Welcome. Grab a cup of coffee. Stay a while. Learn how to use your fancy camera of yours.

pretty afternoon light

By Cori Derksen | Oct 17, 2011

Beautiful light coming through the trees. Ahhhh, one of my favorite things. :) Let the bright light be behind your subject just make sure your subject’s face isn’t too washed out. See how his face is facing toward me. If his face was turned much to the left or right then part of his face…

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even more baby photo props

By Cori Derksen | Oct 11, 2011

Oh how I love the newborn babies. I love photographing them and I love using an antique photo prop with them now and then. I wanted to share a few more fun ideas of newborn photo props for you. There’s so much you can do when photographing newborn babies. Love it.This little guy’s daddy is…

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more newborn photography props

By Cori Derksen | Oct 7, 2011

I thought it would be fun to share some more newborn photography props that I’ve enjoyed using. Newborns are so fun. Especially when they’re new enough and little enough to mold them and play around with them. If the props are kind of random and out there than it’s my preference that there be some kind…

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fall family shots

By Cori Derksen | Oct 3, 2011

The end of the Summer sun and the beginning of the beauty of Fall. I’m welcoming in the Fall this year…so very ready for it. With the Fall season comes lots of family photo shoots. Here are some manual settings during a family shoot in the late evening sun. Settings for the image below: ISO…

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soccer season

By Cori Derksen | Sep 23, 2011

It’s soccer season for all the little peeps! So, it’s time to get that camera out and take out to the field. This past Saturday was my oldest’s first soccer game. So I took out one camera, one lens, with one battery and one memory card inside. No extras, no white balance target, etc. Gotta…

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first day of school

By Cori Derksen | Sep 12, 2011

Some settings from the first day of preschool… manual settings for the shot below: ISO 500, aperture F 2.8, shutter 1/160 second, lens 50mm 1.2 manual settings for the shot below: ISO 1000 (shooting through the window into indoor light), aperture F 2.8, shutter 1/125 second

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inside pictures and ISO

By Cori Derksen | Sep 2, 2011

I took a few quick shots of my little boys in the bathtub yesterday early evening. When you’re shooting indoors without a flash then you need to raise your ISO. Your ISO used to be the speed of film (in film days) and now it’s essentially the same thing on our digital cameras. It’s the…

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pictures in the sun and shade

By Cori Derksen | Aug 15, 2011

Taking pics in the sun and the shade are sometimes tricky. This first picture below was taken with all of the kids in the shade (mostly…my little nephew on the far right got caught in a bit of sun) but the tricky part is that the sun is bright in the background of the picture.…

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more summertime settings

By Cori Derksen | Aug 12, 2011

Time for campfire and time to start in on the s’mores. Yummers! I’m really gonna miss the s’mores that came with summer this year. My favorite s’mores included Nutella rather than a chocolate bar. Yum yum. So these pics were taken in the early evening about dusk. The sun was going down but not down…

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