[slideshow] At the risk of sounding a little too "Oprahish" when you capture photos try to capture a moment with life in it. Studio shots have their place, but if you want to remember the fun or life enriching moment you have to catch an element of that in the photo!

In each of these photos I tried to do just that.

I tried to use a little inherent distortion of the wide angle in the big sphere rock folder to bring some focus back to the boys and girls getting wet pushing that rock around. The shutter speed allows movement to be felt, but captures the frozen focus around the rock of the boys and girls.

You can see the squirt of the water going by Kalen's face...even though he never got wet it certainly appeared that way. He was laughing when he tried to reach out to the water, and seeing the photo he laughed the same way because it was actually the effect he sought.

In the photo of the boys, Kevin (the little guy) would not stand still. So Kalen froze him for the photo. It captures the smiles of two best friends. The post editing I did lightened up the shadows and smoothed the features a bit to enhance the nostalgia of the photo.

The last two were at today's ballgame. The first shows Kalen intensely throwing the ball back to the picture. He wants to own that plate the best he can. The second shows that even though brother likes baseball, the gravel is so much more fun to play with!

I hope I am illustrating the point well enough here. In the film based past we needed to take a lot of care with our shots. Each one cost 25 cents to process. So you made them count by lining up the actors. Today take a chance, take a shot if you see elements converging. Something will pop and you'll have a fitting memory preserved.

ehw