Garden photo shoot

On Sunday Biscuit decided she was going to pull out the "farmer tools" she got from Santa and work really hard in the garden. She was going to have to be served lunch outside because she was going to be working all day. Even if it rained. (note: she lasted until about noon and had lunch inside and I eventually put the tools away at dark :)

I'm trying to take a photo-a-day of a family member. That mostly means the kids. They're around. They're cute. I like them.

And I'm trying to work on taking better/more interesting photos of people so while the kids were "gardening" I was photographing. The photos below are straight out of the camera--no cropping, color fixing or editing on the computer. For better or worse :)

I started off trying to get down low where I was.

But the irrigation in the foreground was annoying and Biscuit's hair was always covering her face from this angle.

So I tried another angle and shot from above.

Got all backs and more hair. Boring. Tried the down low shot from a different angle.

Hello, neighbor's new addition that is dominating this photo. So I got up really close and messed with cropping/framing.

I like this one! Check out the big kid's weird shovel grip.

This one has better light but her face is cut weird. And Oscar doesn't look as good.

And then I got this one. I'd crop out the irrigation in a print but I love just the feet and tools. It totally looks staged but it wasn't.

So far this family-member-photo project is fun. But now I'm back at work so will see the kids less and we'll see how it goes.

Comments

[Nora]

Beautiful!!

[Susan]

I like the experiments you are doing, and publishing the results as they are. What kind of camera are you using?

[Melissa Haworth]

Hey Susan,
Thanks for the compliment :) I got a new camera for Christmas, a Canon G12 which is an update of the G10 I used for years and loved. They changed some stuff on the G12 so Im still getting used to it. I also use my iPhone 4S a LOT for photos since its often in my pocket. The mud photos were iPhone and the garden photos were Canon. At web resolution I really cant tell any quality difference but for prints or shots where I want to control depth of field etc I like to use the Canon.
:) Melissa