I Heart Faces: Before and After

This week's theme is a non-competitive one and offers us all a chance to explore how far we've come in our photography journey. I thought I'd tag along, although I risk exposing how little progress I've actually made :)

I have to start by saying that the I Heart Faces website has been a major motivator for me. I doubt that I'd have been so interested, or learned so much without that great resource. Thank you so much, Angie and Amy, for your hard work and imagination!

I first started getting really interested in photography when my son was born. That interest intensified when I started my blog, in the fall of that year. We traded in our old camera and cam-corder for a newer, nicer camera and off I went! I bought a few books and read them and struggled along for a good long while. Then I found Niecey's blog and then discovered her photography! And then she linked in to I Heart Faces one week, and WON! And a new obsession was born :)

This first photo was taken with our old point-n-shoot when Judah was just a few weeks old. It's still one of my favorite photos of the two of them. They're both looking straight into the camera and have great expressions. But if I had it to do over again today, I'd frame it very differently, try to get some better lighting and play around with some of the fun edits I've discovered on PSE.



The "after" one was hard for me to choose. I wanted to find a shot that shows me putting some of what I've learned into practice. The problem is, even though I may be thinking about all the right principles of photography at the time, it doesn't always show in the shot! Especially when shooting my squirmy, squirrelly kids! So instead of choosing just one shot, as the rules state, I thought I'd bend the rules a bit (it's not a competition this week, after all) and give you a few illustrations of what I've learned in action (remember to click on the picture to see the whole thing-- blogger crops them for me, and not very well!):

1) The rule of thirds. I've been getting better about framing and cropping shots with this in mind:



2) Try shooting from different heights to vary your perspective to add interest to a shot.



3) Close crops are my friend.



4) Coffeeshop Photo Actions are my Best Friend!



5) Capturing the ever-elusive bokeh can make your day!



Here's to more lessons learned in the next two years!! Won't you join me and all the other great folks at I Heart Faces? I'd love to have you follow along here by clicking the "Follow" button in the sidebar.