Firsts

On the way back from Christmas in Centralia (by the way, if you haven't had Christmas in Centralia, you haven't had Christmas) Mindy and I made a quick stop in Steilacoom to shoot Ami's maternity session. Ami is the sister of our good friend Andi, and Andi gave Ami a maternity photo session for Christmas. It was my first maternity session, but that's okay because it's Ami's first baby, so it worked out pretty well.

Swedberg Custom Metal Work

We're not very good at dealing with snow here in the Bellingham area, and consequently I'm on snow day number two and looking ahead to snow day number three and an early start to Christmas break tomorrow. Ah, the joys of teaching... or not teaching as it were.

Anyway, the snow has given me an early break from Taylor Swedberg Teaching, and allowed me time to spend with Taylor Swedberg Photography. I've been looking through some images I haven't had time to edit and post in the past, and I decided to share some art images I captured with my dad in his shop. There is endless opportunity for finding textures and strange artifacts my dad has collected over his lifetime. It was a fun morning, and here are some of the fruits.

How to Take Pictures in the Snow

It's snowing here in the Bellingham area, and Mindy and I have a snow day today so I thought I would take a break from wedding photography and family portraits to very simply explain two methods for taking good pictures in the snow with a point and shoot digital camera.

1) If your camera has a "snow" setting, use it.

2) If your camera doesn't have a "snow" setting, find the button that looks something like "+/-". It is called exposure compensation and it might be a button on your camera, but it is likely a menu item you need to find. When you have found the +/- icon, move the marker from 0 to +2.

Here are all the boring details:

This is a picture I took from my front porch this morning with no adjustments. Notice the gray cast to the snow. This happens because the camera's meter automatically looks for middle gray. Usually this is fine, but in a picture with an inordinate amount of white, the camera underexposes the picture in order to expose the picture as a whole to a middle gray. However, in this case, we don't want what the camera thinks is right, we want white snow.







In this next picture I pushed the exposure compensation (+/-) all the way up to +2. Notice how white the snow looks.






In this final picture, I dropped the exposure compensation from +2 to +1.5. It's a bit darker, and I think a bit too dark. At this point, I am just experimenting with different amounts of exposure compensation and then checking the screen on the back of my camera until I have snow that matches the color of the actual snow in front of me.


In this case, I would go with the photo taken at +2 because the snow looks about right to me in that picture. I hope this helps, and happy shooting!

Christmas in the Northwest

Last weekend, Mindy and I spent the day with a bunch college friends at a cabin at Mount Baker. We went on a hike in the rain, then came back to the cabin for chili bread bowls, boardgames, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It was a great escape from holiday busyness.

Merry Christmas from Toby!

He hates this hat. As soon as we put it on him, he does this weird sideways-backup-crouch maneuver in an attempt to peel it off. It is absolutely hilarious. Poor guy.

Ashley and Ryan

I've mentioned before that this last summer I had the great opportunity to work with and learn from Michèle M. Waite. She's a very talented wedding photographer based here in Bellingham. Just the other day I received some shots I captured while I was working an October wedding with her. Here are just three of the highlights from Ashley and Ryan's day.

The Montes Sisters

Last week I had the opportunity to spend some time with Lindsay Montes (our BCS 4th grade teacher) and her sisters. We had a great time and captured some really fun shots. Seriously, as I was editing through the hundreds of versions I shot, I couldn't believe how many pictures showed all four sisters completely cracking up! It was great for portraits, but also really cool to see such a close family. Here are just a couple from our day.

The DeYoung Family

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I'm just finishing this post as Mindy and I get ready to head out the door and travel down I-5 to stay with my family. We're looking forward to a great long weekend. But enough about me.

This was the second time I've had the honor of taking the DeYoung family's pictures, and it was a delight. I get to see all of their kids in the halls at BCS this year, and I always love getting to interact with kids as a photographer as opposed to a teacher. Here are some shots from our afternoon together.

I can't tell you how many family portrait sessions I have been to where the kids at the end break into a spontaneous stick fight. For the record: these are not supposed to be cute pictures. This is stick fighting, and cute just doesn't cut it. No, these pictures are "cool". These pictures are warrior pictures.

James is Old

One of my best friends in the whole world, James Aries, just thought up a great excuse to get myself and bunch of my other best friends in the world together. James is turning 28, and when James is turning 28 - James gets to party how James wants to party. And that means basketball! Luckily, that's how the rest of us want to party too.

Even though James is getting super old, he can still dunk...

...most of the time:

Here's Tim. No, he's not high enough.

Before and after basketball, we played a bit of Wii Fit. Dustin's getting ready to ski jump the couch:

We all had our game faces. Matt's looks like a bunny: