Spring Thoughts

    There is something to be said about the sights, smells and feeling of the sun warming your soul during spring. It is the fresh air and and unfettered feeling of being able to comfortably walk outside with out a coat on anymore. The environment becomes alive with the sounds of song birds singing and chirping. The contrasting beautiful green pushing up from the ground amongst the brown decaying grass sends a vibrant rejuvenating sight to my eyes.

   I look for this year to bring a lot of different things in life with many new adventures. This year I have the great honor of photographing two weddings with amazing couples. With that there are plans to shoot some engagement photos as well. The season change means it will be a great time to get out and start doing outdoor portraits again.  It is going to be a lot of fun working with the couples and getting to know them while capturing photos of their love for each other.

 
   I will leave you with some spring foliage photos from around the yard.

Canon 30D with 50mm f/1.8

Lilac bush - Canon 30D with 50mm f/1.8

Elm Tree - Canon 30D with 50mm f/1.8

 I was out practicing shooting with my Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens to play with the beautiful Bokeh and it's macro focusing abilities. When I came home Friday afternoon I had to act capture some photos before it became too dark.

Winter Photography

When it comes to winter in Minnesota, the past few years have been practically polar opposites in terms of precipitation. The lack of snow makes for great driving conditions, but unappealing settings for photos. So when you are looking to capture great photographs of winter I suggest thinking small. Like the photograph above I was lucky enough to stumble upon these ice crystals during a dense fog on this chain link fence. It is easy for to just stand back and take a photo of the frost covered fence, but the surrounding landscape did not provide for a clean focused image.

When you look at a subject you should always be mindful of what is going on in your background. If you have a busy or distracting background you will want to see if you can create enough "Bokeh" or a shallow depth of field with a wide angle lens. Use this to throw the foreground and background out of focus and keep your focal point tack sharp to draw a viewer's eye in to your subject. By using a large aperture ie. f/1.4 setting on your camera you can achieve this when you are zoomed in or at a long focal length.

Get out and photograph!