Amy Sandoval Photography Blog

Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk Portrait Photographer, Wedding Photographer: Newborn, Maternity, child, family and wedding coverage.

Category Archives: Personal Notes

Recording daily candid moments & let’s talk about the weird weather!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012 Posted in Personal Notes, Photography Tips

Just a few candids from the last week or so. I take nearly all of my candids on my iPhone, but lately I’ve been trying to get back to shooting some with the big camera, too. I have to leave the big camera on my desk in the home office to remember to shoot with it regularly. Last week it sat on our coffee table for half a week and I used it a lot more, so maybe that’s where it needs to be!

A little technical info for those of you who shoot inside your house and want great candids: I shot these with no flash. My ISO was about 800-1000 and for the shot of the cat on my daughter’s back, that was shot at ISO 3200. I shoot with the Canon 5D Mark II and the low light ISO control is fantastic. I also use custom white balance when I shoot my candids inside. It’s typically on Tungsten or Fluorescent. I don’t have any fancy way of choosing white balance – I change it to see what looks the most natural by taking a shot on several white balance options and choosing the one that best represents the actual light in the room. I still have a mix of CFL and old-school lightbulbs in some rooms, so it depends on the room I’m in. I’m typically shooting “wide open” at apertures of 1.6 to 2.2 on my 50mm 1.2 lens to allow the most light from the room in to the photos. I added a little post vintage toning to the piano photo and no major processing to the photo of the cat on back.

I was inspired to work on capturing more of these moments while watching “The President’s Photographer” on PBS this weekend. It originally aired a couple of years ago but they re-run it sometimes and it’s such an interesting look at the life of a Presidential photographer. Their days are long but they record some amazing moments in history. My favorite shots were the candid moments with the Presidents – the photos in which their guard is down. Those are the most telling.

Of course we’re a three-cat family, so nearly all of our candid shots revolve around their antics.

Savannah is our oldest cat and she’s considered geriatric at age 13. But she seems to be getting more social and less shy as she gets older. She has no qualms about sitting on the piano bench while Olivia practices. That is, when she’s not sitting on a random piece of paper on the floor. You can put an 8.5×11 sheet of paper on the floor anywhere in the house and she will find it and then casually sit down on it and go to sleep for hours. Cats are so funny!

There’s no happier place for our cat Charlie than sleeping on, near or next to a person. Thank goodness she only weighs about 7 pounds because she loves sleeping on our backs!

And, let’s talk about the weather for the last few days. From the 70s to the 30s and back again multiple times. Yesterday and today were crazy. Here are a few shots from last night. We had about 30 minutes of rain last night at sunset and the sun was blazing through the rain. It was incredible light. A little while later we had insanely black, tall clouds surrounding the house. And of course today we had flurries for a minute followed by sun followed by another minute of flurries followed by sun. Crazy! I can’t wait for real spring.

As the light was dying I noticed fog rising off the lake across the street from our house. Crazy weather!

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robynMarch 6, 2012 - 5:31 pm

The photos at the piano are so warm. Lovely! I live in Williamsburg–I also blogged about the freaky weather recently.
(The pics are of my husband and daughter.) http://www.robynlphotography.com

robynMarch 6, 2012 - 5:33 pm

Sorry! That was the wrong link: http://www.robynlphotography.com/2012/03/york-river-state-park.html Anyway, you captured some great shots of the crazy weather down in your area. That sunlight is amazing!

Amy SandovalMarch 6, 2012 - 6:19 pm

Beautiful captures! Thank you for sharing – your blog is a great journey of personal captures.

Session rewind – Fall mini session with Olivia – Child Portrait Photographer in Virginia Beach

Tuesday, January 31, 2012 Posted in Child, Personal Notes

Another catch up blog post! I did a mini session with Olivia last November to get ready for our Christmas cards. Olivia is 9 – part of me would like to permanently hold her here at this age because it’s such a good age. She’s curious, funny, sweet and still likes her parents. At the same time, she’s inching into that pre-teen place and there’s a sass that comes with that. But mostly I know that I’m seeing a glimpse of who she’ll be when she grows up, and I feel lucky to be part of her world.

Part of me wishes the color in this area would stay like this year-round – warm oranges and yellows and beautiful fall backdrops. But alas, spring will come and I will want everything to stay green and fresh all the time. Technical notes on these, for those who wonder…they were shot on my 50mm 1.2 lens and I tested myself and the lens by shooting the majority of them at around 1.2 or 1.4. You’ll see that they have a dreamy feel as a result – the focus drops off very quickly behind her, and in some closer shots of her face it drops off on part of her face. I wish I had more faith in the focal points on my Canon 5D Mark II, but I don’t often trust the focal points outside that trusty middle one, so much of this was done in focus/recompose style.

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Back to Basics: 2012 Rejuvenation

Friday, January 20, 2012 Posted in Personal Notes, Photography Tips

Raise your hand if you’re still wishing people “Happy New Year” and marveling every time you write “2012″ down. And now it’s nearly February 2012.

They say time flies when you’re having fun. I think it’s just flying, period, these days. Where did 2011 even go? I know I’m not the only one feeling this way. We’re all talking about it, emailing one another with apologies for not keeping in touch better and rushing from one required function to the next. I’ve spent most of the last few years so overwhelmed with my daily schedule that the feeling that I’m behind/running late/missing something is now normal! As I wind down a busy January, I’m working to schedule in a bit of a break for myself soon – there are so many things I’d like to do with the time. I am slowly working on a new website and putting together a new portrait line that I think will appeal to a lot of women. I’m also working on rejuvenating myself creatively. Stepping outside the constant marketing/promotion/session box that you need to live inside in order to make it as a pro photog.

I’m following the lead of many of the current photographers I admire and going back to my own roots by picking up film photography again. Once upon a time, I sold my Canon film SLR and lenses in order to pay for my first dSLR! I love shooting digital and will continue to shoot digital for client work, but I’m looking forward to rediscovering the slower waltz of film shooting compared to the freaky break-dance style of shooting that’s so tempting when working with digital. There’s something so valuable and right about checking your settings in triplicate, lining up a subject JUST RIGHT the first time and then clicking the button only to see…..nothing. Now that I’m shooting film again, I still find myself checking the back of the camera for the preview in the display – and the mystery of not knowing what you’ve captured makes getting the photos back in the mail almost as exciting Christmas morning.

I’ll be posting more snippets from the past month in the next week to get back in the habit of updating more often. For now I leave you Instagrams of my new baby – which uses the same lenses as my digital cameras – yay!:

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Olivia’s {Pinterest Inspired Art Party!}

Wednesday, November 9, 2011 Posted in Personal Notes

If there’s any one thing that’s reinvigorated my creativity this year, it’s pinterest.com. I can’t say enough about how this site can be used. I use it to create idea boards for decorating rooms in my home, used it when I created my new in-home studio and recently used it to create an inspiration board for for my daughter’s 9th birthday party.

Olivia loves creating art – drawing, painting, scrapbooking and on and on. Her room (sort-of like my office) is a hodge-podge of half-completed projects, random creations she’s made and lots of art supplies. So I wanted to throw her a birthday party that would celebrate that love for art. She’d been talking about having a slumber party, so we combined the idea, which worked out really well – I don’t know that we could have had this level of detailed projects if we’d had a lot of girls at the party – logistically it would have been hard. So we had a small gathering and they made art, slept and woke up and made more art the next morning. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised that every one of them seemed to really love the projects – and I think part of the thrill was working with mediums they weren’t exposed to every day (canvas, etc.).

I thought I’d share a little about the details of her party. Many of these ideas came from pinterest.com – so I must give that site credit for providing so much help in pulling this party together. You can see my Art Party inspiration board – it’s still there.

“Poofs” purchased on etsy.com:

Glass-bottle sodas from Farm Fresh. Found out later that Cracker Barrel also has the 8 ounce glass Coke bottles. (We invited our family over for the party, too, so the soda was for the adults. Lemonade for the girls. I didn’t want them staying up ALL night!)

Rock candy and much of the other candy and all the paper supplies (including red/white wrapping paper that decorates the tables) is from Party City. A lot of the girls had never had rock candy, so I was happy to introduce them to it.

Glass bottles and striped straws are from Shop Sweet Lulu.

My wonderful mother-in-law made the cake. A simple white cake on the outside with a surprise on the inside. Cake bunting from etsy.com. Wicker basket/bottle set from TJ Maxx.

Custom cupcake wrappers and picks from etsy.com. Cupcakes from Harris Teeter. I meant to send home a cupcake to each parents and forgot – one of Olivia’s friends sent a cupcake home from a birthday party recently and it was awesome!

I purchased an Art Party guide from One Charming Party that included the cut-out displays and some other ideas infused into Olivia’s party. We ended up making our own craft ideas after taking a fun walk through AC Moore and I highly recommend letting your child guide the craft-idea portion of the party planning. This first station is the self-portrait station – the printed frames are part of the Charming Party guide. (And my cats thought we were throwing them a party, apparently!)

Station two was a crayon melting station. Olivia and I peeled crayons for weeks. Hah! You peel crayons and break them up – then divide them out by color. Then the girls each “designed” their own melted crayon by picking their own blend of colors and throwing them in their muffin tin. We put the tin in the oven at 250 for about 15 minutes and they melted nicely. They popped right out once they cooled down and each girl had a funky round blended crayon.

Station three was canvas painting. The girls were shown some abstract sample line-type drawings and each created her own. This was one of the most popular activities.

Their awesome canvases!

Station four was probably the oddest idea but the girls seemed to like it! I based this on lighted jars I saw at a wedding I shot this year. We got battery-operated lights and mixed them with natural Spanish moss (from AC Moore) and put this in a Mason jar. We hid an adorable little bunny in the bottom of the jar. Then the girls wrote their names on a heart and I used a glue gun to attach the heart on each of their “glow jars” with lace around the edges. Then they had lighted jars glow jars for bedtime!

Then we had a present opening, pizza-eating break.

The cake was lots of layers with rainbow colors.

The next morning the girls painted little wood baskets. They loved this, too, and these baskets are less than a dollar each at AC Moore. Overall it was just a really fun party for the girls and I enjoyed the fact that we did things together and the girls got to take home everything they’d made, too.