panning.

Panning is a photographic technique that refers to the movement of the camera as it captures the image of a subject. While a subject is in motion (this can be anything from a car, to a person, or an animal) the camera follows that motion while snapping a shot. The exposure of the image is set at a long enough time to show the movement of the camera in the foreground or background of the image, but not necessarily on the subject.

If that sounds a little like photog mumbo jumbo to you, then here's the simple explanation. Basically you take a picture of something moving. And instead of holding still while taking the picture, you track the target of your picture with your camera. That way, everything else in the image should look blurry and your target should look sharp...or pretty close to it.

So what I'm saying is, this panning technique can be pretty tricky.

Some tips for panning:
1. Shoot in a manual setting so your shutter speed can be a little slower. (1/60-1/125) This will add even more blur to your movement...thus making your picture even awesomer. (It's a word, peeps. Trust me.)

2. Take a lot of photos. A Pulitzer prize winning photographer once told me, "If you want one great picture, then throw away 999." That pretty much sums up my style of shooting. Shoot lots, then throw away the crap.

3. Try a panning shot on a faster moving subject to get even better blur.

Here's a panning shot I took in Hawaii. The couple were spinning in a circle, so as they came around toward me I arced the camera as I took the picture. I love the blur in her limbs and hair!

school picture idea.

I don't like school photos. No. That's not quite it.
I loathe, detest, abhor, shudder-at-the-thought-of, completely-gag-when-I-look-at, HATE school photos. They're bland. They lack personality. And sometimes...if you're lucky, there's a mirror and a nicely posed child with a fist under his chin. Blech.

So this year I was inspired by a little photo I saw on Pinterest. If you're unsure what that is, email me and I'll fill you in. Basically Pinterest = best time suck ever!
This year I let the kids decide what they wanted in their picture. A favorite toy. A back pack. It was up to them. Then after the shoot, I mcjiggered a little somethin' somethin' in Photoshop. And voila! School pictures with personality and pizazz. (Can you tell I'm big on alliteration?)

It's an easy project.
1. Snap the picture.
2. Load the picture in Photoshop or another photo editing software that allows you to place text on the image.
3. Using varying fonts, type info about your kid at that age.
4. Flatten your image (if you used layers) and save a new copy so as not to save over the original file.
5. Print. If you live in Utah County go to Pro Digital Photos. They're great and I use them for a lot of my family pictures.

Here are a few samples of what I made: