I just want Google to show me some love | Nanaimo Photographer November 4, 2009

I’m off to a SEO workshop tonight and I’m strangely excited. What is SEO you ask? Well, it is Search Engine Optimization. It’s basically how to be Google friendly. Google doesn’t currently like me that much so I have work to do to change that. And I’m jazzed to learn all about it. I’m not normally that geeky but it is so essential to any photographer’s business. (No comments Nadine… contrary to what you think, I’m not that geeky. Honest). I’m considering scrapping my website and having a blog driven portfolio site. So many questions to ask. …

I’m not even sad about missing Flamenco tonight.

In other news… I managed to delete yesterdays picture! AHHH!!! It wasn’t good, but there goes my unbroken string of over 100 straight days of picture taking. Not really, because I did take the picture. But nobody knows but me

Maybe it is a good thing. It was awfully dark and made me kind of look like a demon. Which is always hawt.

Oct 10 – Day 102

Fall Photo Shoot with my ladies… will have a whole post soon about it. I’m the one with the hair issues.

Oct 11 – Day 103

Nathan watching something good on the computer. I was all ninja style getting this photo… crawling commando style on my belly into the room. Not that he would have really noticed…

Oct 12 – Day 104

Hahahahahahaaaaaa….. I LOVE THIS PICTURE. It cracks me up to no end.

Okay. Time to do some chores before I have to leave. Happy Wednesday!

S.

Visit my website www.sharinakagawa.com or on Facebook.

Nathan the Panda | Victoria Child Photographer October 26, 2009

Tammy asked me to do some pictures of Nathan as a Panda. This picture cracks me up for some reason. I think it’s the expression on his face. I’m also entering this one on I heart faces.

Happy Monday.

S.

Tuesday Tutorial – Metering | Victoria Photographer October 6, 2009

Further Metering (it never does end!)

So now you have used a grey card to find a correct exposure for the light and have gotten your needle in the middle. Now what?? That doesn’t mean that is your exposure is where you want it creatively. So how do you take needle in the middle and make it applicable to the creative? Think of aperture and shutter speed as ingredients and exposure is the recipe. So to get the creative that you want, you just have to change the recipe.

Let’s say you have needle in the middle at F8 1/30. Technically that is a correct exposure but you don’t want 1/30 because it will have camera shake in it. How do you get to 1/60? Remember when I said that changing one stop is either doubling or halving the amount of light exposing your sensor. So going from 1/30 to 1/60 is halving the amount of light. That will underexpose the picture. So to compensate, you need to open up on the aperture one stop (1/30 to 1/60 is one stop) to double the light coming, which makes up for the halving of light with the shutter speed.

Before we go on, some terms:

Opening up – either going to a larger aperture (i.e. F5.6 to F4) or having a slower shutter speed (from 1/125 to 1/60). Opening up is done when you need more light on your sensor.

Closing down – the opposite of opening up. It is going to a smaller aperture (i.e. F4 to F5.6) or a faster shutter speed (from 1/60 to 1/125) and is letting less light hit the sensor.

Back to the example, you have F8 1/30. You want to go to 1/60 which is closing down the shutter speed. To compensate you need to open up the aperture one stop to F5.6. Think about it like a graph (I have just put the big numbers of the shutter speed for ease).

30 —-> 60 (Shutter Speed)

5.6 <—-8 (Aperture)

Basically, if you have needle in the middle, for every stop that you change on one of the elements, you need to go the equal amount of stops the opposite direction on the other element.

Another example. Needle in the middle is at F4 1/500. F4 is a small depth of field, and you want more. You want F16. How do you do it?

4 —> 5.6 —> 8—-> 11 —> 16

30<—60 <—125<—250<—500

You are closing down four stops on the aperture, so you need to open up 4 stops on the shutter speed. And you will need a tripod with a shutter speed of 1/30.

This is why it is important to know the aperture and shutter speed numbers. If you can’t get them in your head, then just count the number of clicks you change in one direction and change the same amount in the other direction. This is a good approach if you are using ½ stops or 1/3 stops as well.

And that is how you meter and change your settings.

Check out my other tutorial – > click here

And because posts are never complete without a picture…

S.

Visit my website www.sharinakagawa.com or drop me a line on Facebook.

Victoria Photographer | Another Day… September 15, 2009

OK, so it’s day two of my new shift. Getting up in the 5 am’s is rough. So rough that I’ve only managed it one out of two days. Good thing I get ready fast. Walking to work when it is dark and eerily quiet trips me out. I’ve never been willing to get up this early before and certainly not on a regular basis. But it’s good. It means I have time after work to do photography before dance class. I have a feeling I may crash around Christmas time though…

Whatever. Totally worth it.

Aug 29 – Day 60

Aug 30 – Day 61

This is my little brother and his mom. Aren’t they adorable. On this day, I took him to the park and played my favourite game- chase the ducks.

Aug 31 – Day 62

Another lame picture but I was too busy putting together my pine shelf and rearranging my apartment to focus on photography. I have a weird compulsion to rearrange furniture. I get it from my mom.

Happy Tuesday!

S.

www.sharinakagawa.com

All work and no play… May 19, 2009

makes Shari a very tired girl.

9 shoots in 9 days. Wow. It’s tough enough to be creative, but to be creative a few times a day. Plus driving up and down the island.

Shoot one – Laura. Housewife growing husbands.
Shoot two – Makenna. Life is beautiful.
Shoot three – Jason. Water gun mafia.
Shoot four – Stephen. Nothing is as wonderful as a twinkie.
Shoot five – Rina and Tamara. Bride Wars.
Shoot six – Bonnie. Reach for the light.
Shoot seven – Alina. Did I drink all that?
Shoot eight – Nathan and Tammy. Feed mommy.
Shoot nine – Lola. Socialite Gardener.

O….M….G…..

I had two shoots scheduled for today but got rained out. Which is probably for the best. I had dinner with friends instead. I have to keep remembering that if I push too hard, I will wear myself out.

I will have some stuff from the shoots soon. But for now… enjoy a cute picture of my brother.

Nathan

Curtis April 25, 2009

I'm a Duck

Just six weeks old and damn determined to see everything that was going on.

 

I have to admit, I was a little nervous to shoot such a little guy. Curtis didn’t make it easy either. Babies are best shot when sleeping. This little guy didn’t want to sleep and certainly didn’t want to be naked. Can’t blame him. The world is a big and cold place.

S.