DESIGN 6: FRONT
DESIGN 6: INSIDE
Message: “Peace. Hope. Happiness. Health,” signed in the empty space on the right side.
DESIGN 6: BACK
Specs: Horizontal wide format 5×7 card on archival linen, folded in the middle. The card opens on the short end resulting in a unique wide format card that opens to a full 5×14 spread.Do you know this family? Help them win a prize by leaving a comment about their card design!
What I love about this design — the bright colors and patina texture remind me of the ocean and sand, where we took the pictures. I especially love the inside spread with the natural smiles of the boys as they play on the beach. The “film scratches” were added in Photoshop simply because something about these photos reminds me of an age gone by, and that reminds all of us to save and cherish our childhood memories. And who can resist smiling back at those beautiful eyes and bright smiles on the front of the card? I love it! Love the back, too, with the shot of the boys running off to play.
Click here for contest details, but be sure to click your browser’s “back” button to get back to this post so that you can leave a comment about THIS card design, especially if you are commenting in order to help your friends win the prize!
Cheers! And thanks for visiting the blog!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 11:40 am
I finally made it to one of Gregory’s basketball games. Go Nuggets! (This is a spot-metered shot. I love it!)
ISO 2000 1/800s at f/8. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 200 mm
So I’ll just post some pictures, along with the camera settings. I’m loving my new Nikon D3!
ISO 2500 1/500s at f/2.8. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 200 mm
SCORE! (The other team scored, and we all cheered!)
ISO 6400 1/1000s at f/4.5. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 80 mm
Caption contest alert! (The first caption to make me laugh wins a $10 iTunes gift card via e-mail!)
ISO 6400 1/1000s at f/4.5. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 80 mm
A little brother at the sidelines, with light from an overhead window and sunlight shining on a wall pad behind him. Cool, huh?
ISO 4000 1/1000s at f/2.8. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 80 mm
That’s his big brother.
ISO 2000 1/800s at f/4.5. 135 mm lens
Gather UP!
ISO 2000 1/800s at f/2.2. 135 mm lens
The players are always given a good look at who they’re guarding.
ISO 2000 1/400s at f/2.2. 135 mm lens
Break time.
ISO 4000 1/1250s at f/2. 135 mm lens
She sits next to me in choir!
ISO 6400 1/1000s at f/4.5. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 200 mm
Gregory gets a pep talk from the coach. That big window at the ceiling acts like the sort of huge softbox they use to light scenes on Grey’s Anatomy. (Yes, I’m addicted.)
ISO 3600 1/800s at f/4. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 80 mm
Nice form!
ISO 2000 1/800s at f/4. 135 mm lens.
Looks like fun, doesn’t it?
ISO 4000 1/1250s at f/2. 135 mm lens
Spot meter exposes correctly for my focal point, but blows out the background. I don’t care. I still like the shot. It makes it easy to see who I’m focusing on.
ISO 2000 1/800s at f/3.5. 135 mm lens
Shoot! Shoot!
ISO 4000 1/1250s at f/2. 135 mm lens
Rebound! Rebound!
ISO 5600 1/1000s at f/2.8. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 80 mm
Defense! Defense! (Wait a minute. Where’s the ball?)
ISO 4000 1/1250s at f/2. 135 mm lens
Look at that! Gregory’s actually paying attention! He LOVES basketball!
ISO 2000 1/800s at f/2.8. 135 mm lens
Nuggets SCORE!
ISO 6400 1/1000s at f/4.5. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 80 mm
Good game. Good game. Good game. Good game.
ISO 4000 1/1250s at f/2. 135 mm lens
(Good game.)
ISO 4000 1/1250s at f/2. 135 mm lens
What was that famous line from Happy Days after Richie’s basketball game?
ISO 2500 1/800s at f/10. 135 mm lens (Whoa! I totally should have opened up the aperture when I went outside. This is why we practice with new cameras!)
That’s it for today’s testing. I loved the game, Gregory! It’s fun to watch you play!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 11:45 pm
Call me crazy, but I love school concerts!
ISO 3600 1/125s at f/6.3. 14-24 mm lens. Focal length: 24 mm
That’s Bradley in the black tie when the chorus was lining up. Notice how he’s purposefully NOT noticing me.
ISO 2500 1/250s at f/4.5. 135 mm lens.
Great place to test my new camera, of course — such a bad lighting situation. But the music was good!
ISO 2000 1/320s at f/2.8. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 105 mm
The kids liked this part of the song, except Bradley’s got the 7th grade eye roll thing DOWN. I use so many prime lenses (lenses with a fixed focal point — they don’t zoom) that I totally forgot I could zoom in closer with this 80-200 mm lens. But I love how the picture shows all the different expressions. I’m glad I didn’t zoom!
ISO 2000 1/320s at f/2.8. 80-200 mm lens. Focal length: 105 mm
Bradley’s in the band too. (Clarinet on the second row, but don’t even try squinting because you can’t see him in this low res Web version.) I can’t come to the concert tonight, so I usually try to go during the day when the ensembles perform for a school assembly. One of the teachers came up to me during a staging break, looked at my big camera and said, “You’re scaring the children.”
The bands sounded GREAT! We’re talking LIGHT YEARS ahead of my middle school band! They played Bohemian Rhapsody and Bolero! My band: Silent Night and Away in a Manger.
ISO 3600 1/125s at f/6.3. 14-24 mm lens. Focal length: 24 mm
That’s NOT Bradley in high-waters and white ankle socks! (Thanks to Mike’s latest greatest internet find of custom-made pants that actually fit those who are so tall and super-thin they can’t find pants that fit in any store. Trust me. We’ve looked everywhere there is to look.) This is one of those shots I never could have gotten with my old camera. I LOVE my new Nikon D3! Oh, and I don’t know who that kid is, but I’m telling you, if he was at my middle school, the kids would have LOVED those ankle socks!
ISO 6400 1/100s at f/6.3. 28-70 mm lens. Focal length: 70 mm
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 12:49 pm
DESIGN 5: FRONT
DESIGN 5: INSIDE
Message: “Brightest days and warmest nights/may your holidays be filled with joy.”
DESIGN 5: BACK
Specs: Horizontal 5×7 card on archival linen with the inside design spanning the inside spread vertically, folded in the middle.Do you know this family? Help them win a prize by leaving a comment about their card design!
What I love about this design — I had SO much fun working with this family! The picture on the back of the card is one of my all-time favorite images, a spontaneous family hug with mom and dad’s faces showing natural, unposed smiles as they gaze into the eyes of their adolescent children. Who wouldn’t want to memorialize a picture like that by putting it on a Christmas card? It’s perfect! Even so, I didn’t want it to compete too heavily with the front of the card, so I gave it a washed texture to make it just a bit more subtle than the front. When I went to this family’s home to deliver prints (including that picture on the back as a 16×20!) their home and yard were decorated to the nines with lights and beautiful ornaments. I wanted to bring that out in the card by giving the front an all-decked-out-for-Christmas theme. I kept the inside simple to balance the decked-out front, again, mimicking the family’s style of a fun exterior with one simple theme: family is everything.
Click here for contest details, but be sure to click your browser’s “back” button to get back to this post so that you can leave a comment about THIS card design, especially if you are commenting in order to help your friends win the prize!
Cheers! And thanks for visiting the blog!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 7:55 am
DESIGN 4: FRONT
DESIGN 4: INSIDE
Message: “Wishing you a Christmas touched with wonder. Happy Holidays”
DESIGN 4: BACK
Specs: Vertical 5×7 card on archival linen with the inside design spanning the inside spread, folded in the middle.Do you know this family? Help them win a prize by leaving a comment about their card design!
What I love about this design — the sweet image on the front of the baby in focus and the out-of-focus parents gazing adoringly at him is beautiful, for one thing. I love the three-dimensional effect of the baby popping out of the scene! And I love the inside design, with the large image of the baby with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks measuring a full 5×7. Extended family members who receive this card could frame that portion if they wish to, so for the price of a card design, this family also got to send out frameable 5×7 images to all the aunts and uncles and grandmas on their list. The overall theme of the card was designed to compliment the family’s wardrobe of soft leather textures and rich brown colors.
Click here for contest details, but be sure to click your browser’s “back” button to get back to this post so that you can leave a comment about THIS card design, especially if you are commenting in order to help your friends win the prize!
Cheers! And thanks for visiting the blog!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 7:50 am
I’ve had two official shoots now with my new camera. I’m loving it! But here’s my problem. I took the photo above with the new Nikon D3 this morning before worship began. Take a look at the meta data below. ISO 3200! With my old camera, a Nikon D200, any image taken above ISO 800 would have had so many ugly digital artifacts, or noise, in the picture (way uglier than film grain) that I would have spent quite a bit of time messing with the image in Photoshop in an attempt to “fix” it.
ISO 3200. 1/100s at f/5.6. 14-24 mm lens. Focal length: 24 mm
The youth choir was singing this morning. I’m thrilled that I was able to take this picture, and in the high resolution version, the beautiful faces of our young singers are sharply in focus and there’s no troubling graininess to deal with. Plus, because I can use such a high ISO, that also means I can shoot with a much more narrow aperture, allowing for a much larger focal plane. This means that the faces in the front row will be as sharply focused as the faces in the back row. Awesome!
ISO 3200. 1/100s at f/5.6. 28-70 mm lens. Focal length: 35 mm
So what’s the problem, you ask? See how nice that picture looks? I did practically nothing to it except give it a very slight saturation bump. (I always do that with RAW files because the camera expects that the photographer wants a custom level of saturation in RAW mode).
ISO 6400. 1/100s at f/5.6. 28-70 mm lens. Focal length: 62 mm
Here’s the problem: to contrast, this is a picture from Christmas Eve of the Christmas Pageant cast taken with my old camera, a Nikon D200. If you compare this picture with the one above it, you might think they look reasonably similar, and they do, but KNOW THIS: for the top three pictures, I spent virtually NO time tweaking them on the computer. For this one, I spent at least half an hour on that one image. And it still looks yucky! Admittedly, the lighting conditions are not the same, so it’s a flawed test, but it’s such a vast difference in usable camera settings that I now know that next year’s picture of the pageant cast will be SO much clearer!
In the high resolution version of the picture above, the faces are blurry and there’s noticeable grain noise. I removed as much noise as I could in Photoshop, but when you remove noise, sharpness decreases exponentially. Plus, there is some layer masking in that shot to try to even out the light and dark areas, and yet it still looks uneven.
I give up. Thing is, I have lots of pictures from Christmas Eve (before I got my new camera) that I still need to edit. *sigh*
(Nikon D200) ISO 800. 1/100s at f/3.5. 17-50 mm lens. Actual focal length: 36 mm. (Focal length equivalent to full frame camera: 54 mm)
But I still love the pageant pictures! If you go to my church, be sure to check the bulletin board outside the education office next Sunday for some prints! Above, I love this picture of Sophie as baby Jesus! Isn’t her family adorable?
This is not the first time we’ve seen Sophie on the blog. I was so happy when the church staff asked her family to be in the pageant. First of all, I’m the director, and secondly, I’m the resident photographer AND I’ve been documenting Sophie’s first year since her mom’s maternity session. These pictures from the pageant will add so much to Sophie’s “First Year” book! Keep watching this space for her family’s Christmas card design coming soon too.
(Nikon D200) ISO 800. 1/80s at f/4.5. 17-50 mm lens. Actual focal length: 34 mm. (Focal length equivalent to full frame camera: 51 mm).
That’s it for today’s D3 vs. D200 discussion. Bottom line: I am so excited by the places my new camera will take me! Woo hoo! And SO much less time tweaking on the computer! Yay!
Oooh! Here’s one more of Sophie and her mom and dad.
So cute! (She’s smiling at her grandma!)
I love my church family!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 8:02 pm
DESIGN 3: FRONT
DESIGN 3: FRONT FLAP
Message: “A beautiful Christmas of joy, peace and wonder.”
DESIGN 3: INSIDE SPREAD
Overall size: 15×5. The card was signed underneath the family picture.
DESIGN 3: BACK
Specs: Horizontal 5×5 tri-fold card on archival linen with the inside design spanning the inside spread, folded in thirds.Do you know this family? Help them win a prize by leaving a comment about their card design!
What I love about this design — I designed this card with a clear blue background because I dream of blue skies for this family. The clean lines compliment their minimalist style, and the snowflakes compliment stenciling created by the children’s grandmother in their rooms. I especially love the front design of this card with just a picture of hand-holding. To me, that’s what the holidays are all about, hand-holding being the simplest way to show affection, especially between mother and child when part of the reason for hand-holding is to guide and protect.
Click here for contest details, but be sure to click your browser’s “back” button to get back to this post so that you can leave a comment about THIS card design, especially if you are commenting in order to help your friends win the prize!
Cheers! And thanks for visiting the blog!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 7:33 am
DESIGN 2: FRONT
DESIGN 2: INSIDE
Message: “Warmest greetings from our family to yours.”
DESIGN 2: BACK
Specs: Vertical 5×7 card on archival linen with the inside design spanning the inside spread, folded in the middle.Do you know this family? Help them win a prize by leaving a comment about their card design!
What I love about this design — the warmth generated by the careful cropping of the lamp on the front echoes the theme of warmth of the family gathered around the chiminea, the metaphorical warmth of family gatherings as classic as Rockwell. The faux textures and deep red color compliment this client’s exquisite sense of style.
Click here for contest details, but be sure to click your browser’s “back” button to get back to this post so that you can leave a comment about THIS card design, especially if you are commenting in order to help your friends win the prize!
Cheers! And thanks for visiting the blog!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 7:45 am
An entire post about my walk to the Small Circle Woods with Bradley sparked a little bit of sibling rivalry, so in order to test some more features with my new Nikon D3, Gregory and I went for a walk. I’ve been reading the manual slowly, and trying out new features, so it was a good opportunity to test some things I was curious about, like how to shoot on manual settings on a bright sunny day in little shade and not blow out the whites. Keep in mind that my style generally involves photographs with blurry backgrounds for a painted effect, so I often shoot with a wide open aperture. All pictures below are from RAW files straight out of the camera. The only change is that they have been resized and saved as jpg for Web display.
Above, I got a lot of shots of Gregory walking through the woods looking down. It was muddy and he was freaked out about falling on the slippery rug of leaves.
ISO 250. 1/800s at f/2. 135 mm lens.
He looked up!
ISO 250. 1/800s at f/2. 135 mm lens.
We were looking at all the sweet gum trees in the woods. Gregory decided the really big ones should be called Gigumbus Trees. I like that word, gigumbus. It’s pronounced ji-GUM-bus. I’ll use it in a sentence: Julie’s new camera is gigumbus! She’s going to need a new neck soon. (Oooh. That was two sentences.)
ISO 250. 1/800s at f/4. 135 mm lens.
It was actually quite dark in this little valley, other than the obvious sunlight streaming in on Greg’s face. I wanted to see if I could expose the shot and not completely lose the background while also not blowing out the skin tones. I also closed up the aperture some because I didn’t want to completely blur the background.
ISO 250. 1/1250s at f/8. 135 mm lens. Exposure compensation: –1/3.
Greg is not very patient with me when it comes to look-at-the-camera portraits. I had to be quick on this. I would have turned him slightly to get the sun off the end of his nose, except my subject would only allow one shutter click and he wasn’t “getting” my “turn slightly to your left” direction so I just took it and hoped for the best. Ugh. I love his raised eyebrow. He reminds me of Jack Nicholson sometimes with those eyebrows and Michael Douglas with his dimpled chin.
ISO 250. 1/800s at f/2. 135 mm lens.
Look! There’s Santa coming out of that house!
ISO 250. 1/800s at f/8. 135 mm lens.
The spot meter works very well to expose the shot based on where I set my focal point. Alas, the background is too blown out for my taste, so if this were a shot I really loved and wanted to print, I would drop two exposures of this into Photoshop and layer mask them together in order to craft a picture that would seem to have been exposed properly. Sneaky, huh? But I’m happy to know the spot meter works as it should.
ISO 400. 1/400s at f/5.6. 135 mm lens.
I like this one a lot. Gregory was having a great time unblocking the “river.” I like shots that make me recall giggles and happy smiles.
ISO 400. 1/400s at f/4. 135 mm lens.
Back home, he went straight back to building Legos.
ISO 2500. 1/125s at f/2.8. 135 mm lens.
Do you see Mike in the background?
ISO 2500. 1/160s at f/2.8. 135 mm lens.
There he is, concentrating on putting some tiny round Lego peg into some tiny square Lego hole.
ISO 3200. 1/125s at f/2.8. 135 mm lens.
See?
ISO 3200. 1/125s at f/2.8. 135 mm lens.
This is the dark corner just inside our foyer. I can’t believe this picture came out so nice! Can you read the name of the store? My mom gave me that house. Thanks Mom!
ISO 3200. 1/125s at f/2.8. 135 mm lens.
I’ve been using my 135 mm lens so much I thought I’d see how the full frame camera looks on my 50 mm lens. Cool! I wanted to see how far I could push the aperture to get a sharp background with little noise.
ISO 6400. 1/200s at f/6.3. 50 mm lens.
That’s it for today’s testing. Happy new year!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 8:50 am
DESIGN 1: FRONT
DESIGN 1: INSIDE
Message: “Wishes of warmth and joy this holiday season.”
DESIGN 1: BACK
Specs: Vertical 5×7 card on archival linen with the inside design spanning the inside spread, folded in the middle.Do you know this family? Help them win a prize by leaving a comment about their card design!
What I love about this design — the rich earth tones compliment the beach theme, conveying an overall sense of warmth. The photo on the back of the boy playing soccer is beautiful as a sepia-toned image, complimenting the classic styling.
Click here for contest details, but be sure to click your browser’s “back” button to get back to this post so that you can leave a comment about THIS card design, especially if you are commenting in order to help your friends win the prize!
Cheers! And thanks for visiting the blog!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 7:50 am
