Composition- One simple word that means so much! There are so many elements to composition, but in it's simplest form it's what you leave in or take out of your frame in order to tell the story. And just like the books at your local library, the stories can range from very, very, simple, to complex novels.

A couple weeks back we talked about the rule of thirds. The idea that you want to balance your image across the frame in thirds, avoiding the center for your main focal points. And yes, there are exceptions to this rule. Like all good rules that are made to be broken, but for now let's just stick to following, the rules. :)

This week, I'd like to introduce another simple but important composition concept, leading lines. Leading lines serve the same purpose as the rule of thirds, to tell your eye where to go when looking at the photograph. Think about pathways, bridges, walls, things that create direction in your photograph. What direction do you think they should lead, have you ever even thought about it? The answer is they should lead to your subject. So let's see what that looks like.

See how the lines that stair way creates lead you right to Chloë's little face? Now what do you think would have happened if she had been positioned in the right third of the photograph?

In the spirit of showing progress and documenting how - with just a little practice - you can really kick your family photo's up a notch, allow me to showcase one of our awesome members, Leslie. Leslie recently jumped at the chance to have some one-on-one feedback and mentoring on our "M&M Momtographers & Mentoring" thread. You can read more about it here if you missed it.

Being the eager momtographer that she is Leslie was our first mom to post a picture and ask for help. Below is the picture that she posted.

With a little discussion, some critique and a few clear pointers on what she should do differently, we sent Leslie on her way to give it another go! And WOW did she improve! Not only was her straight out of the camera shot pretty impressive but with just a little effort... look at that edit!

(Straight out of the camera - putting her new skills into action!)

TA DAHHHH... The Final Product!

We are incredibly proud of Leslie, and equally proud to see the Momtographer's methodology at work helping moms take better pictures of their families.

You can see the entire discussion that brought Leslie to this point here, and also begin your own journey and start posting!

Snap To It!

I'm so proud of my friend Courtney!  Yesterday marked her little man's five-month birthday and we walked her through some transformational tips to taking better pictures.  As it turns out, all she needed was a starting place!  When she showed me her pictures - BEFORE 10 AM, no less - I knew I had to share them with everyone!

BEFORE - 4 Months

AFTER - 5 Months

And now she's got the bug!!!  Congrats Courtney on your beautiful pictures and I can't wait to see what you do next!

I love the internet - where else can you catch up with someone you haven't seen since high school and pick up instantly? Well, I haven't seen my friend Courtney in *ahem* a number of years, but from her Facebook page it seems the only thing that's changed about her is the number of gorgeous children… including her latest who is 5 months old today!

So in celebration of today Courtney, here are some tips for capturing your baby boy!

First things first - find your pocket of great light.  Where are the good windows in your house?  Glass doors? No glass doors? Take advantage of this gorgeous weather we're having down south and open one up!  Windows and doors take the bright sun and diffuse it into gorgeous portrait-taking light, so find your best and brightest portal and plop that baby boy down at the edge of the light. (Or you might want to try a baby doll first so he's fresh when you get your camera settings perfect!)

What do I mean by the edge of the light?  Here…  see how my not-so-little one *sniff* is positioned just on the shadow side of the light?

Now look what happened when I put my duff down just inside the door - me sitting in the light, and her just on the other side - magic!  And since she's facing the light - look at what it did to her eyes!

Now lets talk about backgrounds.  From what I've seen on facebook, your little man should be lifting his head and pushing up.  Since we want a decluttered backdrop, use a bench, ottoman or even a chair like the one Sydney's sitting on and place it behind him. Now take a very neutral blanket (dark and heavy wools, felts, etc work nicely - but so do plain white down comforters!) and drape it over the back of the ottoman spilling onto the floor under him.  It doesn't have to be perfect, just make sure it's not distracting.  If it's large enough, you could even put a boppy or a dog pillow underneath it to give him some reinforcement. 

Next - you have a Sony DSLR-A300 camera, so rather than get into how to use your manual controls (because I'm just not familiar with your camera!), lets try and take advantage of the built-in portrait mode.  That should be your equivalent of Aperture priority mode. While you're at it - turn off your flash! You want all natural light here.  According to the Sony Website, there should be a "flash off" position on the Exposure Mode dial. 

Also, check your ISO.  If you find a really great pocket of light, you should be able to stay between 100-400.  The lower the ISO the better RAW files you have to work with on in your computer. How do you know what that number should be?  Take a test picture.  Too dark? Bump your ISO.  But be careful - go too high and you'll introduce noise. 

Speaking of Raw files, are you shooting in RAW or JPEG?  For these precious portraits, you want to be in RAW, or at the very least, RAW + jpeg so you have both on hand. Just make sure your memory card is clean so you have lots of room!

Okay - now that you're done with your menus and dials, get on your belly and shoot!  Go eye to eye with that baby boy.  Connect, laugh, tickle, sing Elmo songs!  Don't just rely on your zoom - get in close with your camera.  You don't have to see the whole blanket in every shot.  What if you just got his head?  Just some toes? Get down low with him and just see what happens!  Just make sure he stays facing the light! 

And finally - come over to the boards and show us your pictures!! 

Challenge Yourself!

When we created this site - we had two main goals.  The first was to create a fun, warm, safe place for moms to show off pictures of their kids.  Done - check!  The second was to create a place where moms are continually challenged to learn how to take better pictures.  Almost done- half check! :)

I (all bias aside!) think we are off to a GREAT start! The information is here and available to you, but I really want to to challenge you to take it a step further and start the process of taking better pictures! Don't worry, we are going to help! :)

So here's what I want you to do:

1) Participate in the monthly challenges! It's fun and there are cool prizes!

2) We are starting a thread called M&M (Momtographers Mentoring)- On this thread you post a picture with your settings and as MUCH information as you can about

your set up. Myself and/or Adrienne will critique and give suggestions for improvement for every picture posted, from composition, to post processing, to focus, we will get down and dirty with SPECIFIC suggestions. We ask that you follow up our suggestions with another picture attempting to put them into action! It's going to be a conversation, give AND take to help you improve.

This thread will be in the same vein as "Critique Me", but will be much more in-depth and focused. Other members are welcome to jump in if they have something to add or a question about anything posted, but we promise to do the heavy lifting here. The goal is to have at least one thread strictly dedicated to helping you take better pictures! :)

SNAP TO IT!

I had no idea what I was doing.

My daughter was twelve hours old, my new camera had barely been out of the box that long, and my legs were still iffy from the epidural. But in the quiet of the evening with all visitors gone and my husband snoozing in the hospital recliner that only comes in that odd shade of mauve vinyl, we were finally alone - just she and I. Me and my baby girl.

We couldn't be prouder in our premier edition of  "Help A Momtographer Out!" to introduce you to Los Angeles Photographer, Christa Meola. In fact, left on it's surface, describing Christa with just the term photographer is a little misleading. Treat yourself to a few minutes going through her portfolio, and you'll understand what we mean. She's an artist that truly captures the spirit of family with her unique voice - life, sung in the key of happy.  Every image radiates a joy and warmth, clearly infused with her sunny perspective.

So before we go trying to change her business cards to something like "Purveyor of Photographic Sunshine", let's ask her a few questions:

f+ss+ISO = exposure

Now that you know what the three main parts of a camera are, the next step is to begin to understand how they work together. This is where the magic happens! It's up to you, Miss Momotographer, to find the combination of these three numbers (f-stop, shutter speed and ISO) that equals the most pleasing exposure in any given situation. Sounds scary, we know, but we have full faith that if you've read this far, you are up for the challenge!

To get you going in manual, we want you to try out this method that works great for us when we turn on the camera and try to find our happy exposure place!

THREE EASY STEPS:

1 - Assess the light.  Is it bright and sunny? Dark and cloudy? Are you indoors or out? Based on these answers, set your ISO first. Let's assume it's a bright sunny morning out in the backyard - so set your ISO to 100.

2 - Next, look at your lens. What focal length are you shooting at? (You can either look at the numbers on the lens to figure this out - or some cameras will tell you in the viewfinder). Okay, whatever the focal length is, double it and set your shutter speed one notch above that number. Let's say you're using a nifty fifty (a 50mm prime lens).  Set your shutter speed to 125.

3 - Lastly, ask yourself what it is you want to capture. Just your tot sititng in the flowerbed eating soil? Or the whole yard - dog and child in it. Once you've decided, set your aperture accordingly. Let's say you want the whole shebang in clear focus - pick a "safe" closed down aperture like 7.2.

Now CLICK!  What do you see? A perfectly exposed picture? A bright blob of nothing?  A dark abyss of black? It's likely something in between.

Above we picked our ideal settings, but now we need to work with our environment from that starting place. If it's too dark, either bump up your ISO or open up your aperture.  Then try again. Keep doing this until you are pleased with the result. It's hard at first and you will lose a LOT of shots - so spend plenty time practicing on things that it's okay to miss. TRUST US - over time this becomes easier and easier to gauge and you will be able to adjust settings in seconds to get the shot you desire!

TAKE A DEEP BREATH!

We can hear you now - "WHAT?!? I thought this was supposed to be photography made easy."  It is, it's just going to take some time to get you there. The reality is this - when shooting in manual or half-manual, every location and situation will require a different set of settings depending on the light available and what you're trying to accomplish creatively. That's why we offer our Learn By Looking section, so you can begin to absorb what kind of settings may work in different situations. Shooting on the kitchen floor? Take note of the settings on THIS SHOT and see if they work for you.  You may be just an ISO or shutter adjustment away from the same look.

Hey you photo buff (or aspiring one!)...

This section is for you! It’s the meat. The comprehensive pieces of the puzzle that will help you harness the power of your camera and turn it into some serious snap.

Photography, at its core, is the science of capturing light.  When that light is interpreted by your camera’s sensor, it becomes an image. In order to understand how to capture that light, there are some things we have to break down that end up looking and sounding more like a science lesson than your regularly scheduled Momtography program.

But we know that you care infinitely more about the end product than the equations and technicalities that get you there. We just want to take great pictures of our kids! So we've taken the advanced side of photography and stripped it down to the nuggets you must know to achieve your goal.

We call it The Momtographer's Methodology. It's where we take out the irrelevant, break down the jargon and tell you what it all means to a time-crunched mom. If you keep searching beyond our site, you will see that all of this stuff has much broader implications then what we are presenting, but do you really care? We didn’t think so!

So go hide in a corner with a delicious beverage of choice and dig in, it won’t take long and you can go back to doing what you love best, USING your camera to capture all those things that make you smile.

If, you haven't already, switch your camera dial to "M" (manual), grab the camera manual that you probably banished to the basement and dig in!

If you are reading this it means it's real! It means we launched this thing... HOL"EEEE"Y COW... Seriously somebody pinch me (insert a long squeal here)!

I'm not sure if I'm more nervous or excited, but one emotion I am sure about is relief, well, that and pride! I feel like we are sending our first born off to school for the first time, you know they will be fine but wow talk about anxiety! I hope people like her, and I hope she makes friends and I hope she learns a lot and I hope she contributes to the classroom etc. etc. etc. So many hopes and also fears, but so glad to be finally experiencing it instead of theorizing about it!

So, after you pinch me can I hug you? Yes, hug you, I said it! Because truth be told without YOU we couldn't have done this. We knew almost immediately after embarking on this project that we had finally landed on what we were called to do (and yes I am speaking for us both)! Nothing short of divine intervention could have gotten us through some of the obstacles we confronted along then way! There were so many moments when walking away would have been the easiest thing to do, but we couldn't, we were driven! Driven by something greater then ourselves. We thought of the millions (literally) of new mommies out there frustrated with their inability to capture their families the way they so desperately wanted to. Knowing that they were inefficiently surfing from site to site trying to piece it all together between too little sleep and too frequent feedings was all the motivation we needed! Because each of us had been her, and now knew there was a better way! So after more then a few hicups, late nights, some heartache, a whole lot of time, and a gargantuan amount of love to see this thing come to life is surreal to say the least!