Play Guitar

DAY 18

18 JAN 09

Today, the family returned to my husband's recording studio, but there were no musicians there, save my own children. My daughter brought her electric guitar (a Christmas gift) and my son brought my husband's acoustic guitar, which seems to have become the family guitar.

While we were there, both kids played guitar, piano, and drums while I bounced all over the building taking pictures. The shot that I ended up choosing for today turned out to be the very last shot I took. It's my daughter's guitar, which was leaning against a table when I walked into the room.

There was another occasion today -- not only was it my second time shooting at the studio, but it was also my second time shooting at the studio using my 50mm f/1.8 lens. Known as the Nifty Fifty, I can see it quickly becoming one of my favorites. I mean, please. An f/1.8? And for less than $100?

I shot a lot at f/1.8 today for two reasons: 1)I've never really shot at that aperture before, so I wanted to try it; and 2) I was indoors and wanted to use my flash as little as possible.

Flash experimenting will be coming on another Project 365 day, I'm sure.

Post-processing on this photo included white balance adjustment, sharpening and noise reduction, and a slight curves adjustment.

Sweet Music

DAY 16

16 JAN 09

Since the kids have a four-day weekend this week (Presidents' Day weekend), I had the opportunity to accompany my husband to his studio for his regular Friday recording sessions. Knowing they'd also been doing a lot of construction down there, I took my cameras along to get what I knew would be great shots.

While my husband was working in the back warehouse portion of the building, there were a couple musicians songwriting up front. Actually, they were in the early stages -- more idea lobbing than writing. They were brainstorming ideas. And man, was it entertaining! I told them more than once I had brought the wrong camera. I should have had my video camera with me. But I did have my still camera, and Jeff and Bradly turned out to be more interesting subjects than the construction was (although I got shots of that, too).

Meet Bradly. I took a bunch of pictures of him while he played, some incorporating depth of field and selective focusing as in the shot above, others using motion blur to try and show just how dynamic the process was. In the end, I had so many shots to choose from, it was extremely difficult. This particular shot just spoke to me, and it did so the moment I captured it. Something told me this would be my shot for the day.

Post-processing includes noise reduction and sharpening, and I applied some additional lens blur to the ugly background. Borders were also added.