5 ways becoming a dad made me into a better photographer

Becoming a dad not only changed my life as a person but as a photographer as well. In fact, I feel like being a dad made me a better person and photographer.  Here are 5 specific ways in which fatherhood has helped hone my photography skills. 

  1) Being ready for those quick moments that will happen in a flash. With a 7 month old things happen very quickly and this helps me when photographing a event because the important moments happen very quickly as well. My child helps me focus on this skill more. 

  2) Making a scene work for you. When taking pictures of my son I have to photograph him in the scene he is in when he's playing with his toys or trying to crawl.  Sometimes the background can be very distracting so I have to work the scene to make the photo more appealing.  This can be helpful when photographing a client in a less ideal situation as well.  

 3) Testing my ability to work the light I have. The house I live in doesn't get the best light so I have to work with what's there, so that can be either increasing my IOS or bringing my son closer to the window to get the nice window light. During a wedding this is something that comes up frequently, so these situations with my son is helping me working with bad lighting more often. 

4) Being more selective of the "keepers". If I kept every image I have ever taken I would have thousands of images just of my son.  I am learning that the images that are not useable will never be missed, so I might as well delete them.  

5) Getting me to photograph more often. It is fairly common knowledge among photographers that the more you're out taking photos the better photographer you'll become.  I love my son and like any parent I want to take pictures of every moment in his life.  So this has gotten me to always have my camera near by and photographing more often and that is never a bad thing for a photographer.

Saving Eliza O'Neill

It is with great pleasure to be dedicating this months blog post to talk about a very special project that photographers around the world including myself am part of .  The name of this project is Called SavingEliza, and you can read about her story seen here .

Eliza was diagnosed with Sanfilippo Syndrome. The disorder, makes the body unable to properly break down long chains of sugar molecules called glycosaminoglycans. It will cause Eliza to lose many of her functions. First, she'll lose her speech, then her ability to walk, and she will suffer from seizures. And then, she will lose her life.

So photographers like myself  are donating their work to be sold for this cause. 100% of the processed goes to helping this Eliza. If you are interested in purchasing the print I donated click on this link http://savingeliza.smugmug.com/Featured/i-dVJmSRH/A.  Feel free to share this blog post on any social media platform you have.  Below is a sample of the image, and I want to thank everyone in advance for supporting me in this project!
Click HERE to be forwarded over to where you can purchase this print.

The Beauty That Never Gets Old

I have lived in Sonoma County for many years--25 to be exact.  There are many great things about living in California, such as the weather,the close proximity to the ocean, and for a photographer like me the landscape.  Another great thing about where I live is that I am only an hour away from one of the most amazing sites in the world.  Every year millions of people come to San Francisco just to see the GoldenGate Bridge, which I'm sure manywould agree is by far one of the most beautiful sites in the world.  I don't remember the exact time that I first saw this bridge, but to this day anytime I go to the city anddrive out of the "Rainbow Tunnel" (as I call it) it feels like the very first time seeing this magnificent bridge. So it goes without saying that it is probably one my favorite subjects to shoot.  In my album "San Francisco 'In My Eyes' " (seen here) I photograph the city in ways that I feel are different then how it is normally photographed.  I think the Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most photographed subjects in San Francisco, so when I am photographing it I try to do so in ways I think other people haven't thought of.  I want to show off the beauty, size and character that really make it unique.I am also always looking for thepicture that gives me the feeling of seeing it for the first time.  Below are a few photographs that I took coming home from a family portrait shot I did in San Francisco.  If you'd like to see more views of the Golden Gate, be sure to check out this link.  

Are Film Photographers a Dying Breed?

Recently I had a conversation with a photographer who does it as a hobby.  She mentioned that she still shoots film photography to this day.  This brought up a question for me: are film photographers a dying breed?  When I started thinking about this I couldn't help but wonder why I stopped shooting film.  I started in film photography and absolutely loved it (You can view and purchase some of my film prints here).  To this day I have great memories of being in the darkroom, listening to some music and watching something I created in the camera come to life on paper.  For a person who has never experienced this and has shot digital from the start I feel that this is a huge loss.  Not only do you get to see what you shoot come to life on paper but there are other advantages of shooting film.  The obvious advantage with digital is that you can make a mistake and it doesn't cost you a roll of film so you can shoot thousands of pictures without a care in the world.  But for me, working with film taught me how to be patient and wait for that right moment to click the shutter.  I also feel that film taught me how to expose a photo correctly and how to bracket (bracketing is where you take three photos: one where it should be and one overexposed and one underexposed) to get the perfectly exposed photo. Don't get me wrong here: I love digital photography and, trust me, I do tend to let the things I learned with film slip. Though why is it that with the love I had for film I never shoot film anymore?  Is it time, money, both or something completely different?  Trust me when I say that I do not have the answer to this question. I do, however, have a few ideas about why I think film photographers are a 'dying breed'.  

   First off, I think the main reason is that for photographers who are doing this as a business (like myself) film photography is just not cost effective.  If I were to shoot a wedding with film I would spend hundreds of dollars on film, then I would have to get those rolls of film developed and then printed. It is easy to see how after hundreds if not thousands of photos this could be very expense with film.  With digital photography this is not the case--you can take about a thousand photos on one thirty-two giga byte card for the cost of that card.  Another reason I think a lot of photographers don't shoot film anymore is technology.  I believe that with the advances of technology digital photography keeps getting better and better.  For a lot of film photographers their biggest complaint was that you just can't get the same quality photo that you can get with a digital camera.  Even one of the top film cameras--the Hasselbad--has gone digital with the H5D-50 (here).  I mean sure, that camera is a whopping $44,000- way out of the price range of a lot of photographers, but it is a beast of a camera and in my opinion, just as good if not better then a lot of film cameras. So all this brings me back to my original question: are film photographers a dying breed? 

   I believe to find photographers that used to shoot film or still do to this day is very rare.  But I also feel that the ones who do still shoot film do it because of their love for film and nothing else.  For these photographers not shooting film would be like taking away their one true love.  So with that in mind I don't feel that film will ever completely go away.  What do you think?  Do you think that film photography will one day be a thing of the past? Let me know in the comment section below.

5 ways to improve your iPhone photos

Smartphones, especially the iPhone, has been a game changer for consumers. People are starting to find that it is useless to buy small compact cameras when their iPhone can do what these compact camera do, albeit with some limitations. What the iPhone lacks, it makes up for in easy to use features and thousand of apps to edit your photos with your imagination the only limit.  In this post I want to talk about five tips to make the most use out of your iPhone.

1) The first issue is the bad image stabilization that the iPhone has.  Fixing this is simple. All you have to do is really focus on using two hands as much as possible when taking the photos.  Though an easy way fix this problem is to get a tripod for your iPhone, kind of like the gorilla pod. You can buy one on Amazon (click here to see what they look like).  I have one of these for my DSLR and I love it!

2) Find an app that does a good job with editing.  Even with the photos I take with my DSLR I always edit them by correcting color, adding contrast, or fixing the brightness or darkness of the photo. I do the same thing with the photos I take with my iPhone.  The edit that I feel is the most important is adding sharpness to the photo.  Since the iPhone tends to produce soft photos, adding some sharpness to the image is extremely important.  One of my favorite apps to edit photo's is Snapseed (click here to see the app for yourself)

3) For better focusing or to select a focus on a certain area click on the area you want focused.  For example, if you want to focus on just a person's face you click on the screen where the person's face is and you will see a orange box go to that area. 

4) Sometimes by manually controlling your flash you will get a better result.Have you ever seen a photo you've taken where it is way too bright?Turning your flash on and off rather than keeping it in auto could help you avoid this problem. 

5) Using the HDR mode can help you get a better exposed image.  On your iPhone you might have seen a mode called "HDR" which is by default turned off.  If you click that button it will say in orange lettering "HDR On."  Although for photographers like myself HDR photos are a whole other ball game, this mode on the iPhone does serve a purpose.  The purpose in this case really is to help you get a better exposed image.  For example, let's say you're taking a photo in the middle of the afternoon and yoursubject has lots of harsh shadows.  Well give the HDR mode a try and you might find that you are able to get more details in those once dark shadows.  My only caution is that if you have this mode on you are no longer able to use the flash.

One Year of Blogging

"Time flies when you're having fun" is the first thing that comes to mind when I think about how this month marks one full year of blogging.  I have really enjoyed sharing with the world not only my photography but my thoughts behind it as well.  I started this blog with the hope of sharing with people why I do what I do and what drives me to be a photographer.  For instance, in the post "In The Zone" , I shared some of my feelings about how when I photograph I just kind of zone out and it's only me and my camera. 

In my very first post here I talked about how I wanted to share with you all the collections of my work, whether it was a landscape shoot or a wedding.  As I started to blog more and more I found myself adding a few tips.  This started with this post here and I will probably be doing more from time to time.  I enjoy writing these tips because it not only can help my readers but it also gets me thinking about the technical side of approaching what I do.

So all in all it has been a great year and I have gotten such good feedback from my readers.  I am sometimes in awe of how many people read my blog, and I love to see which posts get the most interaction.  I find it interesting to see which ones my readers like the best versus the ones that are my own favorites.  I noticed that the most read post is the one called "The Editing Process", where I let the readers choose which photo they like best, that can be seen here.  My favorite post from this year, however, is the one about my son being born called "Dropping The Camera To Live In the Moment".  You can view that post here.  When it's all said and done, I am just really enjoying writing these blogs and I hope that you are enjoying reading them.  Please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts about my blog and which post was your favorite from my first year of blogging.  

Saying Goodbye

As I look back at 2013 and go through the photographs I have taken I think back on how great of a year I had in photography.  I had the pleasure of photographing some really great people from senior portraits to head shots.  I also got to witness a few wedding and capture some amazing moments.  Along with this I went out and photographed the world as I see it, taking photo's of some really amazing landscapes and producing some great images.  As the year past I thought about what it is that truly inspires me to do what I do, I thought of the best way to sum it up was by this quote "I combine fine art and photography to make amazing images".  When I thought of that I realized that is exactly what I am trying to do not just take photographs but be the artist that I am.  Through the years I think I have fought that though in 2013 and I learn to expect it and I couldn't be happier with the direction its taking me.   So all in all it was a great year of photography and I got some great images to go along with it, below is a slideshow of those images.  Leave a comment below and tell me what of one of your favorite parts of 2013.

Please keep in mind that it doesn't work on smartphones though if you click this link http://www.k-ophotography.com/Photography/Best-of-2013 can go directly to the gallery to view the images.