gwendolyn waite photography :: blog

Week 9’s assignment was “texture.” Love this old, peeling paint, and the prickly “stickers.”

I’ve got a sick 9-yo and a squirrely toddler home with me this morning, so not much time to write. Happy Tuesday!

ISO 400
f/4.0
1/150

Life changing. That’s what our challenge this week for Project 52 is turning out to be. Not that a focusing technique is truly life changing, but it’s certainly going to make a huge difference in the way I shoot. I have wanted to try out Back Button Focusing (BBF) for a while, but it’s a pretty major change, and I needed some motivation and some pals to try it with. Our Project 52 group decided to do it together. It is going to take many more hours of practice to perfect it, especially with moving targets, but it has already made a huge difference in achieving dead-on focus.

Essentially it means separating the focus from the metering and shutter function. You program your camera to move the focus control to the back AF-ON button, leaving the shutter function free to just meter and fire the shot. The results? Much better focus accuracy and consistency. No longer does one button have to do it all.

These blogs were instrumental in figuring out BBF:

http://www.melissajill.com/blog.cfm?postID=690&f-a-q-back-button-focusing
http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2286

It will definitely take some time to get fully comfortable with this new technique, but I know it’s going to make a huge difference in my photos.

I love this shot of Beatrice – wearing her school uniform, with her winter coat slouched off her shoulders as she so often does now, her big-girl teeth which have finally come in after so many months of a gaping-wide hole, and her loosely braided hair. My sweet girl. Getting so big.

Happy Sunday to you all…

ISO 400
f/4.0
1/400

I bought some local raw honey at the coop this morning, and was really taken with the golden color, especially with the light streaming through from behind.

Hope you all had a good weekend!

ISO 400
f/2.2
1/640
50mm 1.4 lens

Theme of the week (naturally): Love.

Beatrice and her cousin, coloring hearts yesterday. I loved the window gels at my brother’s house, and the one heart off doing its own thing.

Happy Valentines Day!

This week’s theme for our Project 52 was food. I had this vision in my head all week of photographing the cocktail I’ve been indulging in this week – fresh grapefruit juice and vodka. Guess it’s called a Greyhound – it was what we had on hand a couple weeks ago, so my husband fashioned it into a cocktail and I was hooked. I wanted to capture the fresh grapefruit, our cute martini set, and the beautiful pink cocktail, but since I never drink it during daylight hours (it’s my treat after the kids go to bed – a bit of a reward for having survived the day), I never got to it.

My next idea was to capture our Sunday morning pancake breakfast. I had visions of highly staged, beautiful photos of our weekly ritual. An untouched pile of pancakes. The steaming bowl of berry sauce. Our funky green butter dish. Michael made the pancakes, set them out, and I came in with my camera and started moving the dishes around to achieve the optimal lighting conditions.

Then, the children descended.

And there went my vision.

So I moved on to capturing my kids with berry-stained faces, half-devoured plates of pancakes, our messy table, and clutter in the background. None of these photographs were staged in any way, other than occasionally removing an intruding napkin or elbow.

I captured our life. Not the polished, perfect version of blueberry pancakes, but our Sunday morning as it really is. Perfectly imperfect.

If you want to know the settings for any of these photos, just ask. They ranged in ISO from 400 – 2000, depending on where in the room I was shooting.