Today The Boy has his graduation from Pre-K!

Amazing how the time flies…

Here’s a few random photographs from this year! (some of them are from projects this year… Like: How to make Homemade Slime! The Perry The Platypus Costume Quick Project – Kids T-shirt Mod! Fun with Kids: How to do a photo safari Knight Costume for dress up fun!

Here are the results of The Boy’s safari, and below the pic are some tips for taking one with your kids!

Click here to see the full picture set on flickr!

And here’s a previous one from February..

Tips:

• Do use a decent digital camera.  While I wouldn’t give him a fancy digital SLR or anything, resist the urge to just hand over a disposable (taking LOTS of pictures is key!), or one of those ‘kid cameras’ with less resolution than your cell phone.  A decent digital point and shoot will provide the best pictures… and don’t be surprised if you get a few really nice ones!  And that’s motivating to the kids.
• Review camera handling and rules prior.  His main rule was that he always had to have the wrist strap on.  And also to keep his fingers off the lens!
• Pick a good walk:  It should be long enough for plenty of interesting subjects, but short enough that he or she doesn’t get worn out.  And make sure there is plenty of variety of subjects.   Once you’ve done your neighborhood thoroughly, consider driving or biking a bit a way to start your safari!
• Encourage, but don’t micro-manage.  Let him find what he wants to photograph.  Make occasional suggestions (“Do you see anything cool on the ground?” but not “Take a picture of that red leaf”)
• Switch off occasionally to get a picture of the kid!
• If interest is flagging, try a ‘Find the Picture’ game.  “Can you find something that’s shiny?”  “that is moving?”  “How about something that’s orange?”
• Afterwards, we go back and plug the camera into the computer, and do a slideshow of all his shots.  Blurry pictures can be deleted (although don’t dismiss those with artistic merit!) so you just save off his best.  You go through together to pick your favorites.
• Then upload a set of his favorites to flickr or some other photo sharing spot, where he can share with friends or family!
• You can also use something like big huge labs or Picasa to create a mosaic of a few favorite shots.  Maybe they go up on a bulletin board or become a card for grandma!

So, get going on safari… you don’t even have to be a kid to do it, ya know?

The idea behind these efforts was to take up the challenge of building on a free platform something that was as easy to maintain as a blog, but didn’t look like a ‘blog’.

Well, the power of WordPress compels me to build a fabulous portfolio site using that platform.  Now, this is really not in the same spirit as the prior challenges, as a self hosted WordPress site is not a free option (note, the free option, WordPress.com, would not work for this).  And WordPress as a platform is considerably more suited to an effort like this–it’s hardly hacking when you’re just using the platform as designed!  So it’s not really fair to say that WordPress kicks the pants off the other options — they didn’t start in the same place.

So, I redid my friend Grieg’s photography website.  Check it out here!

If you guys are interested, I’ll do a tutorial/tips/lessons learned, and post it over at Dabbled|Studios.  I’m trying to move all my website related blogging over there.

In short, WordPress gives you a ton of tools and plugins which can really produce a professional look.  I will eventually get around to redo-ing my own portfolio site, which is still in Tumblr from the previous experiments.  WordPress is miles above the free options (like Tumblr or Blogger), but the free options do have one huge advantage… Free!  WordPress is technically free as well, but you do have to have your own hosting, which will run you around 5-10$ per month.  Not a huge expense, but not free either.

And if you want to see what we started with, you can see what the free Blogger version looked like here.

And of course, if you need a wedding or childrens photographer and you live in Georgia, do consider Grieg!

To tide you over, here’s a few pictures of the festival, from my friend and favorite photographer, Grieg Wehr:

Bunches of Festival Pics here.

A few tips for successful photos that I like to follow

1. like anything else we post about here, it’s all about practice! The more you do it, the better your eye gets.

2. Take LOTS of pictures. The age of digital means we can take tons of shots and just pick the best ones to keep.

3. Remember the Rule of Thirds for interesting pics.

4. Don’t be afraid to play with them in Photoshop (or similar) afterwards. Re-crop, mess with levels or curves… there are tons of tutorials out there than can help you.

5. Try different angles. Although do remember that when photographing kids, you’ll get great shot if you get down on their level. Have your subject interact with interesting things. And don’t feel like they always have to look at the camera and grin to get a good shot.

Here are some more pics…. Click through to see them on flickr in larger sizes.

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