New Years Eve | C3 San Diego

Photographers: Be Still Photography | Ernie Padaon + Fiona Padaon Location: C3 San Diego

What an amazing way to open up the New Year. We served at church and were able to capture the baptisms of many people at church. Such a great way to start out 2015!

Here are a few sneak peeks from the day. Will post a few more when they are all complete.

Happy, Happy Birthday!

  Birthday parties. Birthday parties. Birthday parties!!

I was just running though our galleries and noticed how many birthday parties we have been a part of.

Having our own little rascals running  around means invites to more and more birthday parties. I remember growing up and having a birthday party every year when I was a kid. I love seeing "the littles" run around with other littles and enjoying the sweets and the games and all the other things at birthday parties. 

Fiona and I enjoy taking photos for little kid birthdays. Kids are full of emotion and they are always great for the camera. They are so photogenic.

The best part is when the kids get all the cake all over their faces. I am pretty sure the parents want that shot at the end of the day. I have seen the parents just force the cake all over their kids in order to make it happen.

Check out little Benton and his birthday donut face.

Fiona and I were asked to shoot this birthday party over the weekend and had a blast. We get so much joy in taking photos for friends and saving those memories for them.

Dance Photography

 

I recently got the opportunity to take some shots for a dance event and was reminded my love for the arts and for dance. I love music and the different movements.  I enjoyed my time out there and loved getting the opportunity to shoot something new. 

While shooting the event, I started out with my 50mm prime lens and took a few shots, then I knew I wanted to get tighter on the shots. I only had my kit lens in the bag, but I went for it. Even with a kit lens, we can make some magic happen.

It is all about knowing the capabilities of your gear. There was enough light to get some solid shots of all the dancers. I brought up the ISO more in order to compensate for the smaller aperture on the kit lens, but it wasn't a huge deal. The grain wouldn't even be that bad for people to hate the picture.

In the end, it is about capturing the moment and freezing the action. If people were shooting out of manual mode, they would have had some issues with the black backgrounds. Their camera would have blown out a few shots or they likely would be blurred out of their mind.

We delivered some quality shots on the night. What we felt was a great shot, wasn't necessarily a great shot to the studio. The studio was looking for form in the dancers, while we were looking for composition, exposure and capturing the moment. I think we found a good group of photos that we all thought were great.

For anyone that usually shoots these type of events, do you shoot out wide and then just crop it in post? I like to get things cropped right in the camera, but all the movement led to some cut off body parts. Just wondering how you all would shoot for something like this?