So in preparation of the summer coming to an end and my babies getting ready to start school soon I’ve decided to take a little while off. Here are two of my favorite pictures of the punks partaking in one of their favorite summer activities… swimming lessons!
Enjoy!
Love, Yvonne
When it comes to pictures and taking pictures there are a lot of different things out there that just interested me. As I explained last WW weddings and flash were two of the furthest things that interested me photography wise. Macro photography might not of been on the list of run-a-way-from but one of the things that just didn’t interest me was macro photography. That was until I met a new friend at the local smug mug (find more information on smugs HERE as it’s a whole ‘nother topic for a whole ‘nother day!). Anyway, my new friend Michelle, talked volumes about how much she loved architectural and macro photography. Really? Pictures of buildings and really close up things? Does you here the excitement? But something happened, the more I listened to her talk the more I heard something… that something was the same passion and excitement I have for my pictures of people!
After a couple lengthy phone conversations and facebook msgs I decided to give it a whirl. I rented a 100mm 2.8 macro from barrow lenses and went to work. I surely didn’t expect to find what I found, myself lost in a world of giant tiny features! After a few days of playing I had to do something horrible, it took every ounce of control and composure I could muster… I packages the 100mm back in the sad lonely fed-ex box and sent him home to barrow lenses. Yes, he, was I my lens and I named him Carlos. He was tall, dark and smooth. Carlos paid attention to details. Here is a collage of our times together.
This mini red blossom is the size of my thumb nail! Even though it suffers from a little motion blur I still love the details I was able to capture in the petals and the anthers and stigma… I would like to go back and get closer to the stigma and really focus on that one day because it’s soooo tiny and weird looking!
I know the next two may not immediately have anything in common but when I was playing I wanted to see how the lens would capture different items at different f-stops. The Bird of Paradise leaf was captured at f2.8 meaning there was a shallow depth of field (less of the object in focus except for a specific point) which created this very abstract green piece, while the nail polish was captured at f13 (the greater the depth of field bringing more of the item in focus) which looks more like a product piece. I loved both of these pictures even though they are both very different…
This might be one of my favorite from the whole series… I’ve played with all my other lenses and have not been able to quite capture the detail I was with the 100mm here!
Even when I cropped into this the detail was still amazing! I never knew that eye lashes were so…. gross! The whole idea that hair grows out of your eyelids does bother me for some reason… I don’t know why : x
My last experiment was inspired by another smuggie, who I’ll call “J”. After 14 failed attempts at capturing a water droplet splashing into a glass of water…
.. I lucked out and got this! Simple set up of a glass of water set up on a smooth seamless blue piece of card stock, an umbrella with flash set up to the right, and my trusty side kick Emily with her water dropper telling me “now!”… “Now!”… “NOW!” and me clicking away!! I was pleased with it : )
Over all I feel like Carlos and I’s adventures were great. He helped me learn a lot about my self: made me venture outside my comfort zone and try new things. Where I’m far from mastering any single aspect of this trial, I rekindled my love of photography and added new interests.
What has inspired you lately?
Love, Yvonne
OK I’m just going to admit that I’m probably going to be late a lot over the summer with my WW posts! Because I don’t schedule them out like I should (I want them to be relevant to how I’m feeling and what I’m doing and that changes so much!) it’s getting ahead of me… before I realize it’s Wed it’s already come and gone! We’re on the summer schedule for sure 
Remembering back, summers used to last forever… I’m talking like MONTHS… sometimes they even felt like a YEAR! Now, with children of my own, I’m realizing how much quicker life really passes us by. I wish I could slow it down, freeze frame, stop, rewind and relive some of these days. My babies are not babies any more and the summer is quickly passing us by, and this reminds me more so how much our lives are going to change with the change of the season. This is a BIG year for us all. We’re facing another deployment, my “baby girl” is starting her academic career as a kindergartner and my “baby boy” is going to be in pre-k. We have a dog. I have a career that is starting. When did *I* grow up?! Why am I so emotional over this?! HA! This is what everyone dreams of, for the most part It’s time like these I count my blessings and just try to sit back and enjoy. Before I know it, times will have changed and we’ll be in a different season of our lives.
OK! Enough of that!! Consider yourself warned with the late WW and I KNOW I am also late on putting up full features of shoots gone by but I am working on those. This next weekend I have time scheduled for all those. I have one more shoot tomorrow then it’s a week until my next wedding (which I’m super duper excited about)!
Hugs & loves, Yvonne
PS: this is my favorite picture right now, from today. If you’re friends with me on facebook sorry you’re seeing again! It really makes me smile, from the inside out and beyond!
Yes, I’ve gone completely bonkers and today is my What Wednesday post just two days late. It is bound to happen, right? I swear I have a good excuse though as to why I’m late… remember my favorite childrens boutique here in Pacific Beach, Forget Me Not? Well, it’s going through a change. The new owners have taken me on to help get their new look going and I’m so excited to present Tula Ru… ! There will be a future post on this more indepth when Casey & Damon have their grand reopening… SO EXCITED!
I’ve got a lot in store for the blog next week which will feature the full shoot from last weekends family session, a wedding at the La Valencia and a sneak peek from from Sunday’s rockin’ baby bump! Phew!! Love it!!
In the mean time here are a few of my favorite model helping me figure out flash, off camera flash and all sorts! She’s already got a couple great moves in her repertiore… we’re in SO much trouble with this one in the future.
This first set is using two flashes. One directly behind to highlight the hair and one on camera directed to her. I know it’s pretty basic but I’ve even learned from that simple set up! Do not place the flash directly behind… I can off set it to the left or right and direct the light to her and get a better effect. I’m also going to be moving the main flash off camera now that my triggers came in the mail!! Woot woot! I know, I’m totally geeking out here!
This second series if my favorite. It’s soft and reminiscent of natural lighting. I’ve shot through the umbrella to distribute the light evenly from the left side and bounced the second flash from the ceiling. Perfection with nice catch lights in her eyes! Again, with the posing… seriously?! HAHA!
So this question has popped up several times over the past few weeks… What camera should I buy? I’m honored and humbled that everyone who has asked lately respects my opinion, thank you!!
Today there are so many options for cameras it’s overwhelming! There are different sizes (ranging from key chains to big poppa hunkers of DSLRs) and styles that offer a wide range of features (HD, panoramic, video with/out sound, 720/1080, presets and many other variables. This isn’t even taking into consideration how many megapixels they boast!! I already want to pull my hair out thinking about it all.
Let’s start with megapixels… to break it down “Yvonne Style” (now that’s hopefully simpler than “Barney Style”!), the more megapixels you have the larger you can potentially print your images. Think of it this way:
My favorite chart that explained anything beyond these numbers was at Les Jones’ site.
The numbers are dots per inch of resolution. The colors represents quality of print: purple being highest and orange being the lowest. 
Now, with this knowledge remember that a good sharp image can easily be blown up HUGE because it’s a good image to begin with. The greatness of your picture will not be equal to your megapixels. It’s not a MP contest, it’s a sensor size contest ; ) HA!
Why would a bigger sensor matter? Well, to put is simply, the bigger the sensor the more information that can be captured (given that it’s technically correct and in focus). Is this going to really make a difference in choosing your camera? Not really. If you’re interested leave me some feed back and I can go into a more detailed explanation on sensors.
Okay, so now that we have a megapixels under our belt the next question, for me is, what are you going to be taking pictures of? What type of pictures do you want to capture? One thing that took me forever (and I mean F.O.R.E.V.E.R. – ask a couple of my friends) was why couldn’t I get those “blurry backgrounds” in my point and shoot pictures? Well, the simple answer is that my camera was fully automatic and even though it took great pictures I couldn’t control anything. I wanted blurry backgrounds. I wanted blurry backgrounds to highlight the object I was photographing. My old faithful buddy just couldn’t do that. That encouraged me to learn more about the basics and what I ultimately wanted to do with my camera… which, in turn was the deciding factor in going back to school for nursing or photography (guess which one won?)!
The third thing I suggest thinking about is size. How compact and accessible do you want your camera to be? Do you want to carry it with you everywhere? How important is accessibility to you? Something compact is easier to tote and whip out anytime any place while any of the current DSLRs are usually too big to fit inside a medium purse… and no way are you fitting one of those things in a pocket! With the DSLR you also have to take lenses into consideration.
So, is any of this helping? I feel like I’ve shared a lot but nothing! I guess the next step is what do I have? Well, I have them all! HAHA! I really do! I have three DSLRs (Canon 1D, 50D and a 5D), an Olympus point and shoot (plus many dead cameras in a drawer – why do I keep them? Are they ever going to work again? NO! I can’t throw them out though because I might, one day, open one up and revive it… yeah right!), and my handy dandy camera phone. The hubs and I bought our first digital camera after we got married to capture our lives 10 years ago (and let’s face it, it’s the way things were going and the way I take pictures the film was getting expensive to process). I think I might have that shoe boxed size thing around here somewhere… ha! When we upgraded on a vacation we stuck with Olympus because we had already invested $$ in xD cards and it made the most sense. So we’re Olympus point and shoot people, simple as that. When I went DSLR shopping I checked out Nikon, Sony, Olympus and Canon. Canon seemed the most popular and was a little less expensive when it came down to the crunch. It was on sale. Period. Each brand had their pros and cons and sale always wins! And to be totally transparent, a lot of my favorite photographers used Canon.
In the end ask, ask some more, do your homework and figure out what you want to do with your camera! That will make shopping or deciding on what to look for much easier. I’m always open for help. I may not have the answers but I will try my darnedest to find you a suitable answer, that much I promise!
Love, Yvonne
P.S. I’m always up for sharing so hit me up and leave some plog love or email love!
So, in my quest for being a more eco-friendly photographer I’m cutting all my tangible marketing material! That’s right – I REFUSE to print marketing material! In addition, I will be using 100% post consumer recycled materials to print all future agreements… I’m also looking into going totally paperless! I feel like one of those old car commercials where they are “CUTTING PRICES!” and you see a man wielding a crazy chain saw cutting things up. That is how excited I am about all this! I may or may not be reenacting those commercial scenes in my PJs and slipper… you will never know!
So in light of my marketing paperless marketing I created a twitter account specifically for the biz… it took all of two suggestions from my facebook friends to come up with the snazzy twitter account for the biz… www.twitter.com/LeBrunPhoto!! Thank you, Meaghan, for your wise and thoughtful suggestion! You ROCK! AND if you’re a bride looking for a wedding coordinator make sure to check her out – I hear she’s really fun to work with
Because posts are ALWAYS better with pictures, here I leave you with a picture of me and my little girl (who graduated from Pre-K today) ! I know it doesn’t technically have anything to do with the post but she’s cute… and she HATES litterbugs! So it works
Love, Yvonne & Brielle
