Vintage Freebie with Keren - Mother's Day Tags

Can it be true?! Mother's Day is JUST around the corner! How freakishly fast this year is slipping away :(
My Baby is no longer a baby but a 21 month old that looks like a 3 year old...Ahhh!!..how I miss that new baby smell!  Sensing a tad bit of baby fever, are we? Maybe ;)

Hope you enjoy these Fab Mother's Day Tags! They are 2" circles for easy punching :)

click Here to Download

clip art credit: The Graphics Fairy

Have a wonderful week!

xo,

Keren

www.FreePrettyThingsForYou.com

Photography with Jessica - ISO

Have you all been experimenting with aperture and shutter speed? Trying new things? Having fun? Good! The last of the three basic photography principles is ISO and that's what we'll be going over today. And the good news is that it's super easy to understand. And to make it even better, besides just applying to DSLRs, a lot of point and shoot cameras have adjustable ISO settings too!

Your ISO setting determines how fast your digital sensor "picks up" the light coming into the camera, and works in combination with aperture and shutter speed to determine your exposure. It's a carry-over from the pre-digital days of film speed. The lowest setting starts at 100 and can go all the way up to 6400 or more. A lower ISO number (100 for example) produces a clearer, smoother, cleaner image but requires more light to do so. So you will need to be in a very brightly lit area. A high ISO number (1600 for example) needs less light to capture the image, but the image will be grainier the higher you go. So you can be in a dark area and will still be able to capture your image, but it will have some amount of grain.

This first photo was taken outdoors with plenty of light, so I used a low setting of ISO 100 so I could get the clearest picture.



The second photo was taken indoors and at night (no flash) so there was very little light and I had to use a much higher ISO of 1600. You can see that there is some graininess to the image.



The newer your digital camera, the higher ISO settings it's likely to have, and the less graininess as well.

A very easy way to understand ISO is the "worker bees" analogy. Think of your ISO number as your number of worker bees, and those bees' only job is to buzz around gathering light for your photo! If you are in a dark area, you'll need a lot of bees to help you get enough light for your picture, so you need a high ISO number. If you are in a very well lit area, you won't need much help getting light, so a small number of worker bees will do the job and you just need the lowest ISO number (100).



So, that's it! Easy as pie! So once you have your aperture and shutter speed set the way you want, just try to keep you ISO set at 100. But if your photo is too dark you'll need more worker bees gathering that light in for you, so increase your ISO until you can get the correct exposure!

Being able to adjust your ISO is awesome because it allows you to avoid flash use in low light conditions! I avoid using a flash whenever possible because it creates yucky harsh light and sharp shadows. You will get much better images by increasing your ISO instead, even if it does add a little grain. Most of the time in the newer, nicer DSLRs, the grain is almost unnoticeable!

And to illustrate that point, here are some pictures I took of my kids searching for eggs this Easter. In this setting (indoors with partially covered windows), if you didn't know how to adjust your ISO, you would be forced to use the icky flash! But look how great it looks if you just bump up your ISO a bit. No noticeable grain at all! All these were taken at ISO 640...











Now let's see how you use your ISO settings! One more time, the rules for the link party...

Please link to ONE specific blog post, not an entire blog. And please only link to a blog post featuring pictures that you've taken experimenting with ISO settings!
Thanks for your cooperation, I'm looking forward to seeing your pictures!!

Post Pretty Freebie!

Ready for the weekend to get here!? Me too! Here's a  little vintage pretty to get you through till then :) But before I go and leave you, I wanted to say that I would really Love and appreciate YOUR feedback on what kind of vintage freebies you would like to see more of  here on Shabby Blogs! After all I am making them for you and I wouldn't want any of you to get bored or anything ;)

Click here to Download 

Till next week My Pretties!
xoxo!
Keren
www.FreePrettyThingsForYou.com

Adorable Deer Easter Tag Freebies!

Are you all ready For Easter?? If the answer is No, you're not alone! I'm so behind on everything I don't even know where to start! Hopefully these adorable little  vintage deer tags will get us all motivated to get the Easter wagon rolling :)

Click Here to Download

I really can't get enough of this little fawn.... I hope she brings you lots and lots of  :)
Enjoy!

-Keren
www.freeprettythingsforyou.com

Photography with Jessica - Shutter Speed

I hope you've been having fun experimenting with aperture! Now we'll be getting familiar with shutter speed. Most of this is applicable to SLR cameras, but I'll also clue you in on how it relates to point and shoot cameras too!

Shutter speed works in combination with the aperture and ISO to determine how much light is entering your camera. I like to think of the shutter as a tiny set of sliding doors inside the camera that slide apart and then come together again. Shutter speed is measured in seconds, and in fractions of seconds. If the shutter goes very fast, like 1/2000 of a second, then only a little bit of light has time to enter the camera. If the shutter goes super slow, like 10 seconds, then a whole lot of light is getting in over that long amount of time.

It is much more common for the shutter to only be open for a fraction of a second. On your camera, the fractions of a second will be displayed as whole number, and the full seconds will be displayed with hash marks.



So why is shutter speed so important? Because it controls how motion appears in your photo. A fast shutter speed will freeze action, and a slow shutter speed will allow for motion blur!



So when taking your pictures, you need to decide whether you want your subject crisp and clear, or if you want to see some blur to convey a sense of motion.

In most cases you will probably want a fast shutter speed. Here are some examples of situations where a fast shutter speed can freeze the action in a photo:





Sometimes I like to allow for just a little bit of blur to convey the feel of motion. I love it and I think it adds a little fun and spunk! You'll notice that the shutter speed wasn't quite as fast for this one:



There are some instances where you would want a very slow shutter speed to allow for a lot of motion blur. For these kinds of photos you would need to use a tripod to avoid camera shake. As human beings, we are not able to stay 100% completely still while taking a picture. If your shutter speed goes any slower than 1/125th of a second, you start to see this camera shake motion and your pictures will be blurry.

Here are some examples of the effects you can get if you leave your shutter open for a long time:

In these first images of a Hawaiian fire dancer, it is so awesome to see the path of the fire as it twirls!



In this next image of the waterfall, the flowing water creates a smooth blur as it travels on its path.



And that's not all you can do! You've probably all seen impressive motion blur pictures of fountains, car lights on city streets, and even stars that circle with the Earth's rotation. If you Google "motion blur" you can see all kinds of cool photos you can take with a slow shutter speed and a tripod!

Keep in mind that leaving your shutter open for long periods of time will be letting a lot of light into your camera and you may get over-exposed images. You can compensate by closing up your aperture, or by shooting at night when there's less light.

On an SLR camera you can choose your own shutter speed for your photos, remembering that anything slower than 1/125th of a second will need a tripod (or set the camera on a table, the ground, etc.) to keep it still.

Though I like to shoot completely in manual mode, an easier way to begin experimenting with your shutter speed setting is to use the TV mode (shutter speed priority mode) on your SLR camera dial. In TV mode you can determine your own shutter speed, and then the camera will automatically determine your aperture and ISO for you. Cool!

If you have a point and shoot camera, there is one way to control your shutter speed. To freeze action with a fast shutter speed, set your dial to "sport" mode, which has an icon that looks like a person running. This setting will tell your camera to use the fastest shutter speed possible. Unfortunately, there's not really a way to get heavy motion blur with a point and shoot. There's no setting to keep the shutter open for that long.

Next, I'll be covering ISO! In the meantime, let's see your photos with your new shutter speed skills!

And let's set some ground rules with the link party:

Please link to ONE specific blog post, not an entire blog. And please ONLY link to a blog post featuring pictures that you've taken experimenting with shutter speed!
Thanks for your cooperation, I can't wait to see your pictures!!