{"id":5211,"date":"2009-08-30T17:16:17","date_gmt":"2009-08-30T09:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/08\/30\/baby-photo-taking\/"},"modified":"2010-04-05T08:15:41","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T00:15:41","slug":"baby-photo-taking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/08\/30\/baby-photo-taking\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby photo-taking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone was saying that while macro photography is reasonably accessible to amateur photographers, it remains one of the most difficult themes in photo-taking for amateurs.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some truth to that: you\u2019d want specialized equipment for starters \u2013 dedicated macro lenses, close-up filters, extension tubes or lens attachments to reach the necessary magnification factor first, then a steady tripod with a ball head that won\u2019t sink under the weight of a heavy DSLR with a macro lens \/ attachments, then finally a remote trigger while shooting in mirror-up mode to eliminate the minute vibrations that come with using finger triggers on the shutter release.<\/p>\n

But now I have a different opinion: taking baby pictures is even the more !@#!@%%^@! difficult! The lens equipment, accessorizing, framing and composition is all easy: it\u2019s getting the subject to cooperate that\u2019s crazily tough.<\/p>\n

We can get Hannah to coo and make cutey noises at home easily enough when we’re playing with her. But of late, she\u2019s (somehow) smarten up to the presence of a camera and will do anything but look cute. She\u2019ll instead grumble, look away, fidget, chew on her thumbs, widen her eyes (like she\u2019s seeing a ghost).<\/p>\n

Case in point: it\u2019s been raining for most of this Sunday weekend today, but after the rain mostly subsided at 4:15 pm, we made our way down to the poolside to see if I can get some nice outdoor pictures of Hannah and Ling. And out of the 120 exposures I took, just a measly 4 pictures turned out with Hannah not making one of those funny faces.<\/p>\n

\"blog-2009-baby-DSC_2472-poolside\" \"blog-2009-baby-DSC_2545-poolside\"<\/p>\n

So, I\u2019m gonna make an order for this book<\/a> and see if I can outsmart Hannah in the next photographic outing. There\u2019s a lot of books on this theme (the one I\u2019ve linked seems the most well-reviewed one), which only suggests that there\u2019re probably other equally as exasperated parents \/ amateur photographers trying to take pictures of tots.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some difference in color temperature BTW between the two pictures above. It\u2019s probably impossible to tell from looking at the exposures, but the one on the right was taken with a pool table umbrella over us.<\/p>\n

(Taken on the Sigma 18-250mm).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone was saying that while macro photography is reasonably accessible to amateur photographers, it remains one of the most difficult themes in photo-taking for amateurs. There\u2019s some truth to that: you\u2019d want specialized equipment for starters \u2013 dedicated macro lenses,<\/p>\n

Read More Baby photo-taking<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,7,13],"tags":[137,363],"class_list":["post-5211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-books","category-children-blues","category-photography-cameras","tag-d300","tag-sigma-18-250mm","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-8-id","wpcat-7-id","wpcat-13-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}