[cassie]

I think overall they are pretty good. It’s hard to take good horse pics because you have to get the timing just right on the shutter. If you are having trouble shooting above 400 ISO with your body you will definitely need to find a newer one or deal with more noise though, KWIM?

I’ve noticed a lot of people take horse pictures with too short of focal lengths but you don’t so all the horses actually have butts in proportion to your heads. I’m not a huge fan of suspension shots in the canter/ gallop, I like the look of the 2nd beat more right before the inside front hits the ground and the first beat isn’t really as good a way to show the horse when they start to reach under themselves just because it sort of makes their butts look funny.

The photo that I notice the softness in the most is the one where you have the gray landing after the white/ green vertical. There is also the jockey with his skull hat cut off and the others that CC mentioned.

The photo with the baby bothers me the most because it scares the begessies out of me just because it isn’t a safe thing to do at all and although I do see it time and time again from other horsie friends you should never risk the safety of a child for this photo IMO. The only way you could do this photo safely is as a composite. I don’t care how bombproof a horse is, horses are unpredictable by nature and their forward eyesight is poor and they have trouble seeing little kids. Once the horse picks his head up even just a little higher he won’t be able to see that baby there at all, KWIM? (It also looks like there are horse apples next to the kid but that bugs me less than the safety aspect).

 

Are you planning on catering just toward jumpers/ race track crowds or dressage as well? Dressage riders will want to see trot and lateral work as well 🙂

 

ETA: Cameraclicker’s comment about shooting raw will help a lot with noise/ blur. If you do get stuck shooting a step or two underexposed to stop the motion you will be able to fix it a lot easier in raw than in jpeg with less noise.

[cassie]

I could only see Micheala’s senior pics as well by scrolling through the album. I totally agree with what has been said, but want to add something that I mentioned in another thread too. When taking pictures of horses be very mindful of your focal length if you aren’t taking pictures of them on the side, and especially if you are taking pictures of them standing at an angle to you.

Anything shorter than 80mm is really too short to take a picture of a horse with. The reason I say this is because you need the compressed background. Their bodies are so long that when you look at a horse that’s had it’s pic taken with a 35 or a 50 (not as bad with the 50 but still kind of noticeable) their heads are too big for their butts. Same idea as why you don’t really want to take pics of a person with a big nose using a 35mm.

[cassie]

I’m a MWAC too 🙂

The church pictures would actually be really easy to fix the warm cast on if you shot in RAW. You could select the white on someone’s dress and white balance the photo to that point. The colors would look a lot more natural and less orange, I especially notice the warm cast on the white dresses, some of them look kind of orange-y to me. Then like intuition mentioned play with your ISO and figure out when you start to get noise. For example I know with my Nikon d3100 I can shoot 1600 ISO before you start to notice noise which is great inside usually. Once I get higher than that though the noise is noticeable.

One of the advantages to being a MWAC is I have these two awesome little kids that I can employ to do all sorts of things while I practice different techniques. They really earned their keep while I figured out the speedlight lol. I have one that will swivel around 360 degrees and will also point at 90, 135, and 180 degree angles. So I pretty much just sat in my living room with my toddler standing by the wall while I turned the speedlight and set it to each of the different angles to see what would happen and played with the power on it. Now I like to think I’m pretty decent at bouncing it to make it look like my house has more windows than it really does, but it took a lot of practice to figure it out 🙂 taking the pics with it at the different settings and angles and having them just all side by side really helps though so that you can see how bouncing, etc affects the shadows.

I know not everyone will agree with me, but on pics like this one: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-LrOPBjEpi6Q/Uhf0WN11BxI/AAAAAAAAASo/9qkeus8vhY4/w818-h545-no/reunionupload-7_zps938e9f23.jpg I do think it’s OK to blow out the background a little bit so that you can see the person’s face. Of course the fix is to put a reflector in front of her and to wear a white shirt so that her eyes brighten up a little bit and you don’t have to blow the background out as much.

[cassie]

One thing you will find as you shoot more kids- especially younger kids- is they aren’t really going to be cooperative in times where the outdoor lighting is best unfortunately. 11am is sort of a horrible time for pics of kids though- especially younger ones- because it’s almost lunch time. But definitely for mine, and most kids, they’re going to be most cooperative a little after breakfast or after their afternoon nap. Which means around 10 and around 3 which isn’t the best time of day for pictures ideally, so it will help to learn how to shoot in that harsher light. (This is after much observation working as a nursery aid at the Y for 3 years)

Waiting for evening light and little kids is just bad news bears when they are little. Anything after 6pm is meltdown city for me and all my friends.

[cassie]

Little kids are simply very difficult to photograph. Period. Especially if you are trying to get nice pictures of them sitting down. My two year old NEVER sits unless she is strapped in her carseat. A picture like the one you have linked would just result in disaster for her. I did some for a couple friends and it was much easier to get pictures of the kids standing/ playing together, etc. I follow my toddler all the time for her pictures all over the place and then click away. Spray and pray isn’t the exact right term for what I do for her pictures- it’s not quite that bad- but I do expect to toss a lot of hers out.

When dealing with little kids, it is pretty safe to assume that not all of them are going to be doing what you want them to do at the same time. I’ve decided there is a reason my mom only has ONE picture of all four of us kids when we were little that we are all actually LOOKING at the camera and smiling. And don’t even ask how my attempts at getting a nice picture of my toddler and 9 month old together is going. I have lots of pictures of them together, and actually some cute ones, just not a single one with them both actually looking at me looking pleasant lol. I could care less about them actually smiling, I just want a picture of them both looking at me without one of them in the process of running away from me.

I did see a thing about putting a pez dispenser on your hot shoe though and randomly dispersing candy out when the kids behave, but I have yet to try that method 🙂

It definitely is an advantage to have your own kids if you want to shoot kids/ families because you get a lot more practice figuring out what they’ll actually cooperate for, and really thinking fast and shooting fast.

 

ETA here is one that I did for my friend of her four kids that I think turned out really well. Her son didn’t cooperate at all for portraits but he thought jumping was cool so it worked. It took like maybe 12 tries before we got this but it got the toddler tuckered out enough that he let me get a everybody standing still picture too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/64132459@N05/9324000346/

[cassie]

so I’m new here and really haven’t said anything yet, but I’ll add this.

 

Pay attention to your subject and focal length. I have horses and tons of horrible pictures of horses and until I knew about focal lengths never knew why they were horrible. Horses look funny if you take a picture of them with a focal length less than 80mm, a lot of them look like they were with a 50 but a 50 is still too short.

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