Composing

It's been a slow week. BUT it's leading up to my birthday which makes it a bit exciting! I still have such a little kid attitude when it comes to my 2 favorite days of the year: Christmas and my birthday. Now don't get misled here - I'm not the greediest person on the planet (maybe just in the Bay Area - kidding!) The reason I love these holidays is for different reasons. Christmas has always been a magical time of year for me - a feeling created and still fed by my parents. It's all about love and giving and generosity and being with family and friends.

I love my birthday for different, perhaps more selfish reasons. I LOVE my family and friends. I thrive when I'm surrounded by people I care about. The reason I love my birthday is because it's the one day of the year I feel that I can ask my friends and family to spend time with me and they will make it a slightly bigger priority than usual. The best birthday for me is a big party - no frills - just friends. The older we get - the less we see each other - the more my birthday means to me for getting together with people.

So while I attempt to calmly anticipate seeing so many of my best friends this weekend - I will share with you some photos I took a few weeks ago around my parents' yard. This is a brief lesson on photo composition. Before the camera type, before aperture size, before shutter speed - the fundamental of a good picture is composition. How you choose to frame up your shot. This is what I believe truly makes a photographer an artist. And this is what I was practicing in the yard that day.

My biggest pet peeve - PLEASE NOTE (whether you know me or not!) - is when I ask someone to take a picture of me with someone else and instead of composing the photo around our group - they center the photo on our faces. Usually this cuts our bodies in half and includes a whole ton of boring wall/ceiling in the shot. Example from Liz's birthday weekend:

Poor composition; Better composition

Usually I end up doing some fancy cropping when situations like this arise. Anything to make it look a little better! And usually that's why I'll opt for a tri-pod to take my photo and kindly turn down the generous offer of someone passing by. You just never know who'll have a good eye or not! (I know - I'm so stuck up...)

Geraniums and Pansies

These pots actually looked pretty gnarly overall. Half the flowers were dead and dry and overgrown - ready to be pulled out. But by re-composing my shot to a much tighter frame - they're decent photos, yah?

It never hurts to have some colorful and beautiful subjects to photograph does it? Maybe a post in the future will need to create those blueberries into something yummy and blog-worthy! But this quick break from rich, sweet food has been nice.