Leyda and William ~ Engagement

*All photos are property of Jackie Beale Photography

I'm very excited to finally post Leyda and William engagement session! It was a beautiful saturday evening and the light seriously could not have been any more gorgeous. We made our way through the Kraft Azalea Gardens and then took some awesome pictures by the lake. I fell in love with that place. It's a small park tucked away in the middle of an upscale neighboorhood.

It was so much fun to capture the chemistry between them. They are naturals in front of the camera :) Leyda and William, thank you so so much for giving me the opportunity to capture your love. I hope i did it justice. Can't wait to see you guys soon!

A little post processing :)

I just love the feeling in this photo

The sun was setting and reflected beautifully against the lake. Leyda and William decided to go for it and take some pictures in the lake. Love it!

Test shots

The light was sooooo beautiful this afternoon when I got home. I didn't want to miss out so I took some pictures of a few things that were around me.

A random bike. I wanted to test the f-stops on my lens on an object that wasn't so close. This was shot I believe at 1.4 or 1.8

Of course, I had to test on one of my favorite pair of shoes :)

Beautiful learning tools

I totally forgot to post about a few articles I read a couple of days ago. There are so many forums about photography on the web that will help you learn how to become a better photographer, whether you are just starting out, like me, or where you have been doing this for years. It's also a great place to interact with others and upload your work to have them constructively critiqued by other professionals. I think it's the next best thing if you aren't able to have a personal mentor in person.

A while ago, I came across a great place where you can learn about digital photography. Click HERE to check it out!

I've joined their mailing list as well and receive weekly emails with great articles on different subjects. One in particular that I received last week was about the art of exposure and the three important elements you need to understand to get a right exposure and also learn how they work together. The article mentioned really neat metaphore. Here it goes:

Many people describe the relationship between ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed using different metaphors to help us get our heads around it. Let me share a couple. A quick word of warning first though - like most metaphors - these are far from perfect and are just for illustrative purposes:

The Window

Imagine your camera is like a window with shutters that open and close.

Aperture is the size of the window. If it’s bigger more light gets through and the room is brighter.

Shutter Speed is the amount of time that the shutters of the window are open. The longer you leave them open the more that comes in.

Now imagine that you’re inside the room and are wearing sunglasses (hopefully this isn’t too much of a stretch). Your eyes become desensitized to the light that comes in (it’s like a low ISO).

There are a number of ways of increasing the amount of light in the room (or at least how much it seems that there is. You could increase the time that the shutters are open (decrease shutter speed), you could increase the size of the window (increase aperture) or you could take off your sunglasses (make the ISO larger).

There were other metaphors but I liked this one the best. I know, it sounds like trying to explain something to a child, but I'm more of a visual person and when metaphors or illustrations are used to help me understand something, I can visualize it in my head and it makes a greater impact in me and it's stuck in my head forever :)

Layer masks

One of the things that really love about photoshop is the ability to do layer masks. I think it's just incredible that you're able to individualy tweek and retouch different areas of your picture and then put them all together. It's kinda confusing at first but I was able to practice alot this weekend and I felt so happy to finally understand this! Here's an example of Chivonne's picture that I used to play with layer masks. I'm not a big professional photoshoper or anything but I'd thought it would be fun to share it with my blog :) Besides, she can retain things a lot better than I can.

Basicly, what I did is: First, opened up the original image and immediatly created a duplicate layer. I changed the duplicate layer image to a sepia tone. This is the fun part now: I clicked on the layer masks icon that on the bottom of your layers list. Then I selected the brush tool and I sweeped over chivonne. What this did is bring the color chivonne from the original image on to my duplicate layer.

And that's how I was able to have a sepia background but chivonne in color.

Happy Monday! :)

Your Gear

A while ago, I came across a great lens rental company. They do not only rent lenses though, they have a ton of other stuff like camera bodies, flashes, batteries, extenders, etc. Check them out HERE.

I just had the opportunity to order a Canon 17-40mm f/4L series lens from them. They were super awesome with their customer service and they email you back and forth to verify that everything is ok if you are their first customer, which I was :)

Sometimes you can't buy all the lenses you want right away, especially if you don't have the $$$ and you really don't want to get in debt so renting some gear is the perfect solution! Their prices are very reasonable and they offer 2 day shipping.

What I've learned from other photographers is that you don't want to get into debt. So the best thing to do is that for every event you book, rent one or two lenses. Eventually, you will have booked enough events and have made enough money to buy yourself the gear for your future events.

Be sure to check out BorrowLenses for your future renting needs, and no they did not hire me to be their spokesperson, I just like them and their website :)

Happy Wednesday!