WOW - Busy Winter

Sorry it's been so long, it's been a busy winter this year, The mild winters in the last couple years have led to more winter weddings, which is great. The churchs are so decorated with all the Christmas flowers, etc.. Easter is another great time for this and it's great! Anway, we had a great time at a the weddings, got some great pictures as normal. I'm very thankful for having Canon L lenses with Image stablizaton built in, during the last couple wedding we were not allowed to use flash during the cermony. The pictures turned out great regardless.

One of the recent weddings had a really entertaining DJ team that really kept the party moving, They actually did something I've never seen before with a picture frame. The Bride and Groom went around the Room as "Freeze Frame" was played, and posed inside the picture frame for a quick picture. At the time I didn't think much about it, but the pictures were FUN to look at and I'm sure the couple will enjoy them.

Okay, I've promised to start some tutorials and tips so I'll keep good on that.

Our Photo Tips:

When shooting a picture outdoors in this snow, set your camera to overexpose the picture by 1 stop. This will make the camera expose the snow as WHITE instead of a dingy blue/white or gray. If you are shooting people with it, you might want to turn on your flash to brighten up their faces in the picture too. This Fill-Flash is a great thing.

For some good locations for shooting in the snow try our local Cincinnati Parks like Sharon woods, Ault Park, Mt. Airy, Eden Parks Mirror lake, Devou Park overlook, etc.. You will probably run into some deer and other wildlife in your adventures. Esp, in Mt. Airy, there seems to be deer and racoon's there every time I'm in the park. You might try some of the smaller Cities like Covington, Fort Mitchell, and Newport for some very scenic urban snowscapes. The trees were really nice driving through town this morning.

Keep in mind your camera is a lot like you, It don't like a lot of the cold weather, and bringing it in and out of the cold is not the best thing in the world for it.you might try placing your camera in a plastic bag when you bring it back indoors from being outside to help avoid condensation on it a little. Also Battery life is shorter in the cold, keep a spare battery with you in an inside coat or shirt pocket.

If your Camera offers it, shoot in RAW or Camera RAW format, I use Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop to convert these into jpg files after any correction that needs to be done. Of course you might not have these programs, Adobe elements works pretty good also and most cameras included that program with them these days.

If you don't want to shoot in raw because it is too much work consider what you give up by shooting in jpg mode. a JPG file is a compressed file, where the color set is compressed down, the color depth is lower and even the dynamic range of the picture is lower. Generally a picture that might be over/underexposed by 2 stops can be saved simply by having a RAW file. I have shot side by side raw/jpg (our cameras will do both at the same time) and the JPG file loses detail in both the highlights and shadows, where the raw brings out much more detail to work with. The RAW file also does allows you more room in sitting white balance (A whole topic in it's self).

The most I can say is Try it for a while and see how you like it. Worst you have done is taken some pictures and had to put in a little extra time learning to use your camera and computer. Hopefully you have learned that RAW is better for a lot of things, I won't say all, because it does add some post processing time, but for important pictures like your wedding pictures it is all we use.