Don't forget to bring your "A" game

That should pretty much be the mantra of the Hautop family.  You see they are all over-achievers and I like to think that they married well.  :)  So well in fact that 2 of the 3 "married-a-Hautop"ers have recently hit the big screen.  Yes that's right, thanks to a collaboration between Zach Schabot and Erin Hautop our blog has been featured in the book "My Brand New Home".  My incredibly talented brother-in-law wrote a children's book based on the events that take place when building a new home.  It is a wonderful resource to help explain the process and includes fun activities related to moving.  A really great idea!  Many of the photographs found in the book are taken by our very own Erin Hautop!  Flip open the cover and what do you see in the credits,  Take Two!  So cool to see an idea come to life and watch others enjoy the work you have done.  Congrats, Zach for making this happen!  And congrats Erin for taking this blog to the next level!  You both rock and I'm so proud to call you family. 

Now I should probably get back to work on my own next great idea before I'm kicked out.....  lol

trying to keep up

The last two weeks have been full of lots of fun and excitement...and TONS more pictures!  Baseball season is officially underway so our family is spending lots of time on the West Raleigh baseball fields.  That means that my camera is now back in action capturing all those action shots for the team!  I have already taken images from a couple of the practices and am gearing up for the games to start which will have me out there two times a week!!  I will do my best this season to post some of my favorite images from the field and then talk a little about my settings (hopefully it will help reinforce what we learned from the shutter speed lesson :-).  I addition to baseball, I have also taken pics for a few folks this week...headshots, a family shoot and the final pics for a kids clothing company.  The headshots were for my awesome blog partner and the family photo shoot was for my first repeat customer!!  Below are a few images that I have not yet shared from both of those shoots.

  The last photo shoot this week was the final model for the spitter spatter clothing line.  You probably remember that I posted a few of the images from the first shoot a couple months ago.  The site is finally up and running and hopefully the baby girl image will be added soon.  But one of my favorite images from the session doesn't focus on the clothing but does show off this beautiful little girl.  Hope you enjoy and please check out spitter spatter at:

 http://www.spitterspatter.com/

Finally, I wanted to share some fun and exciting news.  You may have noticed the watermark on the last image and were wondering what it was all about.  I have decided, after lots of consideration, to start a business that would include my photography.  I have just created the facebook page and you can find it under studio BECK.  You may notice my husband make a appearance on the site with his fun creative talents from time to time, but for now it will be a lot of photography.  I would love for you to contact me if you are interested in having photos taken and of course to like my page on facebook if you like what you see.  Vicki and I will still continue to run the blog together and I will have much of my personal photography and of course my photos challenge images here!!  Thanks for looking and hope to hear from you soon.

The last post....

....of this most boring yet important series on basics.  Hopefully you weren't thinking last post ever.  That would just be terrible.  To think of all the readers never to hear from us again.  :(  lol  You're not getting rid of us that easy people.  Now on to ISO!!!


Erin's take away this week.....
Alrighty guys and gals...I am going to do my best to try and explain the benefits, downfalls, and uses for the ISO setting on your camera.  At a high level, the ISO is the digital equivalent of film speed (for those of you who remember the days of film :-).  If you were planning to take outdoor, full sun pictures, you would buy 100 speed film whereas if you were planning to be inside, then you would go for 400 or 800.  Same is true for digital cameras, but the benefit of course is that you can change the ISO setting from one picture to the next without having to waste a whole roll of film!  I have a series of 4 images all taken at different ISO settings.  For each image, I kept the aperture at 2.8.

 This image was shot at ISO 100.  You can notice that the image is blurry and that is because I am inside and at this low ISO setting, the camera did not have enough light hitting the sensor to give me a high enough shutter speed to hand-hold the camera.  The shutter speed here was actually 1/6.

 This image was shot at ISO 500 which allowed my shutter speed to improve to 1/30.  I still find that this shutter speed is too slow to hand hold the camera and the image still looks a little blurry because of it (but definitely better than the first image)

 I dramatically increased the ISO in this image to 1600.  You can notice that the globe is much better focused because my shutter speeds increased to 1/100...a much better speed for hand holding the camera.  However, you do start to see the trade off of raising your ISO.  If you look closely at the background, the grey area is starting to look grainy.  When you raise your ISO high, you run the risk of adding that grainy look to your image.  Better and more expensive cameras have a greater number of ISO settings available and do a better job of minimizing the grain in your picture.

This last image was shot at an ISO of 4000.  My shutter speeds improved further to 1/250 but you can see that I also picked up much more grain in the image.  Generally speaking, I would chose to use my flash in a situation where I had to raise the ISO too high.  Generally speaking, I hate the way that flash images look but would rather have the pic look "flashy" than to make it look too grainy. 

So, as you can see from all of these images, when I raised my ISO I was able to get faster shutter speeds.  I find that adjustments to my ISO setting is a necessity in lower lighting situations.  But you have to remember that raising it too much comes with a price...grainier pics.  If you all remember me talking about my frustration with photographing my son's basketball games (part 1 of our motion section), I was complaining about the lighting in the gym being so poor that I was forced to raise my ISO to the max on my camera to get my shutter speeds high enough to stop motion. And because I had to raise them to the max, I was really disappointed with the quality of the image.  The gym was also not the time to put a flash on my camera so I did something I almost never do...I left my camera at home :(.

Hope this helps explain a little but I encourage you to all go out and practice.  The best way to really "get it" is by doing it yourself. 


Vicki's take away this week....
Here's the deal.  I never really liked to study that much in school.  I was more of the fly by the seat of your pants, cram it all in at once, fake it till you make it, kinda student.  So my lessons are more of "on the job" type learnings that just come from repitition and trying new things.  I like to try something several different ways, put them all together, and then compare.  Which one do I like best? Why is it that way?  Ok, now let's try something else.  So  my advice on tackling this topic is to find something you want to take a picture of and then play with your ISO setting.  I'll admit that for the longest time I let my external flash do a lot of work for me.  Relying on its awesomeness to compensate for what I did not understand on my camera.  The more I become comfortable with my camera settings (and this has been over the course of 3 years) the less I need my flash.  Now don't get me wrong, there are many times when an external flash is crucial.  But there are also times when you can manipulate natural light to work for you and get a similar result.  Some would argue an even better result.  Natural light is almost always more flattering than a giant beam of direct light coming straight at you! 

For these photos I kept my Shutter Speed at 1/200 and Aperture at 2.8 and used NO flash.  I shot in manual mode and moved my ISO around from 100 to 3200.  Here's what happened....

ISO 100                 ISO 400

 

ISO  1000                        ISO 3200

 

 

These pictures were taken in a spare bedroom with no overhead light and only a half open window.  As Erin said, the more you raise your ISO the more grain you will see.  But if you are in a low-light situation it may be your only choice.  For the average shot I usually leave my ISO somewhere around 400 and make the adjustments in my Shutter Speed and Aperture.  Those changes are often made with fewer "key strokes" and are something you can do on the fly.  But if in the future you are snapping pictures in a church or on a cloudy day try playing with the ISO.  You may just get that shot after all.  :)

 

 

 

This concludes our review on the basics!!!  (Picture confetti falling from the ceiling)  Next week tune in for our ALL MANUAL shoot.  Scary, I know.  But we are getting bold and working our next seesion in full control.    Hey, every accomplishment starts with the decision to TRY.  And that's exactly what we are going to do.

 

Hit us up on email with your comments people!!  hautopblog@gmail.com  We would LOVE to hear from you.  :)