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!!

Rainy Saturday Afternoon

I spend quite a bit of time at home working away on photos, emails, etc., and when this past Saturday rolled around I was a little bummed that it was raining in Santa Barbara since I was itching to be outside! (I had a photo session scheduled with Jordan but her mom and I decided to postpone it for brighter weather, seeing as it probably wouldn't be a good idea to take an 8 month old out in the pouring rain! ;) )

Tim and I love shooting in stormy weather though, and we decided not to pass the day away cooped up inside watching movies and sipping a warm drink (which I absolutely love doing from time to time!). Instead, we hopped into our Toyota Tacoma and started driving towards Ojai, for a photo adventure! Along the way we drove by Lake Casitas, detoured on a few roads that looked interesting and pulled off to the side to exercise the creative sides of our brains! We had such a blast!










































Tim's eye for fine art always challenges me to do the same, and rainy days make for a great source of inspiration for just that!













All along our drive there were tons of small rock slides! At times it made me nervous, but we made it through safely :). Here is one rock that made it all the way to the middle of the road, I couldn't resist getting up close to it for an interesting perspective.















Tim steeling the shot I took just seconds ago ;)! Actually it's supper fun to see how he photographs the same subject, we tend to approach them in an entirely different way, perhaps that helps us be such a good team! Hopefully he'll post his shot from this on his blog :).






















Umm... not much to say here ;)... just my husband's funny way of getting sick shots :)






















And the aftermath of him rolling around on the wet pavement! :). My husband's so awesome! I love him to death! :)

Hayden and Ephraim's Portraits!

I thought it would be fun to introduce you guys to my nephews! They are some of the funiest, cutest, craziest boys I have ever met! Seriously, they are so much fun, everytime I visit them they make me laugh so much!

When I was in Palm Springs for Christmas break, my sister asked me to grab my camera and snap off a few shots of them. So we went to a nearby park in Palm Desert to hang out and have some fun. Hayden wasn't quite into it at first, but once we got him on the swings and made him laugh a bit he quickly cheered up :).

Their parent's are both supper talented in drawing. Mike is also talented in the area of web design and graphic arts. Check out his blog, he has a fetish with calling himself batmyke :). Hmm I wonder where his kids get their crazyness from! :)


































































































To see more pics from when I shot Hayden and Ephraim's portraits click here

Murphy Twins!

A recent first for me was photographing two twin boys!! They were so cute! I know, I know, I think I have said this about every single kid I have shot, but honestly, I think they are so adorable! :)

So the Murphy twins were fun little boys, they were just barely learning to crawl and hold themselves up. We took pictures all over their beautiful home. We went in the backyard in their little play pin, their living room and even in one of the bedrooms there!

They have a couple sessions booked with me and I can't wait for our next one! It's going to be a blast to see how they change! Speaking of change, this Saturday I am scheduled to take pictures of Jordan again and I am SOOO excited to see how much she has changed. Check back here in a bit and I'll be sure to post up her new pictures :).









































































To view the twins entire session click here

Kyle's photos!

I wanted to share with you all one of my photo sessions with an adorable and crazy 4 year old boy named Kyle! He was so much fun to photograph. At the start of our session he was so chatty and had so much to say to me, I loved getting to know this kid :)!

Then, part way through, he decided it would be fun to run away from the camera!! I've met many challenges before when photographing kids, but never someone running away from me!! It was so funny at first, and I just played along with him... as though we were playing hide and seek! :) That's how I got the shot of him peeking at me through the bushes.

But after some time of playing this game both him and I were rather tired of it. So I suggested we switch locations and head to the beach. He loved that idea! And when we got there he thoroughly enjoyed throwing sticks into the water and playing tag with me! :). Kyle was such a character to photograph! :) And I had a blast grabbing these images:


















































































To view Kyle's entire session click here

Family Portraits!!

Check out these family portraits I shot recently! It was seriously a blast to capture some images of these guys! To see more from their session follow this link: Renga Family Portraits

Cheryl May....Halberg!!!!

Just a little under a month ago I got married to a wonderful, handsome and talented man named Tim Halberg!! I am so excited to be called his wife! For the first few weeks we kept looking at each other and saying things like "your my husband!! so weird!"... weird in a good way though that is :). So, I am no longer Cheryl Knowlton, but now proudly go by Cheryl Halberg! :) Although it's a bit frustrating that my legal name has yet to change, so whenever I bank I still use my old last name :(. That will all change soon though hopefully! :)

My wedding day was absolutely surreal!! Seriously, it is hard to explain, but it was as though everything just unfolded before my eyes as though I was simply a spectator. And yet, I felt very attunned as to what was supposed to happen when and how, and who was supposed to be where. I tried to soak in every moment, knowing that it would fly by so fast! In the end, I really had such a blast, experienced more emotions than I knew what to do with in one day, and am absolutely blessed to be living with the man of my dreams who I dearly love!

Unfortunately I have no images to show you since I spent my entire day in front of the camera! But here are a few links for you to check out some images that came from that day:

My husband Tim's blog (he also has some images from our honeymoon up!): Tim Halberg Photography

Our incredible wedding photographers!: Michael Costa Photography