Fall Colors for background in Portrait

Here is one of the reasons why I do love during Fall Season. I can use the fall leaves as a background for my outdoor portrait and the low light in fall season offers glow result.

Portait Tips: Next time you get out with your kid(s) just around the park; use the colorful leaves for a background and guaranteed you will be pleased with the result.

Her Gaze

Light: Natural   ISO 100   1/30 sec f/5.6   Flash did not fire
Location: Sacramento Zoo, CA

Her gaze is soundlessly commanding me to go away and leave her alone with her nap under the triple digit Fahrenheit temperature yesterday.  “I am happy where am at and don’t disturb”, this Lion sending it to me as she continues to take her nap under the wall of shade.

I took my daughter yesterday at the Zoo as she will be going back to school pretty soon. Summer has been busy for me and my husband that we weren’t able to get out of town. Took her out yesterday for the idea to beat the crowd at weekends. But with all the days, I had picked the hottest days. Despite of that, I was happy to see my 8 years old daughter that she’s actually enjoying going back to the Zoo as loves all about animals. Prior years, she just happy to go in the Zoo and don’t have that much interests on them.

The only thing on summer days when visiting the Zoo is the animals don’t have much interest walking around. They are lazily and happily just take nap and hide. Spring and fall seasons are the best time as each animal are actively roaming around inside their space.  

All photo content on this blog are copyright by Aileen Sorenson.

Ms. G

"A genuine smile comes within true happiness and a true happiness express within your eyes".

~Aileen Sorenson

Here is one of the ongoing photoshoot monthly projects with my daughter in the month of May and here is my favorite thus far with all the photos for a reason of her giving me a genuine smile without me asking her.

Fall Season Portraiture

Try to use different angle for interesting result.

Meet my friend, Gelina. She is a reason why I am back on track on photography for stopping several months on clicking on my camera. I haven't really done much on portraiture or anything last year. Somehow, I kind of stop using my camera. It stayed inside the camera bag for months in which it is not ideal really if you haven't develop much your photographic eye yet on photography. I am still on the process of learning on what I do like to photograph at. I am still contemplating if I will call myself a photographer. I am totally purely seft-taught on photography.

As far as what I do like to photograph, I realized that I love to do some portaiture, vivid colors of nature, and macro photography. I haven't done a lot of landscape yet and haven't conclude if I do like it or not. Trying a landscape photography would be my one of the list I want to do on my future photograhy.

Anyhow, back on the photoshoot of my friend. It was actually a birthday gift for her. It was a month of October and it was chilly out already. Good thing, the sun was out. The hard thing though is when my eye starts to get watery and can't see much on the viewfinder. It gives me blurry vision and hard to focus on the subject clearly. The chilly cold outside causes my eyes watery. The truth is I was kind of nervous if I can get some good shot of her as I haven't done much portraiture of somebody aside of photoshooting my own daughter.


What I learned on portaiture during Fall Season:

1. The Fall season gives more warm tone on the subject as the sun is far away from earth. It really gives pleasing eye result. Afternoon photoshoot around 3:00sh is more preferrable.

2. Shoot under the shade like a big tree to eliminate shadow on the subject.

Gabby

Supplemental Elements: f/4.5   1/320s    ISO100  50mm

Here's still one of the photoshoot that I took last Saturday as the sun settling down on the horizon. (See related post on previous photo)

Warm tone

Model: Isabella O.

Supplemental Elements: f/4.5  1/250s ISO100  50mm   NoFlash

Here is one of the photoshoot I took last Saturday afternoon during our friend’s birthday party as the sun settles down on the horizon at 20 hundred hours.  In front of the house is a vacant lot full of wild weeds turn to brown as the Summer Season approaches. It was unplanned photoshoot and it turned out to be fun.

One of my favorite time of the day for portraiture is when the sun past at noon or late afternoon as the sun gives you the warm tone and not harsh looking on the subject.

♥ Happy Mother's Day ♥

I feel like baking and decorating cupcakes this morning and so here it is. My daughter asks me why I am baking cupcakes and I replied back for no any reason at all and just for picture purposes only. Then she asked me if she can have some. I replied back with “Of course”. Then she replied back, “oh, I thought it’s only for picture purposes like you said mom”.

 While downloading the photos, a poem came to mind:

Mother’s Love

By © 2012 Aileen Sorenson

A mother’s love is one of the greatest gifts that the earth can offer

Without a mother’s love, the earth is almost to nothing

A mother’s love can heal everything and almost to anything

The mother’s love teaches a child to give love unquestioningly

A mother’s love we cannot replace or pay it much

A mother’s love will do everything and not to expect in return much

That mother’s love we ought to keep in our heart,

As that mother’s love we can pass on to our kids and share the love

My very first attempt on Photography



Happy first day of May!

I was digging into my external hard drive this afternoon and found this.

Here is one of my first attempts on photography. I took this photo two months after just received my own DSLR from my hubby. I have no clue on how it works in terms of settings, aperture, speed, light and other factors. I remember this daffodil flower was just alone under a wrecked machine up in the Daffodil hill located in Jackson, CA. A canopy of high trees surrounds it and I saw a light peeking through and illuminate this lonely flower. As for the time of the day, the sun starts to low down on the horizon. The time of the day, the amount of light makes me realized all plays a relatively rule on the result of your photo. This is the first time made me think that all things needs to be considered and manually adjusted the settings of your camera. It gives a great impact if you don’t shoot your subject on direct broad daylight.

This photo is no cropped and no editing has been done.

Genuine Smile {Kids Portraits}

Supplemental Elements: f3.2     1/400 s     ISO 100     50mm

What I do like on this photo is her genuine smile. You wonder what she is thinking and where she is looking and beyond. Don't you agree?

Ms. S {Kids Portraits}

Supplemental Elements: f3.2     1/400 s     ISO 100     50mm

My daughter and I were off last Saturday for Easter egg hunting in the park. What I love about the park is the big trees surrounding the area and gives plenty of shade.  It was beautiful day, the sun is out and some patches of cloud in some areas.

Asking the kids to take a picture with their eggs after picking them up is such not a good idea unless he/she listens to you. I said not such a good idea because of course, they are eager to open up the eggs and a prize waits inside. Who am I kidding? I think myself. We have at least more than 10 tens kids and only 1 I persuaded to have a picture with her eggs. I tried to ask several kids if they wanted to take a picture with their eggs and replied politely “No, thank you”. 

Meet Ms. S, aside from my daughter that cannot say no to me for a picture, only one says yes and sits down right away by the grass under the shade of a tree.

Tips on Photography:

Portraits – try not to use flash and it is more pleasing to the eye. Use different angles to capture an image. Use a tree for a shade. Always be ready to click away on kids’ photography.

Lesson learned:

Don’t expect for a kid to sit down long for photography especially when just done picking up the some eggs.

Dragonfly {Macro Photography}

Thank you all for the support on my photography!

I was browsing one of my media for Nikon and looked what I found. I could not believe I missed to download this memory stick in my computer. It has been like less than two years. Anyway, I remember this dragonfly on one fine day when my family was outside for swimming on summer of year 2010. This dragonfly come fly around and settles down on one of the plants above the pool. It can sit there for a while and as soon as I got my camera and ready to click away, always took off. Then, I decided to get ready with my camera and sit down close where the dragonfly used to settle on an afternoon swimming. There you go I got a chance to capture some few clicks before taking off again.

xoxo,

Aileen S

Sparks of Love

This is a photoshoot with Bernice and Roric in the yellow wildflowers on a windy sunny day. As I speculated, the landowner will cut it down the field in few weeks. After three days of the photoshoot as I passed by around the route, I saw bare field on both sides. The wildflowers were wiped out. Glad we had the photoshoot an earlier of the week.