KNJR Studios

I started a few nights ago reading one portion of my digital camera manual each night.

The first night I learned how to make a diopter adjustment.  This means that I can now look through the lens without my glasses and see as if I still had my glasses on.  Don’t get excited yet, my eyes aren’t that bad.  If your’s are any worse you’ll probably have to buy an extra attachment to make this adjustment on your DSLR.  But this is awesome since one of the main things I cry about when shooting is how much my glasses get in the way.  Glasses? Who needs ‘em?

The next night I learned about all the shooting modes.  I found out that one of the modes is called Live View.  That means I see through-lens view on the LCD screen.  I can also zoom in up to 13X while in Live View.  This is awesome for those shots that require precise focus.  Of course this is not useful for speedy babies – but is excellent for static shots.

I found a blog (http://www NULL.strobist NULL.blogspot NULL.com/).  OK, first I found a forum (http://www NULL.thephotoforum NULL.com/forum/) and happened upon a link to a blog.  I’m a little late since the blog has been around for over 2 years.  But the blog is all about off camera lighting.

Lucky me, I have plenty of photographic equipment lying around, packed away, and stored in other peoples’ garages and storage rooms.  I found a Minolta Maxxum 4000AF (http://www NULL.amazon NULL.com/Minolta-Maxxum-Flash-4000af/dp/B000EO676I) flash.  So I also have a flash, or a strobe, or a speedlight – call it what you like.  Nothing fancy, but selling for between $50-100+ from various sellers online.

So once I acquire a couple other needed accessories, I’ll start learning about flash photography.

Penelope perched on a stepping stool.

Recently I’ve decided that it is time that I actually put some real effort into my passion for photography.  I had a really good start being the “head of the class” in my college photography courses. Of course these were introductory courses usually filled with students that had never even touched a camera much less entered a darkroom.

Next I created several series of images and even had one [Whore] selected for the Member’s Exihibition at the Circle Gallery in Annapolis, MD. But once the courses ended, so did my access to the darkroom. So did my photography all together in a lot of ways. Then came babies. So I bought a beginner’s lighting set up, a couple back drops & grabbed my dusty Maxxum 7D and starting attemping to take maternity and baby portraits.

Now, over two years later, I’m going to try. So what you see here in this post is the first of many photos where I’m actually trying.  Actually trying to get motivated.  Actually trying to know what I’m doing.  Actually trying to be good at what I’m doing.

I did a photoshoot of a former boss’s twins and attempted to use only natural light coming from a window. The pictures just turned out OK. So in this photo I did the same thing, except I used a couple of my photo lights to fill in some of the shadows. This picture is black and white because mixing several different light temperatures doesn’t really work – at least not in this case. I already knew this, but figured I would give it a shot and see what kind of color correction I could do in Photoshop. That did not work out. I think this picture would be nicer in color – just not in the color I shot it.