52week Challenge
A simply maybe not so simple 52-week guide on capturing candid moments with your family and your life from a professional photographer’s perspective. I will include weekly challenges and tips along the way to help you capture an image with different angles/perspectives. While assisting you through learning basic camera settings and understanding the importance of light. This blog is made based on natural light and how to manipulate your situation and settings to best use this light. A full-frame dslr camera and wide-angle 35mm or 50mm 2.0f stop lens or lower is suggested but you can follow along with these challenges with any photo-taking device as well.
If you read that first paragraph and were like holy sh*t that’s a lot of photographer jargon this isn’t for me let me ease your fears this is for every level of a photographer; the I just have a phone and want to capture every moment, the I’m a beginner but I have some experience and I’ve been doing photography as a business for a while but forget to take pictures of my family photographer. You don’t have to be an expert to see or set up a special moment and save it. I started doing challenges for myself because I was getting caught up in work and missing out on capturing moments of my own family. Enough of all the Wordy Lead-in.
Week 1: Take a step back and capture the full room
For this challenge I want you to do just that go to the corner, the hall, the doorway, and capture the full scene. We often don’t show the full room hiding clutter or messes but they add a natural beautiful story to our images. Stepping back, we can see the time of day by where the light is falling through the window, we can build a story on what we see around the space, toys throughout the rooms showing the child’s transition throughout the day. I want you to take this week to see the opportunities in the full scope.
Tip for the week:
To create more depth in your image, create a foreground by allowing part of the door frame or hallway wall to remain in the image. In doing this we have a basis of focus we have the foreground i.e. the door frame, the middle ground what is in focus ‘the subject’, and the background. If you are using a dslr camera with a lens that has low aperture capabilities set it to the lowest aperture settings f1.8, f2, f2.2, or f2.5, and make sure your focal point is fixed on the smallest part of your subject usually the eyes. This will make your subject sharp and your background will have a nice bokhen or blurred effect drawing our eye to the subject. For light consider opening curtains and blinds to allow the most light in and setting the camera to iso400 and adjusting your shutter speed to accommodate. Happy shooting make sure to share your images with the hashtag #52weekstepback
