Darice Michelle Photography

Category Archives: For You Photographers

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WOW Am I Behind In All Your Comments!

February 17, 2010 – 12:38 am

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Whoops I have been so busy lately that I have not been able to read through all the comments many of you left under my “Go Ahead Ask Me” Section. My kids and I have been busy and truly enjoy spending time together so I have been blogging less. I hope you all still come back from time to time to see what great weddings and photo shoots I have done.

So many of you awesome photographers and beginner photographers have sent me comments with GREAT questions that I PROMISE I will get to as soon as I can. I just wanted to let you all know I heard your questions and haven’t forgotten about them.

Ok, I know this next photo has nothing to do with my post but I can’t help but share it. Jaden just turned 7 years old on Feb. 9th and aside from him growing up so fast, we had a blast ice skating at Skate World! I haven’t been ice skating in over 10 years and couldn’t believe how quickly I picked it up again…maybe doing yoga and becoming better at balancing kind of helped me out a little on the ice there!

Jaden had many friends at his party…we were so proud of everyone that skated with much bravery! Most of Jaden’s friends had never gone ice skating before! Way to go everyone.

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Another Photography Question

January 19, 2010 – 9:06 am

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Kimberly Makinster is a new photographer out of Jacksonville and posted a question for me on facebook that I couldn’t resist answering. Why? Simply because she stated one word that grabbed my attention, CALIFORNIA!

Question from Kim:

Hi Darice!

Just wanted to ask you if you had any pointers for me-I am heading out to Cali next week with my clients out there and I will actually be shooting my first real professional shoot.

Im really excited. I have put together a list of shots on the beach, action shots, urban shots downtown, and studio shots. I have a d5000 im working with and im wondering if you would suggest some lenses outside of the 55mm and 200mm.

I love your photography and any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated. I am a graphic and web designer but I am just getting into photography. I would also love to volunteer if you had any shoots coming up that I could help you with and learn from the best!

thanks again!

Kim

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ANSWER:

Hi Kim! I should be asking you if I can assist you! You’re going to my favorite place, CALI! It’s funny you sent this message to me at a time when my thoughts have been grossly dominated by my desire to return back home. My memory flickers with moments spent at the Pacific Ocean, strolling down the neatly lined palm trees streets with their neighboring one-of-a-kind old spanish-style homes and carting through the Bixby Knoll’s Von’s grocery store that looks more like a furniture interior design store with it’s dark hard wood floors and modern track lighting.

California brings forth culture, beauty, landscape variety with its hills, valleys, mountains, and less we forget the glistening ocean with homes sitting atop monstrous cliffs. Or the city where all are welcome: Santa Monica. Her sidewalks never grow lonely with bikini women rollerbladers looking to be admired, the pronounced bikers group with their spikes and long beards, the independent tattooed shirt-less skate boarders, young couples smothered by their impetuous feelings, and old couples envying them. Oh yeah and then there’s the occasional dressed up wanna-be-star or those that seemingly appear blind since they saw it acceptable to boldly show up in their disharmonized attire starting with a bonnet shadowed by a country leather vest followed by a hot pink too-too ending with florescent green and black horizontal candy-cane-like tights accompanied by their 20-year old beat up southern boots even a homeless person wouldn’t dare wear. “People watching” in California certainly is entertaining and since no one is camera shy, click away! Cali certainly provides endless photographic subjects, backgrounds and opportunities so I wish you the very best photo shoot during your stay!

Having said all that, now I will answer you question…sorry, had to get that off my chest…I miss California dearly.

Downtown Los Angeles, California

Downtown Urban Shots:

Be careful, DT LA has every homeless person imaginable. Unlike DT Jacksonville, the homeless in LA disregard manners and have lost their fear for authority. So be wise and come fully equipped…and I don’t mean camera equipped. If you are shooting before sun down, be sure you have a pack with you.

I am not sure where in California you are staying so it’s hard to make suggestions. However, if you’ll be in the LA area these were my favorite beach locations to shoot at when I first ventured as a new beginner photographer: (such memories)

1. Corona Del Mar

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1. Newport Beach

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3. Huntington Beach

4. Redondo Beach

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5. Laguna Beach

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6. Santa Monica Beach

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As far as lenses go:

1. Be sure to have a wide angel

2. Include a portrait lens (even if all you have is the Nikon 18mm-105mm 3.5-5.6)

* If you’re shooting outdoors before sunset, you will be okay. When I started out practicing at Little Corona Del Mar Beach, I only had a 75-300mm 4.5 lens. Using a tripod (yes it can be tricky to use one in the sand) I got great results with this lens!

3. A flash (Nikon SB 900 Speed Light).

Since California has the most amazing sun sets, I highly recommend you use a flash to capture the oranges, pinks and blues at sun down!

I have some weddings coming up if you are interested in shooting with me. Email me at darice at daricemichelle dot com and we’ll go over the details!

Have a great day Kim!

Sincerely,

Darice Michelle

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Photography Question Time

January 11, 2010 – 6:41 pm

I get a lot of emails with questions from other photographers or photography hobbiests. Since I receive similar questions I thought that posting some general questions here might be of use to others who want to pick my brain : )

From Sherry Caterson:

I was wondering if you might know the answer to a couple of questions I have…
1. Is it the computer or the photo editing program that is important when editing a photo? I have I-photo, which is limited, but also I am not sure that when I edit a photo I am getting a true image result on my computer screen. What do you suggest?

My Answer:

There are a multitude of different photo editing programs out there to retouch photos with. For the professional photographer, most use Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop.

For the hobbiest, prancing around in Photoshop may be a bit intimidating and trippy; therefore you can opt out to use more simple programs like Lunapic or Gimp.
2. How do you back up your photos? I plan to be scanning alot of photos, plus ones from my camera… what is an easy way to back these up so I won’t lose pics when my computer crashes (which has happened in the past). A lot of photos also seems to make my computer run sluggish (i have a mac laptop) I can burn disks..but then do I delete the pics from my computer?…what would you suggest as the best way to back up a lot of photos.

My Answer:

Sherry, I feel your pain. I, along with many others, have lost photos from computer malfunctions and the like, so you are not alone. To avoid any future heart attacks, I now have a complete back up system thanks to a fellow photographer friend, Brian Smith with S & R Photography, who hooked me up. My backup operating systems consists of a Linksys Cisco Network Storage Unit with 2 One-TB Seagate Internal Hard Drives that mirror files so if one fails or shuts down, I can still access the second one…phew! Manually, I drag my photos from the computer to the system. Yet, since life still likes to surprise us with what could go wrong, I still back up my files on disks because you never know what can go wrong.

I’m planning to make digital albums (which I still have to learn about- know anything?), after I scan all my loose photos (tons of them) onto computer and organize them by year, event & faces. I also want to edit them properly if they are faded, or red eye, and maybe do some artsy stuff with them and want to be able to print them out and look good if I wanted to have a print.

My Answer:

Depending upon how much time or money you want to invest your project into will guide you to which album software program or on-line album-making program would be best for you. Try looking at these sites:

I’d be ever grateful if you could answer any of these questions, as I embark on this seemingly never-ending project.

Sherry

Good luck Sherry and I hope that helps!! : )

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Pictage User Group (PUG) Hosts Denis Reggie!

May 22, 2009 – 8:49 pm

Last night a bunch of us photographers were in such great company with famous and highly talented photographer, Denis Reggie. Denis Reggie has photographed so many celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Mariah Carey, JFK Junior’s wedding, NBC Real Weddings, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wedding and SO MUCH MORE. He is the Grandfather of REAL wedding photojournalism. There was a great turn out of many photographers that the energy in the room was so alive, fun, and playful that it truly was one of the best workshops I have been to!

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Thank you Scarlett, for hosting a great PUG meeting! We all really learned a lot from Denis and had such a great time!

(photos below were taken by Scarlett Lillian)

denisreggie Part of our night we learned Denis’s lighting secret that he calls “Foofing”…

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The first photo of Scarlett, Denis made me take it the way I normally take the photo, then he grabbed my camera made some adjustments and took the photo using his “foofing” lighting technique. Which one do you like better?

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Denis taking a photo of me using his foo foo technique with some minor adjustments… you can see how there are shadows to the right of me when facing this photo thus creating a little depth. This photo is only lightly “foofed”. Below you will see images that have been fully “foofed”.

“Foofing” helps to thin out arms and since it’s so hard to photograph people where their arms don’t look “fat”, Denis explained how foofooing gives the image DEPTH thus creating shadows that assist in flattering the arms in a photo.

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