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

Background Color

My mission was to take the photos of the baby. I was neither thinking much on how to position the baby, nor the kind of background that best bring out the baby.

I was tired of squating down to shoot the baby. Since the light from the windows was shinning at the sofa (gave me fast enough shutter speed), and I would be able to sit down on the floor to shoot the baby, I get the baby up to the sofa. The baby can roll around the sofa comfortably without worrying knocking his head on the floor. Of course, I am guarding the edge of the sofa to prevent the baby from falling down straight to the floor.

After shooting and checking on the photos, I noticed that the sofa background color was pretty good in bringing out the color of the baby's skin. He was fair, and the background was dark. The contrast made the baby outstanding. Hmm... the baby looked good with dark brown background.

I was shooting at f1.8 at 50mm. It helped to create the depth of field isolating the baby, emphasizing the baby while de-emphasizing the foreground (seat cushion in front of the baby) and background (back cushion behind the baby).


Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/BabyShots25Dec2008

Directional light

Sometimes I heard people talking about directional light. Photos can turn out good by not shinning the light source directly on to the person's face. So it is not surprise that we see photographers with external flash always trying to bounce the flash to create a directional light. Unfortunate for internal flash though, as it always shines direct to the object.

With the baby lying down on the floor, I noticed the shadow of his nose on his right face. The light was shinning from the left side through the windows. I thought the shadow might make the photo looks good, so I took a few shots, with flash off, and room light off.


I think directional light is good for potrait shots as it creates shadow and contrast. Hmm... but I don't think is a good idea to play too much on the directional light when taking group photos. Someone face will be covered with shadow...

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/BabyShots25Dec2008

Smile, baby smile~

I was visiting a family on Christmas day to see the huge xmas tree they put in the house, and their new born baby. Maybe not so new (7 months old?)?

My friends wanted me to take photos of their baby. I tried a few shots to check the lighting in the house. First, I did it with the ceiling light on, but it wasn't bright enough. The photos turned out a bit under exposed. Later, I tried with the internal camera flash, the effect was just too harsh (I did not have an external flash yet...).

It was noon and there was sunlight shinning into the house through the windows. So I opened the curtain and just used the sunlight through the windows. To get a proper expose photo of the baby, I had the baby sitting down facing the light with the xmas tree behind him.


I pushed the ISO up to 800 to let more ambient light in to my camera (and also to get a higher shutter speed) , and shot the baby with f1.8. The f-stop helped to create bokeh effect on the xmas tree deco, which made the baby and his smile (also bokeh - no teeth) stood out.

I can see his saliva dripping too~

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/BabyShots25Dec2008

Waist level

This kid was very shy and kept looking away from my camera. Whenever I held my camera up and pointed towards her, she would instinctively look away. I could not press the shutter fast enough and ended up with a few blur shots (due to low light condition).

I decided to try shooting 'blindly'. I set the multi-sensor Auto Focus to let the camera find its own focus point. Then I hold my camera down at the waist level when the kid was not looking at me.

Luckily I managed to capture her image at one trial, if not she would definitely notice that I was snapping her photo!

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/BabyAndKidShotsDec2008

The big eyes

Couldn't help kept looking at the big eyes and long eye lashes of this baby.

I was finding a chance to shoot an innocent look of him. While he was staring at the food, I quickly focused on him and pressed the shutter. Where was the best spot to focus on? The eyes, obviously. They were just too big~ =D

The room lighting was low, so I pumped the ISO up to 800, and kept the aperture of the lens wide open.

I was lucky to get this shot! Babies are very active and they will not sit still, especially baby boy...

I adjusted the color level of the original photo (on the right) in photoshop. The original photo was yellowish due to the lighting of the room.


I like this photo a lot and decided to set it as the background of this blog.

To make the photo blends into the white background, I used the 'Gradient' function in photoshop. It helped create a soft look on the photos.

This is how I do it. First, open up the photo in photoshop, the photo will show up as a background layer. Select the whole image and copy into a new sheet. The reason being photoshop will not let you modify anything that is classified under background.

In the new sheet, the image will show up as 'layer 1'. Add a layer mask to this image (layer 1). Next, select 'Gradient' tool from the toolbar, and start playing with the tool until you get a satisfying result. Below is the after processing photo.

Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/kcshashin/BabyAndKidShotsDec2008