Sisters' bonding

I was sitting down watching the 2 little princesses walking towards my direction. They were holding hands and they just looked so lovely. The bonding between them must be very strong.

I always think that walking shot is one of the natural pose (without thinking that there is a camera ready to shoot at you, that is). I took a shot with my flash on and checked on the photo. It seems over exposed. They walked from a corridor into an unsheltered walkway and the sunlight was shinning to them directly. I should not have my flash on.


I quickly took another shot wihtout the flash before the kids walked away from me (they are seriously camera shy).

ISO: 400
Shutter: 1/640 sec
Aperture: f2.8
Focal length: 50
Flash: No

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/KidsShots14Aug2010

Dancing in the dark

It was 6pm plus and it was raining heavily outside. The sky was dark and there was no light in the hall.

We were told that the light will automatically be turned on at 7pm (unfortunately there was no light sensor installed at the hall to detect the ambient condition). Sometimes i think it is just stupid to base on the time to trigger the light if there is an event going on in that area.

The program at that time was to have all the kids dancing and jumping around. With such dark environment, it was quite impossible to shoot without any motion blur...


ISO: 1600
Shutter: 1/20 sec
Aperture: f2.8
EV: -1.3
Flash: Yes

To minimize the motion blur (it did help a little bit), I stopped down the EV to -1.3, boosted the ISO to 1600, and with the aperture wide open. As a result, I managed to get a shutter speed of 1/20 sec. The photo would turn out underexposed (and lotsa noise) and I was hoping that the flash could at least brightened the photo.

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/KidsShots14Aug2010

Host behind the birthday cake

Wow! So crowded!

Time to sing birthday song to the birthday girls. Every kids started crowding in front of the cake, including some adults, leaving me no space to take photos of the family.

No choice, I couldn't chase them away to give me space, just have to find myself a corner to stand. Hmm... Since I was shooting from the side, I need to make sure the father standing furthest away to have a non-blur face. If I were to use f2.8 and focus on the kids, then the father's face would be blur. If I were to focus on the father, then the kid's face would be blur.


ISO: 1600
Shutter: 1/125 sec
Aperture: f5
Focal length: 18mm
Flash: Yes

I selected f5 and thought it was sufficient to keep everyone looked sharp on the photo. Happy Birthday and blow the candles!

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/KidsShots14Aug2010

Young Mothers, and Kids

Time for group photos. With such a big group, everyone had to squeeze in so that my not so wide angle lens can get everyone into the frame.

I was not the only one holding the camera. There were husbands around me trying to take the photos too. So the big group could get confuse easily on which camera to look at. I just had to take a few more shots hoping that everyone will look at my camera for an instant.

No luck. I was checking the photos after the group shot. None of the photos has everyone looking at my camera.


Luckily there is photoshop. Putting aside the kids (kids are easily distracted and they hardly/refuse to look at the camera patiently), I decided to at least edit the mothers' faces to make them looking at my camera. I used the photo above as a base and the circled parts were those I wanted to edit.

In the below photos, I used Lasso tool in photoshop to cut out the faces that I wanted to replace. Then I pasted them to the base photo amd used the vector mask to blend the faces.


It was time consuming, but it was quite satisfying looking at the final result. All mothers were looking at the camera, finally~


Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/MothersAndKidsShots2May2010

Eye Level

When shooting people, I think it is always good to shoot at same eye level. It applies to kids' photos too. So to take some decent photos of kids, squating down is a must!

Rather than waiting for kids to lift their heads up looking at the camera, squating down bring the camera to kids' eye level, which attracted their attention to certain extend. At least I felt that they look at the camera more often than while I was standing up. That made it easier for me to snap their photos.

There were things to look out for when squating down. Kids like running around. I had to be aware that the kids might run into my camera (next, you would be hearing some loud cry~). The kids pushed me and leant on me. So I had to be stable too...

It was tiring to squat down and take photos~ And since kids were running around all the time, I needed to keep varying the focal length and turned my head very often to snap them.

Tiring, but fun!


Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/MothersAndKidsShots2May2010

Happy Birthday!

The birthday party was for all the May babies!


All the kids who were born in May 2 years ago surrounded the cake, and all the parents surrounded their kids. Guess what, that left me no place to stand for shooting photos! Haha...

That left me no choice. I just grabbed a chair and stood on it to have a view on the inside circle. Unfortunately, I am not tall enough to take the photos with the camera at my eye level. I had my camera set to multi-focus, turned the flash on, lifted my camera high up, and I went shooting blindly. I hoped I was lucky enough to have a few decent shots.


Below photo show the mothers' hands helping the kids to cut the cake. And those hands were blocking the kids' faces~ Kids: 'Let me have a look at the cake!'. Haha...


Of course, parents were busy taking photos of their kids! Look at the cameras on their hands pointing towards the kids. I lifted my camera higher than them~ Happy Birthday to May babies!


Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/MothersAndKidsShots2May2010

From Top Down

Although I am not tall, standing among 2 years old kids made me feel tall. This posts a problem instantly for photoshooting. Shooting from my eye level down would make the kids look even shorter!


From the above photos, the kids' legs seem being shortened when shooting from top down. The kids' foreheads looked bigger than normal (nearer to the lens), and the legs look shorter than normal (further from the lens). This is especially obvious when the kids did not look at the camera. I can't expect kids to always lift up their heads and look at me...

After shooting a few shots from top down, I noticed that some shots turned out pretty okay. So I was thinking, it may be better to shoot the kids with them facing my camera. This would eliminate the big forehead problem. Another thing that I noticed is that, try not to shoot the whole legs. It helps to prevent the short looking illusion. Below are some of the photos for example.


Oh ya, try making the aperture as large as possible. The depth of field created will blur out the lower part of the kids, which somehow makes the photos look better.

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/MothersAndKidsShots2May2010