Ellekes 52 - week 14 Shoot added

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Ellekes

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Vicky
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I hope I can still join in.

Reason for a 52

I tend to stick to what I like and do best (shooting kids and babies). At my local photoclub there's already a monthly theme so that is challenging me to think outside the box. And so now I've added a 52 challenge. I really hope to be creative enough to come up withan entry every week!

My own 52 rules

1. One shoot a week
2. Shot to be taken in the week (so no going though old files to find a suitable pic)
3. I have to have a good reason for showing the pic (and share it with you...)
4. No lucky shots. My entry has to have been planned.
5. They have to have kids in them....


My entry for this week:



Was the result of a pulled pinata at a party. In pp, the colours have been enhanced somewhat. The crop was intented not to focus too much on one child in particular, as I wanted to convey the total atmosphere.
Hope this works.
 
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Ellekes said:
I hope I can still join in.
Click to expand...

Looks like you have done anyways. ;)

Welcome aboard... and good luck. It's quite a hard task posting a pic a week, far more so than I expected. Just remember... keep at it, don't get disheartened at all, and learn from any comments. There's nowt worse than someone who starts and then gives up the minute they get some negative comments.

Anyways... I'm rambling... did I say 'welcome'? :D
 
Welcome aboard Vicky :wave:

You've set yourself some tough rules there so the very best of luck with it.
I really hope that you enjoy the experience and learn something in the process.

And that's a lovely fun shot to start with. Great vibrant colours, lovely motion in the "confetti stuff" and you've caught some lovely expressions on their faces.
It fits the theme of play brilliantly.

People / children shots are really not my thing I'm afraid, so C&C is a bit difficult for me.
However, if I was looking for ways to improve on this I'd give a bit more consideration to the framing. I like the natural, relaxed composition, but there are a couple of children chopped in half on either side of the shot that don't quite work for me.
The other thing I notice is that although the colour enhancement in PP has worked brilliantly on the clothing, on my monitor it appears like the colour in the hair and skin tones is slightly off.
It will be interesting to see how it looks to other people though - this particular monitor isn't great :lol:
 
Hi Vicky and welcome along, fair play for heaping the weekly pressure upon yourself like the rest of us. Good luck with your challenge. Are you going to catch up on the past weeks or just crack on from here?

Kids in the pictures is going be challenging, A good start this week as play is what they do best.
 
Thanks all!!

@SarahLee, thanks for the advice! I wasn't too sure about the chopping kids in half myself, but in this case it was intentional. We had a session on how to create the impression of something going on outside the borders of the photograph. One of the tips was to not end the crop with a whole something (admitted the example was a bench and not a child :D) and that was what I was trying to do. Give the impression of a large group of children, rather then the limited bunch in the picture. Not sure it worked though ;)
As for the colours, I'm not sure, this monitor is not too great either. Just another week or so, new monitor is on its way!!!!! :clap:

@clud17, I'm just gonna pick up here, but as I go along, I'm gonna try and get the other weeks in, just to force myself.

As for the additional challenge of getting kids in the picture, it really forces me to go outside of your everyday kids photography! I'm really looking forward to the challenge...
 
I was looking at the calendar, and I think I'm a week behind. Never mind, I'll get to work on week 11 right away.

Anyway, this is my week 10 entry. Well, as my rules say, it has to have kids in it, it has to be planned and taken in the week itself. This one ticks all the boxes.

When I read the challenge for week 10, I immediately thought about the wedding we had to go to. My initial plan was to get a shot full of chemistry between the new bride and groom and their one year old. Unfortunately the boy was with the babysit all day.
But then I got the chance of this "First love" shot.

My oldest (soon to be six) fell absolutely head over heels with her second cousin (at least that what I think he is called, my husbands cousin?). She couldn't stop talking about him, wanted to dance with him all night. And he, being the gentleman he was, sweetly indulged in this kindergarten crush (he is 25 :D ).

In this pose, her happy "he's holding my hand" smile, his indulgent smile and him holding her hand close to his heart, to me this was a special kind of chemistry. Chemistry in my daughters heart. All day yesterday, she kept talking about him, enough to make my heart melt...
At leat, I've kept record of this first crush, so that one day, I can show this at her wedding and she'll be completely embarassed :-)

 
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Nice portrait and her smile and blushes say it all. A few more years and you'll be standing between her and any boys :D
 
Hi Vicky, welcome to the 52's...

Play, an excellent shot, good clear colours, and they are clearly having fun.

Chemistry, evil parent :lol:... what a lovely portrait, and it fits the theme perfectly.
 
Welcome to the 52 Vicky. I reallly love your chemistry shot:thumbs: The look of sheer joy yet slightly uncomfortable on your daughters face is priceless. She is gonna love you in years to come when you show her this :D

The play shot is lovely and colourful, so full of fun. It is just a tiny bit distracting at the bottom left corner, but still a super shot.

Cheers, Rob
 
Oef, at the end of the week, managed to get a candid shot in. Never expected that planning for an unplanned image was so difficult...

Anyway, luckily when my youngest fell down the climbing frame, mum was nearby holding a camera (bad mummy :nono: ). Am not overly happy about is, but I do feel it fits the theme. Gave it a bit of an old finish to ge closer to the feel of the old snapshots you see in old family albums.


 
:rules: Naughty mummy!
Little one falls down and mum grabs the camera :lol:
Reminds me of someone on the tropical fish site I go to. Her son fell and cracked his head against the fish tank. She wondered if it was terrible that her first thought was about whether the tank was broken instead of about his head :p

:thumbs:It definitely fits the theme and is it really awful of me to say that I "like" an image of a crying child?
Composition, PP and colouring work really well.
His face is a touch overexposed for my tastes, but I know that a lot of people like that look . . . and that's definitely NOT a reason to push him off the climbing frame just so that you can reshoot :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
two weeks in a row eh, Vicky :D... last week your daughter, and this week your son... It's a well caught shot, and works well for the theme... The processing works well too.
 
jgs001 said:
two weeks in a row eh, Vicky :D... last week your daughter, and this week your son... It's a well caught shot, and works well for the theme... The processing works well too.
Click to expand...

They're actually all girls :D. But I do admit that the clothing and the short hair gives the impression of her being a boy. But I am a blessed mother of three little girls :cuckoo:
 
That's a great collection of photos Vicky, welcome to the 52!

Three girls eh? Lucky you. We have just the two, and as teenagers they now justs cowl at the camera. Long gone are the days of happy children smiling like you have captured above.

The shot in #6 is a corker. You've really nailed the expression on your daughters face. Will be interesting to see her reaction when he hits 30 and she's in her early teens... :)

Candid is lovely too. Nice expression, lovely processing, but as Sarah says, the face is a little too blown for me. The High key look is OK for standard portraiture, but candids (for me anyway) should have as much detail as you can cram in. That's my very humble opinion though!!

You've set yourself a real challenge with your 52. Look forward to seeing more.

Ian.
 
Love your Chemistry shot :) My eldest is 12 today and I have a picture of her from last year when she met Ben Fogle....can't wait till her 18th :lol:

Great Candid shot too and makes me feel a little better that when I was out in the field yesterday photographing lambs for a childrens farm my daughter(being looked after by older sister and brother) fell of a log and hurt her elbow.....it was only 6 inches off the ground but HOW bad do I feel!
 
OK, am a bit late in posting this one, but it was taken on Saturday, so it still counts as being in the right week.
My middle girl holding a daisy. Taken with aperture wide open at 70mm.

I took a similar image almost exactly a year ago. My very first picture with a DSLR was actually to the same effect as this one. With a few remarks to make. That one was purely by accident and I didn't find out what I did until someone else told me. The focus was off with at least 10 centimeters. And it took me close to a year to be able to more or less "create" this picture.

I like it a lot, hopefully you do too.


24ysmmv.jpg
 
Great image,

The white of the daisy looks a little blown to me (although could be my monitor) and I wonder what it would look like with the daisy on the 3rds crossing point (at the minute the hole is). However, I bet you are really chuffed as it's a lovely shot :thumbs:
 
Well to be honest, it is slightly blown ;), but to me it just adds to the picture.

Maybe this is not the most perfect picture from a technical point of view, but I love it.

Together with the images below, I plan to make a collection to hang on my office wall. :D

9r0e9z.jpg



15mee88.jpg
 
Those are my favourites so far Vicky :thumbs:

The daisy is slightly blown, but I don't mind that at all in the context of this shot. It's simple, elegant and very, very sweet. I love the amount of background blur that you've got in there too.

Combined with the ones below it, that's going to make a beautiful collage or your office wall. The butterfly one is absolutely gorgeous !!!!
 
Lovely shots but to my eyes the butterfly looks slightly soft, but I am having a major issue with this focussing lark at the moment, may be I am losing my eyesight:shrug:

Love the lizard though!
 
There is indeed some motion blur in the butterfly. There wasn't that much light in the butterfly house, and I wasn't allowed to used flash, so shutter speed was on the low end. The softness is the motion blur of the wings flapping.
 
Ellekes said:
They're actually all girls :D. But I do admit that the clothing and the short hair gives the impression of her being a boy. But I am a blessed mother of three little girls :cuckoo:
Click to expand...

Oops.... Sorry about that :D...

Three lovely shots you've produced there, it'll be a lovely collage. The daisy is a bit blown, but I think it works anyway.
 
OK, it took me ages this week to get a chance to post these.
Anyway, it is still within the rules, as the picture has been taken last week.
I had told hubby that I needed to take a picture around the theme quad.

Initial plan was to take a picture of one of the girls aiming a quad antenna. But I couldn't find one of those old antenna's. So as I was still wondering how to solve the theme, hubby proudly pronounced that he helped me!

He had gone looking around for quads for sale, so I could have the kids on it to take pics. At first I thought he was being unusually thoughfull, until I heard him negotiating with the salesman on the price :nono::nono:

Anyway, the girls didn't really like being on the thing, it was raining and the quad was standing by the side of a very busy road. Still, I think this picture has something to it.

35jgdqd.jpg
 
Vicky, it's a good shot, and the colours and DOF work very well... it doesn't really shout quad without the explanation, but I like it :thumbs:
 
OK, I haven't had a look at what the others posted this week, so maybe I'm way off in the theme.
But in light of the theme "Shoot" I have set myself a new standard as of this week.

Instead of doing what I usually do, take 100's of pics so that there was bound to be a good one, I decided to change tactics. Think, look and ...shoot!

We went for a walk yesterday. beautiful day, lots of sun, kids playing around, ... so plenty of opportunity to take pics home. I took 67 pictures, of which at least 10 really good ones. So my tactics seem to have worked :D

This one is what I thought was best. I would have loved if my daughters expression was less painfull, but it took a long time composing the shot. Spent quite some time getting the exposure right, aiming for the eye to be in focus and then shooting at the right time.

I think it worked really well. All a bit out of focus because of the reeds, but the part of her face that was focused on is pin sharp (checked the eye at a 100% size, and yes it is in focus, jippee!!!).

Probably doesn't scream shoot, but is filled my goals this week. Hope you like!

ete5n6.jpg
 
Wow !!

Really like you're style.
Very brave of you to decide to shoot nothing but children, you must have one helluva imagination, I wouldn't know where to start !!

Keep going though, there are some lovely images, the last one is simply stunning.
 
Vicky, lovely shot.. you're plan seems to be working... I was drawn straight to her eye, which has a lovely catchlight in it. The blurred grass stems fit in nicely too. I didn't notice it straight away, so that's a good thing, but her hair is blown out, which is a bit of a shame, as otherwise it blends in so nicely with the grass...
 
Hi Vicky,

Catching up after a "break" and I have to say that the last image for shoot is far and away the best so far.

Very very good indeed.

Ian.
 
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