Children's Portrait tip from Cheryl May!

I had the opportunity last week to hang out with an awesome mom, wife and friend Chrystal. Chrystal loves photography and has a great eye. She wanted to learn more about how to make her camera take the pictures she wanted to. So we got together at Alice Keck park in Santa Barbara for a mini photo lesson with me and we had such a blast!

Brody tagged along, and was an excellent and willing model. Her biggest question for me that day was how to take a picture where the foreground is sharp and the background is out of focus. This was an awesome question so we spent a good portion of the time practicing this. Here are a few examples:

















































The answer to Chrystal's question is actually supper simple and easy to master and once you do you will fall in love with it! I have! I shoot this way just about 90% of the time!

There are a couple ways to get this effect. One is to set your camera on the 'macro setting' which is usually designated by a flower. Another is to put your camera on Av (for Aperture value) and set your Aperture to f4 or f5.6. This setting allows you to choose your aperture but will still set your exposure for you. It will keep whatever is in the foreground sharp and throw everything else out of focus. It's a super fun setting to play with and will get you some awesome results!

Another thing that helps when trying to achieve this affect is to use what is called a 'long lens' basically that's a lens that is 70mm and up. For shooting Brody at the park, we used my 100mm lens which worked beautifully! Longer lenses will emphasize this effect more so than shorter (50mm or lower) lenses will.

I hope this lesson has been helpful, feel free to email me if you have questions :)!

Thank you Chrystal and Brody for such a fun day!

Sienna's Album

Lately I have really been getting into designing albums, I put together my husband Tim's sample album, and I had a blast working on Sienna's little 5x5 coffee table book. Here are some of my favorite pages from her book.













































This book just arrived the other day, it was absolutely adorable! I was so excited to be able to hand it off to Sienna's mom. Albums are so much fun and such a great keepsake to have around. My favorite thing in the house right now is our engagement book that we used as our guest book at our wedding :). Thanks to all of you who signed it and made it so special!

Here is Sienna's entire album

Sienna's portraits in Santa Barbara

I recently had the priviledge of photographing Sienna. She was so precious and sweet! I had a blast capturing all of her little expressions. Here are a few of my favorites from her day:





















































































































Her mom ordered the most adorable little 5x5 coffee table book from me, and I'll be sharing that with you soon... but for now you can click here to see her entire session :).

It's official!

I finally changed my name to Cheryl May Halberg!! (previously Cheryl May Knowlton).

Being newly weds Tim and I had no idea what we had to do to get my name changed! We asked around to a bunch of our friends and at first we thought we simply had to wait till we received our marriage license in the mail! But we couldn't be any more wrong! :) lol.

We found out then that we were supposed to go to the Santa Barbara Courthouse to purchase a copy of the license. So this past Tuesday I did just that, along with heading to the social security office to get a new SS card and the DMV to update my drivers license.

As I left to go do all that I was dreading the long lines and rude people. But to my pleasant surprise it really didn't take long at all! I must have hit everything a good time :). At the DMV I ran into an old Brooks Institute classmate Eric Distel, as well as a super cheery man working the camera. I think we all typically think of DMV workers as bitter, stogy old people who hate their job, but it was so awesome to run into a man who brightened people's day while working at the DMV, what a blessing he is!!

Children's Portrait Tips from Cheryl May!

There have been so many times I have been hanging out with people and they have asked for my advice on how to create a certain photographic look. So a portion of my blog is now going to be devoted to helping people get better photographs of their children and loved ones. I am so excited about this and hope that it helps all of you who love to take pictures but just haven't had the chance to learn all the ins and outs of phtography! So here it goes....

First things first, it's important to understand how to compose an image. There are certain rules that have been created in the visual world, but one thing to always remember, these rules are ment to be broken! Instead of seeing them as rules, think of them as guidelines :)!

The rule/guideline for this week is called the 'rule of thirds'. This basically means you want to avoid placing your subject in the dead center of the photograph. Again, I'm not saying you can't ever center your subject, but most of the time a photograph will be more successful if you place the subject or the person's eyes just off of the center of the image. Here are a few examples:













































If your were to split these images into thirds vertically each kid would fall in either the left third or the right thrid. Like the grid below shows:

















The next time you're photographing your adorable little one, as you look through your camera, imagine this grid in the frame and be sure to place your subect either to the left or the right.
















In this image Grace fills the entire frame, but the image is successful because her face is placed in the right third of the frame.












































This rule aslo works with verticle images. If you were to place the above grid over the image, the top horizontal line would line up roughly in the area that Ephraim's eyes are placed. A successful portrait will position the eyes at the top third of the image.
















Like I said earlier, this rule is more like a guidline and can be broken succesfully! Above is an example of just that. If you look closely, Jenna's nose is directly in the center of the image! The rule has been broken here! What helps though is that her eyes are at the top third of the image.

As you practice this technique, you will get better and better at recognizing when to use this rule and when to break it.

I truly hope that this has been helpful! If you have any questions please email me at cheryl@cherylmay.com :) God bless!!