Rachel Henderson Photography Blog » Wedding Photography in Holland Michigan MI, plus lots of Winfield and Harriet

The title of this blog post comes from a famous photograph in my family. I had a eccentric grandfather who was a musician, photographer, lawyer. In the early ’30s, before he married my grandmother he traveled in Europe, North Africa and Asia playing the clarinet. When he returned he gathered the many pictures from his travels into a scrapbook that my cousins and I loved looking through. In the middle of the book is an innocuous image labeled “the streets of Bangkok.” When you look closely you can see that my grandfather caught a picture of a beheading in the middle of the street. There it is, plain as can be, corporal punishment in Asia 80 years ago. To this day my family still remembers and talks about this image. This story has nothing to do with the photography tip that I am about to give you. I just wanted to tell you about it because it inspired my title.Probably the simplest and most common photography mistake is taking pictures from too far away. I think it comes from a fear that a “bad” photographer “cuts off peoples heads.” In order to protect from that too many people take pictures of their subject, the chair that he is in, the table that he is sitting by and the tree that he is sitting under, just to be sure not to “cut off his head.” This practice creates lots of photographs that all look kind of the same.Not only are many people afraid of cutting off heads but camera manufacturers encourage this problem by putting those little brackets in the very center of the screen. It is way too tempting to use those brackets to aim, and then shoot the picture. Camera’s are not guns, don’t shoot!Here are some examples, I pulled this off of a random blog. The first picture is what the little girl’s mother posted. She used her camera like a gun.Why not get a little closer?It tells so much more of the story, doesn’t it? All that I did was crop the original image. Also, notice how getting closer can be a very forgiving practice if your house isn’t always perfectly clean.Here’s another example from today. Jared, Win and I went to Labor Day picnic. Now Jim Merlino is a great guy, and that fort and turtle are pretty cool……but there is so much more character when I zoom in and take a closer pictures.In this picture it seems like I’ve gotten almost as close as I could to show that Jared and Win are having a watergun fight with a Noel. See how much more emotion there is by just going ahead and cutting off heads.So remember, the most memorable photograph in my family’s history-even 80 years later-has a cut off head ;-). Try it, you might get too close at times, but your photographs will get so much better overall that it is worth a few missed foreheads.Here are a couple more pictures of our evening.Who do you think was having more fun with the large water gun?Win really liked the veggie pizza that the Duncan’s brought.

As you know we’d been vacationing with Jared’s family in Detroit last week. As I was going through the pictures I noticed a couple that were a perfect demonstration of ISO and it’s relationship to digital noise. We were on a pontoon boat in the middle of the day. My father-in-law’s camera was accidentally set so that the ISO was at 1600, which is way too high for the amount of light available on a boat in the daytime. A couple of images were taken before the setting was changed. Both of these pictures were taken with the same camera, on the same day, very close to the same time. Do you see the difference in the quality of the images? Click on the images to see a much larger view of them. Look closely at the skin tones.ISO 1600 (too high for the situation)ISO 100 (lowest available ISO, which is great for bright situations)The little baby is Willow. Click on the image to open a larger version of it and look closely at her face. Now do the same to the picture of her brother Ezra. Do you see how Willow looks like she has some sort of blue and magenta skin disorder but her brother looks fine. That blotchy, colorful grain is called digital noise. It happens when the ISO it turned up too high.ISO is measured in numbers like 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 etc… It’s the same as those numbers that were on the boxes of film that we used to buy. Do you remember film? ISO is very similar with digital. ISO is a measurement of how sensitive your digital film is. The more light that is available the lower you can set your ISO. If you are inside or it is late evening you’d have to bump the ISO higher to make sure that you image didn’t turn out really blurry. If your ISO is set too high you lose quality by introducing a lot of unnecessary noise, like on Willow’s face. If your ISO is set too low then you will get a really blurry picture, one of those images where someone is moving their arm and it looks like a see-through moving ghost.Basically, you want to have your ISO set to the lowest possible setting for the given situation. Since there was plenty of light on that boat the ISO was changed to 100 (the lowest) for the picture of Ezra. Do you see how great his skin looks? The quality of the picture changes significantly.It’s important to understand this because settings in digital cameras can be daunting. There are so many menus. Once they are demystified your camera will more fun to use.Don’t worry, I’m not telling you that you have to start thinking about ISO when you are trying to get your kids to keep doing the cute thing that they just stopped doing once you got your camera out. Thankfully camera companies do the work for us. In almost every camera I’ve ever seen there is a setting in the ISO setting list called auto. You guessed it, it automatically sets the lowest reasonable ISO for the situation. Amazing! Even the fanciest film cameras couldn’t do that. Digital is fabulous.Check your camera. Make sure that it is set to auto ISO. If you notice that even with it set to auto you are getting noisy images try setting it to 100 whenever you are outside.Happy snapshots!Rachel

A couple of posts ago (in the really long post) I promised photography tips in the future. Here is tip number one. I’ll also include pictures of Win to keep everybody satisfied. Quantity! It might seem simple but very few great photographs were taken solo. Now that most people are shooting digital this idea is within easy reach for non-pros. Here is a screen capture of my computer right after I downloaded the pictures of Win eating oatmeal.Yup, that’s 111 pictures of Win eating oatmeal, and you thought that I just knew how to capture the moment. Now this example is a little excessive. Win was being really cute practicing eating with a spoon and I didn’t feel like I had gotten the image that I wanted yet. So I kept shooting.The point is that good photographs usually come from a series or collection of ok and bad ones. That is ok. Just be sure to delete the unworthy images before you fill up your hard-drive and frustrate your husband. Think about keeping only about 10% of the images that you take.More later.Win has been practicing eating with a spoon and fork lately. I thought about letting him go at it solo and seeing what happened.It started off good enough. . .. . .with a satisfying biteThen things took a little bit of a turn.Who needs a spoon when we’ve got 2 perfectly good hands.

Friends and family,

I’m so glad that ya’ll like Win’s blog and have supported me as I have discovered the world of photography. Everyone has been so encouraging, it means a lot to me. Win’s blog has been a great place for me to practice my photography, knowing that someone will see it. Over the past year many of you have come to me with this question, “What camera should I buy?” I LOVE this question because I have opinions about it. If you know me, even just a little, you know that I love to share my opinions-freely. So here goes, free advice.Cameras and photography are really important to most people, especially people with families. Good photographs elicit emotions and memories that are so important in our lives. Most people know that they want those types of images of their life but they don’t know how to get them. Camera companies know this too. They sell cameras based on this desire. They claim that their cameras take better pictures than you old camera. This claim may or may not be true.Gear is important but photography is in the photographer, not the camera. Do not be discouraged though, photography isn’t that difficult. You don’t have to like numbers or gear to take better pictures. There are a many REALLY SIMPLE tips that will improve your photography 10 fold. They don’t cost anything and you don’t even have to press any new buttons on your camera.Back to the main question, “What camera should I buy?” Now if you have a camera, that works and takes more that 2.0 megapixel pictures then your camera is better than my own point and shoot. Possibly you don’t actually need a new camera. Now, say your camera is broken, film (did I say that?) or you really, really want something new you might be in the market for a new camera. Just make sure that you buy one that fits your lifestyle.The first question that I have is, “what are you going to use it for?” The answer to this question for most people who ask me about cameras is, “I want to be able to take really good pictures without having to fuss with the camera too much.” I will assume that is where you are. You want a good camera but you don’t really want to take up photography. I won’t bore you with things like ISO, spot metering and changing lenses. You can get great pictures with a point and shoot so don’t despair and think that you have to pony up lots of money and lug around a huge camera to get good photos. I have a little illustration that I think is helpful.Imagine that you are on a road trip and the destination is good pictures. You have a car (camera) and you know where you want to be (good photos) but you are having trouble getting there. To solve your problem you walk down the street to the auto dealership and tell the salesman that you are trying to get someplace but you are having trouble getting there. He, being a salesman, tells you that you need a new car. Not wanting to deal with any more hassles you tell him that you want the most expensive vehicle that he sells. He brings you around the lot and shows you an beautiful 15 passenger van with cruise control, power everything and an iPod plugin. You ask him if this vehicle will get you to your destination and he says, “absolutely!” You drive that thing for an hour and then it stops and you still aren’t at your destination. That is when you realize that you didn’t need a new car, just gas (simple photography tips) in the car that you already owned. It wasn’t a new car or vehicle repair knowledge (knowing the technological side of photography) that you needed. While the iPod plug in sounded nice it wasn’t the feature that you needed to pay for. What you needed was gasoline and possibly a map-both very simple fixes that don’t cost that much (well not quite as much a a new car). Possibly the car that you had needed more than gas and did need replacing, but a 15 passenger van isn’t the best replacement for you.I see lots of people with big expensive cameras that are like a person driving a 15 passenger van when they don’t need all of that space. It is clunky and expensive. Now a 15 passenger van is great if you are a youth pastor but most people don’t need all of the extra features and size. Following is am image that I think is pretty funny. The redhead is Jessica Claire, one of the most respected photographers in the industry. I’m talking really, really expensive and really, really talented. The guy is the bride’s uncle. Who looks like the pro? Who is the pro? Imagine Payton Manning in jeans and a t-shirt standing on a football field with a $9.00 football from Wal-Mart. I am standing next to him, wearing brand new top of the line football gear and holding a $700 vealskin football. Yeah, that is what this picture looks like to me. Got it? No matter what equipment I might be wearing I still get scared when people expect me to even toss keys to them.All of that being said I will finally cut to the chase and tell you what to buy. There are many great cameras out there. This is one of many so don’t think that this is the only good camera out there. This is just one that I think balances features with price well.Canon PowerShot A570 ISHere are a couple of things that I like about this camera and would look for in a camera.Canon, I am not much a brand name follower but Canon has lead the industry for a while. Their cameras almost always dominate top 10 lists and the like.6.0 megapixels is a happy number (even though this has 7.1). Anymore and the you are paying for extra seats in your 15 passenger van. Any less than 4.0 and you are a little limited (but only a little). Camera manufactures have marketed camera by their megapixels. This is a little deceiving, you don’t really need any more than 6.0, tops. They can be a little hard to find though because of marketing.IS stands for image stabilization. This is a great feature that enables you to take pictures with less blur.Personally I like batteries over a charger. You can buy rechargeable batteries but if you forget to charge them you can always stop at a store and pick some up. Consumer’s Report says that Energizer e2 are the best pick and most economical battery for digital cameras.Screen size may seem like a simple feature but it is one that is worth paying for. It is hard to take a good picture if you can’t see it.Cameras should fit your lifestyle, small cameras fit into more pockets that large ones. A camera that is with you in your pocket on a trip will take much better pictures than one that you left in the car because it was too big to carry. Ask anyone who has been on vacation with me. I’m really bad at getting my camera out. It is just too big to be convenient.Those are a couple of features that I like about this camera. If you are looking at a camera and want to know what I think just email me and I will check it out for you.As for all of those photography tips that I kept mentioning, I will post some of those later. This post is getting a little long. From now on I will occasionally give simple photography tips and tricks that you can use with your point and shoot camera.I’m leaving you with this picture. These were taken by [b]ecker, another amazing photographer. He used his cell phone (ok it was an iPhone) to take them. Pretty good images for a noncamera!Rachel