focal length: 32 mm
shutter speed: 1/320
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 200
flash: none

I was snapping away under vastly changing lighting conditions (shade-no shade) in manual mode and forgot to check my settings. I was just too excited trying to get a shot of Sophie and her shadow. So guess what happened? Yup. I totally overexposed the shot since I was previously shooting in the shade.

This is what it looked like SOOC:

I know… so, how in the world did I get it to look like the top image? Luckily I shot in RAW and was able to recover a lot of the detail. I did lose highlights on her skin but I got all the concrete texture back. Lesson learned: shoot in RAW and chimp!

You are “chimping” when you check your LCD after your shot. Although the LCD doesn’t show you a true representation of your photo, it can sure help in these situations. Hint: keep your camera playback mode in histogram view to check your tonal range to get better feedback of your exposure.

Laura is a Vancouver wedding and portrait photographer. Visit laurahana.com.

focal length: 70 mm
shutter speed: 1/3200
aperture: f/3.2
ISO: 200
flash: none

I’ve been forcing myself to shoot in manual mode for the past couple weeks and it’s definitely getting easier and easier. Yesterday, I practiced shooting with a bright sun, albeit in late afternoon, to try and expose for the blue sky. Although I don’t mind blowing out the sky as long as my intended subject is properly exposed, just as an exercise, I tried to retain as much of the colour this time. I used spot metering and pointed my camera toward the sky. I adjusted my settings so the meter was not quite zeroed but slightly underexposed and came up with this. This image is SOOC except for the crop and a touch of fill light.

Sometimes it’s nice to take a few moments to stop and think. It’s a good exercise to get away from the busyness of life.

Laura is a Vancouver wedding and portrait photographer. Visit laurahana.com.

focal length: 24 mm
shutter speed: 1/40
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 200
flash: fired

This one was a tough one to process. Normally, I don’t spend a lot of time in the digital darkroom working on my images but I didn’t take many shots today and this one was the only I thought I could share. Unfortunately, the photo was a mess of wires and other people’s body parts jutting into the frame. I couldn’t keep the aspect ratio with the crop, so I did a haphazard squarish crop. Adjusted the colours in Lightroom and exported it as JPG so I could open it in Photoshop and add a texture for more “grittiness”. You know, because baby and gritty go so well together. I ended up cloning out the wires, which took some time. I used the healing brush on some parts but it didn’t work so well on others so most of it was done with the cloning tool.

Here’s the before picture, in case you’re wondering what it looked like originally.

Oooo, what a difference!

I felt a bit adventurous and veered off my usual “normal” processing to try something different. Keeping it interesting, ya know?

Sophie was rocking it on the drums today!

Laura is a Vancouver wedding and portrait photographer. Visit laurahana.com.

focal length: 31 mm
shutter speed: 1/160
aperture: f/11
ISO: 200
flash: none

In contrast to my sun flare shot in yesterday’s daily pic, here’s one where I shot with a smaller aperture so that I would get more defined sun rays. This image has a completely different feeling with respect to the flare due to the sharpness of it. Keeping this in mind will help you determine which f-stop to use in order to achieve the look that you want.

I shot this back in May, hence the lilacs in bloom. They were so pretty but they did attract a crazy amount of bees!

Laura is a Vancouver wedding and portrait photographer. Visit laurahana.com.

focal length: 32 mm
shutter speed: 1/30
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 200
flash: none

Ok, I really need to work on this whole “flare” thing. I got a few decent shots of her covering the sun so that she got some nice hair lights going on but once she moved out of the way, I didn’t know how to compose a nice photo with the flare. It was more difficult since she was moving around so much and didn’t care at all that I was trying to take some pictures! Ah, so what’s new? Anyways, this is me trying out something new.

How often do you challenge yourself to try something different?

Laura is a Vancouver wedding and portrait photographer. Visit laurahana.com.