Tag: photography

A Photo a Week Challenge: Playtime

I had the opportunity to do an extended family photo shoot, and these adorable cousins were having so much fun together. Even though they see each other often, they were so excited when they got together, and their enthusiasm made the whole shoot go off splendidly, even with the chilly weather. Big kudos to their parents and grandparents, who let them be kids and have moments like this, even if some might think they are wasting time (they weren’t, because I loved taking this photo).

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO OF KIDS (OF ANY AGE) BEING KIDS.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
  3. Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
  4. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.
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A Photo a Week Challenge: Bokeh

In photography, bokeh is the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens. In other words, it’s the quality of the intentionally blurry part of your image, or the background. While I love the flower in this photo, I really love the bokeh produced by my 50mm lens. It is my go-to lens for photographing flowers and people. As I shoot using Nikon cameras, my 50mm is a Nikor lens that I’ve had for over 10 years. I haven’t been able to beat it’s quality or flexibility, even though it has a dedicated focal length.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO THAT HAVE GREAT BOKEH.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
  3. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Vanishing Point

A vanishing point, also known as the point of convergence, is a key element in many works of art. Think of the vanishing point is the spot on the horizon line where the other lines diminish. It allows us to a create three-dimensional look in drawings, paintings, and photographs.

When shooting perspective images, sometimes the vanishing point is visible. Sometimes it’s not, as in my image. The curve of the vanishing point gives you the feeling that you know what is just beyond the curve in the road.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO (OR THREE…) THAT FEATURE A VANISHING POINT.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography. Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ and “Photo a Week” tags.
  3. Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
  4. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Focal Point

As a photographer, I take great care about what is in focus in my photos. Changing the focal point of an image can change the entire feel of the photo. In the images I’ve shared for today’s challenge, I’ve taken the same picture but changed the focus of the image. I love each image for different reasons.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A SERIES OF PHOTOS THAT SHOW THE SAME SCENE WITH DIFFERENT FOCUAL POINTS.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ and “Photo a Week” tags.
  3. Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
  4. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Multiple shapes

I enjoy combining shapes. This one is actually more than just a circle in a square. The pedals are triangular, the leaves are waterdrop shaped, and the steams are lines. It all makes for a diverse and interesting world in which we live. (English degree coming out in full-force there.)

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO THAT FEATURES MULTIPLE SHAPES OF ANY KIND IN THE SAME IMAGE.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ and “Photo a Week” tags.
  3. Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
  4. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Natural Lighting

I love not having to set up lighting. Flash stands and additional lighting is the bane of my photography existence. I love, love, LOVE natural lighting. I love shooting outdoors because I usually don’t have to worry too much about lighting (golden hour is ideal). I grabbed this photo of my sister-in-law at our family cabin one morning last summer when the lighting coming in the kitchen window was just perfect.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO (OR MORE) OF USING NATURAL LIGHTING.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
  3. Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
  4. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Unedited

A long, long time ago, I can still remember how the photos used to look. It used to be that photo editing was limited to the professionals and people who could afford a really cool dark room in their basements. Today with cell phone cameras, everyone is a photographer armed with pretty powerful editing programs and the ability to make a quick phone grab look like it came from a professional session. This weekend, my husband and I took a fun drive to Corner Canyon, which gives a great over-view look at both the Salt Lake and Utah County Valleys. I didn’t have any of my nicer cameras with me, so I took this with my phone. This shot is looking at Mount Timpanogos on the Utah County Valley side of things. Position, lighting, fluffy clouds…everything lined up for the perfect shot that needed no editing.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO (OR THREE…) THAT HAS NOT BEEN EDITED.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography. Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ and “Photo a Week” tags.
  3. Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
  4. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Weathered

A recent trend in photo editing is an edgy, black and white feeling. I’ve been doing a lot of trial and error to see if I could duplicate it. While this photo doesn’t show it off completely, I really like how this old, weathered log looks using my current experiment. Living close to the mountains and rural areas, I come across weathered items to photograph frequently. There are also a lot of different treatments that you can use to make an image look weathered. With this week’s challenge, try lots of different techniques.

And just for kicks and giggles, here’s one of my great niece with the treatment, so you can see how it looks on people.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO (OR THREE…) THAT SHOW EITHER WEATHERED ITEMS OR WITH WEATHERED TREATMENTS.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography. Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ and “Photo a Week” tags.
  3. Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
  4. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: That Face!

As much as I love doing portraits, I really enjoy taking candid photos even more. You get to see someone’s real personality when they aren’t worried about how they look or if their hair is perfect. My niece is actually really good about me taking her photo, whether in a formal portrait setting or grabbing a quick shot like this one.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A CANDID (SUBJECT OF YOUR CHOOSING) PHOTO OR TWO.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
  3. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Unexpected Focus

As  photographers, we try to be very careful about how, where, and what we focus on. We can spend large amounts of time getting the focus just right for an image. Then, there are the fun happenstances where what we thought we were focusing on isn’t what the camera thought we wanted to focus on. For this image, I focused on the foreground tree on purpose as my subject walked towards me along the pond’s edge. I loved the delicate blossoms on the tree, and I also loved how it gave her a feeling of privacy.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO OF WITH UNEXPECTED POINTS OF FOCUS.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
  3. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.