Digital Photography Tips, Recipes, Technology and Photographs from The Mansurovs
Chase is a young man with a lot of potential to become a very good model. Although that may not be what he wants to do with his life, all of us enjoyed working on his Senior Session pictures.
We used couple of flashes for some of the images. If anyone is interested in the techniques we used, please let us know, so that we can shed some light on the subject :)
Here are some of my favorite images from the last shoot with Isadora. The first image was taken in a shady area and I had to use off-camera flash (umbrella with a single strobe) as fill-flash to brighten up her face and get rid of raccoon eyes (shadows under eyes). The flash was positioned a little higher at approximately 30 degrees, to my left:
This image was shot with natural light, early in the morning in the beginning of the session:
Malika is the daughter of our dear friends Becky and Andrew. I love their daughter very much! Since they decided to relocate somewhere special, they asked me if I could take pictures of Malika before they left. She is growing fast, alright! Last year at this very moment I was taking her picture, talking her into being a princess of a yellow castle. This year she outsmarted me almost in everything!
Malika, I will miss you dearly and I can’t wait to take your pictures when you come back to Colorado!
My sister and I woke up pretty early this morning for a portrait shoot which I scheduled yesterday. Believe me, if I was not sure of this beautiful little lady’s talent to pose in front of the camera and of her artistic abilities, I wouldn’t have made such a quick decision. I have taken pictures of Jade, Isadora’s sister before and I knew that we would have no less than fabulous photo shoot this time around!
This particular picture was shot with the Nikon D700, Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D @ 1/3200, ISO 200 at f/1.8, almost wide open. I really love the bokeh and contrast the 85mm f/1.4D produces and it really is one heck of a lens for portraits! Along with the 50mm f/1.4G, this is my top used lens for what I do. I took this picture early in the morning using natural light, so no reflectors or off-camera flash were used.
Stay tuned for more tips from this photo shoot and for more amazing pictures of Isadora!
A month ago we were approached by the Dental Aid organization here in Colorado. They wanted us to do some portraiture of their patients and asked us to print some of the images for them as well. We gladly decided to donate our time and here are some of the images from the short session:
At times when my husband is away on a business trip or any trip whatsoever, I get so nostalgic, I start flipping the “pages” of Lightroom to glace over our old images. Oh, I do own those old style coffee table albums, too. If the technology keeps up the way it has been, I will soon forget which shelf is generously occupied by my albums. Instead of thinking or speaking out loud, which I do a lot, I decided to write my thoughts out loud. I am not sure if there is such a thing. If there is not, I hope people list “writing out loud” under my name in Wikipedia.
So, my husband is away for couple of more days. I am stuck home with my little dudes with no wallet or my phone! All my husband’s fault! Which means all I get to do is cook, watch TV, attend to my boy’s needs and get nostalgic of how my husband would play with the boys every night to give me a time off. Right about when I finished the last sentence, my younger son Osman, who is still not sleeping at 11:34PM is calling for his dad! Awwwwwwww, we miss you daddy-o, come back!
If you have stumbled upon this entry, you are most likely having trouble getting your photos accepted by either FoodGawker or TasteSpotting. Believe me when I say I’ve been there and done that to get my photos through :)
You submit a picture of your favorite dish and wait for an e-mail from the site admins. Here comes the long awaited e-mail, in which it states that your image was rejected, because it was either dull, unsharp, had lighting issues or whatever other reason the admins came up with! At times, it gets very frustrating to find out that your precious creations were chosen not to be displayed on famous food sites. I too got very frustrated the first couple of times, until I figured out how to do it right. For those who are in the same boat as me, the following tips should help you to get your pictures approved by both FoodGawker and TasteSpotting.
Who wouldn’t want pearly white teeth gleaming through a beautiful smile! This is a quick and one of the most effective ways of whitening teeth in Photoshop. I’ve tried many different ways before, but once I adopted this particular method, I never went back to my old ways again.
Here is how I do it:
This Photoshop tutorial is for brightening people’s eyes and making them pop in portraits.
Eyes represent the soul of a person. They tell our story and are capable of magically transferring our emotions to the viewer. Good photographers know the importance of being able to capture people’s inner feelings through their eyes, which is why they always strive to highlight the eyes by bringing them into complete focus. While as human beings we are quite used to looking at people’s eyes while communicating to them, it doesn’t always work the same way in photography. Sometimes there is just too much distraction in the picture and other things to look at that we would not even notice in everyday life. Whatever it is, these distractions move us away from the real story of the subject, getting us lost in insignificant details.
Fortunately, there are some simple tricks in Photoshop that can help to bring the viewer’s attention back to the subject’s eyes. In this quick tutorial, I will show you how to brighten your subject’s eyes and make them “pop”.
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about getting new curtains for our apartment. There was a lot of work involved in hanging the curtains. Since the ceilings were too high for me, my husband did the entire job by himself. I ironed the curtains though! Just as I hoped that we were all done, my mom told me that we did a lousy job assigning curtains to each window. As a matter of fact, it looks like there is more work ahead of me…
Each set of curtains came with clear instructions. Well, I have the curtains but I lost the instructions. A girl does not need any instructions, I said to myself. At least that’s what I initially thought. As you see, I am still on a big mission and God only knows when it is going to end!
Here is the current look of my little nook I created for myself. I admit that it looks a little different right about now! It might look even more different a week from now.
Aside from not feeling very well for the last week and not being able to go out as much, we are trying to keep our sons busy and entertained. We added one more lesson to our routine daily exercises. In addition to book reading, phonics, drawing, watching cartoons and playing games – Omar is learning to write. He is doing pretty good, I shall admit. Well, he is no genius (at least not yet) but he is mommy’s little smartie pants!.. and he needs a haircut.
