my untrained eye.
This is a very good friend of mine. Her boys were a little tricky to photograph because her firstborn, Emmett, is quite serious so it was hard to get a natural smile from him and of course Porter is a wiggly little two year old. But I was very happy with the outcome! And by the end of it, Emmett was asking me to go out for ice cream with them. He was seriously disappointed when I told him I couldn't go. I won him over ;)

I'm in love with this next one. I should have had them turn around and walk back toward me so I could have gotten their faces in it.

This one took some serious convincing to get. Emmett did NOT want to lay down because there was a cricket in the grass. I'm glad he finally gave in after I flicked it far away because i think it's adorable.

I think this next one's my favorite, just because of the pose and all of their smiles. Too bad the sun had gone down and it was so dark.

This is my nephew, Grayson. My sis-in-law asked me to snap a few for his six month pictures. I think a baby in a box is my new favorite thing. Let's get rid of obnoxiously colored Bumbos and bouncy seats and just put our babies in vintage crates.

I took these next pictures two nights ago on the most gorgeous evening ever. I literally passed five other photographers downtown. It was slightly comical. These are the close friends of the first family I photographed. She's pregnant with twin boys (!!!) but I can see why God wanted her to have some more. They were insanely easy to photograph. They followed all my directions and just smiled on command like it was their job. I'm not used to boys like that!

Teag and Rhys:

At the end, Teag asked me to join them for ice cream too! It cracked me up. I'm glad the kiddos end up loving me in the end after all that bossing around I had to do for an hour!

6 comments:

Elisa ClarkOctober 29, 2013 at 12:42 PM
SO great! I'm so excited for you to take a class...I totally learned the most in a class. (and I rarely shoot in Manual...I shoot in AV - it's much easier to learn than full Manual - although there are times for that too)
I am in LOVE with the picture of the boys in the distance through the letters. You need to sell that one to the Chamber or something for park publicity. :) Awesome!
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ChelseyOctober 29, 2013 at 1:18 PM
Haverlee~
First of all, Awesome Pictures! Give yourself more credit girl! you do a great job. Secondly, totally random but is the 2nd family the Phillips family? The guy in the pictures looks like my
2nd cousin mark, and how many other families have a cute little boy named Teag?! Ha
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Chelsey LarsonOctober 29, 2013 at 6:04 PM
Ha that's so funny! What a small world=) It's Chelsey Larson
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Iowa SunshineOctober 30, 2013 at 6:22 AM
These are wonderful shots! I like the red door family one and the b/white photo with the letters the best. I can see progress in your photography over the last few months! Have fun at the class : )
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Nana JudieOctober 30, 2013 at 7:48 AM
Haverlee they are all amazing! i am partial to the little guy in the box :) You are an artist for sure. Look out Joy Prouty!
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for the book lovers {my recent favorites}:

Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan: An incredibly haunting medical memoir. There's a lot of medical info to read through but I didn't find those parts boring and difficult to wade through. I thought she shared just enough. But if you like a book that's easy to read, this isn't it. I couldn't get this one out of my mind for a very long time. An unforgettable true story.
Me Before You by JoJo Moyes and What Alice Forgot by Lianne Moriarty: I'm just going to lump these two together because they're in the same category. I'm calling them deep chick lit. A perfect summer book to get lost in. Read them. Both. I promise you from the bottom of my heart that you will LOVE them. (I liked them both way better than Where'd You Go, Bernadette.)
These Is My Words by Nancy E. Turner: Most of my favorite books have a main character with a whole lotta grit. I wasn't quite sure about this one when I first started it but, oh, did it sweep me in and not let me go til the last page. I also love a book that makes me "emote out loud" as I like to think of it. This one had me smiling all the way through and crying my eyes out at the end. It follows a young girl through her life in the Arizona Territories in the late 1800's. A must read for anyone who likes Historical Fiction.
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill. I LOVED this book. Its a very well researched historical fiction novel about a young girl kidnapped from her village in Africa and sold into slavery. It follows her through her whole life and the unbelievable heartache and trauma she lives through. I've been telling people I liked it as much as Unbroken but the main character is so much more endearing and has so much spunk.
Another Place at the Table by Kathy Harrison. I have a thing for modern day memoirs of utterly heartbreaking stories (Like Breaking Night and Blackbird). This is a Foster mother's first-hand account of the children she took in over the years and the unbelievable trauma they went through before they came to her.
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. I loved this lighthearted yet emotional story of a strong woman making the best of a hard life in the Southwest, beginning in the 1930's. I love her writing style--just cuts to the point of every story without too much "fluff" and yet tells it in a way that you can picture everything in vivid detail. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, is one of my all-time favorites, and this true-life novel about her grandmother didn't disappoint.
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. Modern day fiction about a girl raised in Foster homes and her struggles throughout life. She learns about the Victorian Era language of flowers and that becomes a huge part of her life. I finished it in two days. An easy read but very emotional and moving.
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. The true story of a man's experience after Hurricane Katrina when he decided not to evacuate in order to look after several properties he owned. Quite an unbelievable story and so hard to believe this happened in the US only a few years ago.