June 4

Today I had a big photo shoot with my friend Katie's family. Six kids under the age of 5! I was a bit nervous about it, as it was my first paid photo gig. It ended up being a bright and sunny morning. I suppose that is better than rain, but I think it is hard to get a good picture with the bright sun, at least for my inexperienced self it is hard. It was a bit stressful for me this morning, as I was trying to find photo spots with good light but not direct sunlight and no shadows. And then I was trying to remember everything I was supposed to remember about ISO and shutter speed and aperture. And all the while, trying to take pictures of six kids who only wanted to sit still for less than a second at a time! (Actually, the kids did pretty good at posing...especially the three oldest ones). Stressful, but fun too!!

All in all, I took 250 pictures and ended up with 85 keepers (an improvement on my percentage of keepers from yesterday). My favorite of the day is the one posted above. It's not a very realistic picture as her eyes are not really that green in real life (I think they looked more blue in the other pictures I took). But we took this picture underneath this tree with really low branches. It was almost like were were inside a tree tent. The light was shining through the leaves of the tree, giving everything under the tree a greenish tint. She was looking up into the light, and it just made her eyes sparkle green! I love the effect!

And I'm going to cheat, because I have several favorites from today. Here is another one I liked. These two brothers were so sweet and did a great job posing for the camera!

I have several more photo shoots lined up next week...I don't think I'm going to want to mail this lens back on Wednesday! =)