focal length: 34 mm
shutter speed: 1/160
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 800
flash: none

Melody prompted us to share our dream-like photos. I shot this yesterday and although the focus was off, I like the slightly blurred effect. It looked “dreamy”. Well… almost.

Here’s SOOC (straight out of camera):

To get from the SOOC to the final image, I cropped just a bit to get rid of the wood piece at the bottom left corner. Then I increased exposure and contrast, adjusted the tone curve, added some white vignetting and decreased the vibrance a touch. You can see the values in the screen shot below from Adobe Lightroom.

Et, voila! Dreamy! Well, it is to me at least.

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

focal length: 26 mm
shutter speed: 1/13
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 1250
flash: none

So here’s the a colour version of a similar shot to yesterday’s daily pic. I managed to tone down the yellow in the hue/saturation dialogue in Photoshop by increasing the lightness of the yellows a bit. I couldn’t do much with the brightly coloured carpet and dizzying effect of the blue lines. But I still like the picture because it’s a full body shot of Sophie in her outfit. She was walking towards me and I took a slew of shots. Without a flash, her movement is still visible with a bit of motion blur on her lower half. I’m okay with that. So how would you have processed this one? If you would like a go at it, feel free to download a larger size here and post a link with your play.

I just like her little baby belly.

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

focal length: 38 mm
shutter speed: 1/20
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 1600
flash: none

Wow, is it ever difficult to shoot in a low lit building with no walls or ceilings to bounce your flash off of. Add to that nice combination, some fuchsia backed blue-diamond-patterned carpet, yellow pews and very distracting walls with every other skinny beam painted a bright blue! I shot some photos for the Canada Day celebration at church today and boy, was that ever difficult! The mixture of natural light and ‘canned’ light was a nightmare. I thought I could fix it in post, but it was a no-go. So I tried a conversion. To be honest, I’m not so friendly with doing conversions myself. I rely on a preset in Lightroom and tweak it to my liking. It’s still not a pretty picture but I’ll take it!

I’ll show you a colour version tomorrow and you can be the judge! Do you have any of those nightmare locations for shooting?

After the service, Sophie wanted to show off her skills on the catwalk.

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

focal length: 55 mm
shutter speed: 1/30
aperture: f/3.5
ISO: 640
flash: none

It was time to say goodbye to my good ol’ 50mm f/1.8. The nifty fifty as some call it. It was my favourite lens. Two years, it had served me well. Astounding finesse in low light, beautiful bokeh, nice build quality and reliable. Small enough to take anywhere and the perfect length for portraits.

But alas, it was time for it to move on… onto new and better things. It went to a good family. It will help capture new beginnings for them. A newborn. It’s favourite subject. Serve them well good friend.

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

focal length: 50 mm
shutter speed: 1/2000
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 200
flash: none

Today’s daily pic is from the same series of shots from yesterday’s post. I usually take many shots from a single outing and from there, glean only a handful to process. To give you an idea of how many photos I take, choose and eventually process, I’ll share the numbers for this shoot.

Total RAW files shot: 52
Total Processed: 25
Time span of shoot: 4 minutes (from 3:47pm to 3:51pm)
Shots per minute: 13

I guess my “keep” rate is about 50%, meaning I’ll keep about 50% of my shots. So then, what happens to the other 50%? I’m terrible at deleting images unless they are extremely blurry and unusable so I save all my RAW files and also back them up onto at least one external hard drive. Which reminds me! I need to back these up pronto!

50% seems a bit high as I believe it’s usually lower for most shoots I do. Normally, when I’m shooting indoors with less light, I end up keeping a fewer percentage of photos. Even though you may end up culling most of your pictures, don’t skimp on the shots when shooting kids or other fast moving subjects. You never know what you may end up with. I used to shoot a lot more in the past (in JPG mode) but since switching to RAW, I’ve learned to tone down my rapid fire to a more leisurely pace, but I still take plenty!

What’s your “keep” rate?  Sophie wants to know.

focal length: 48 mm
shutter speed: 1/2000
aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 200
flash: none

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