Oh I haven’t been here for a while!

I am not abandoning this blog- definitely NOT! But the last few months of pregnancy demanded a lot of planning and attention that I simply had to pick between a photography blog and a pregnancy blog. Obviously the latter won!

But once we have our new baby and our new routine and I figure it all out, I’ll be right back here hosting Selfie Saturdays and posting adorable photos of Lexi and me and hubby and friends and everything that is going on. This will not be a blog about my life, though. You can read about my life on The Art of Making a Baby. This will be a blog dedicated to beauty and magic and light and photography and creativity. This won’t be a blog of day-to-day photography, but of special moments.

So the reason why I am posting here right now ( besides to give you an update for why I am missing from Selfie Magic) is because I finally took a few self-portraits worth of being displayed on this blog: Our Christmas Photos.

As most of you know, sometimes self-portraits are all about HIT-OR-MISS. This was definitely starting out as a MISS. Both of us weren’t in the mood, we were loosing light, business calls kept coming in in the middle of the shoot. BUT we did pick an amazing location, we managed to look acceptable and somewhat Christmasy and were in the kind of state of mind where we couldn’t care less about anything- it just needed to be done.

The cards went out right on time and this was officially our first Christmas card as the three of us. It was even more special to send out these cards to my friends in Europe and family in Russia.

So here are the photos themselves, all taken with a tripod and a remote, using my 50mm.

{I’m 34 weeks pregnant in these}

This is why I love knowing how to take self-portraits- being able to take family photos without hiring a photog or hassling a friend.

I’ve been feeling good lately, I can’t complain. Hitting my 3rd trimester was really a huge mental roadblock. I am this much closer to meeting our little cutie Alexis. However, having only 2 months till she is full term is sending me into a tizzy of planning, buying, preparing and it seem like there won’t be enough time to do it all.

But still, I am super excited: for the new chapter in our lives, for this person, I don’t yet know but who I already love so much, to finally be in my arms. This week I actually managed to prepare for Selfie Saturdays. The key is to plan the shoot for Thursday. So when hubby was out running errands, I set everything up to take a few pregnancy themed self-portraits. I walked away with slightly over 400 images, hoping I’d get a few usable ones, since it’s hard to get a perfect picture when you’re shooting yourself. I think they turned out fine, though I am looking forward to a time when I can bounce up and down adjusting settings, running back and forth making sure it’s shooting at the right angle, rather than moan like an old woman trying to get off the floor to check the settings.

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So today I am posting an actual self-portrait, but just not a very creative one. My husband and I went flying with our friends on their Piper plane and it was pretty cool. This is the only  photo  I took that was not of the ground below us. I was a bit more concentrated on sights and sounds than snapping pictures of myself. It didn’t help that I had a 50mm with me so not a lot of angle in such a small plane.

Anyways, I still think it’s a picture cool picture as a diptych, so here it is. Hoping to take a few nicer selfies this Saturday.

Also, if you guys haven’t entered the Bella Materna bra giveaway on The Art of Making a Baby, make sure you do – it ends tonight.

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“Hello, Alexis!”

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I FINALLY CALIBRATED MY LENS’ AUTOFOCUS!!!

If you don’t know how HUGE this is, then you really gotta read up below! If you have already done the calibration yourself, then I bow to you, because it took me a year or so to get off my butt and do it, even though I was sick and tired of softly focused photos.

So first, selfies for this week:

Now onto the fun and useful stuff!

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

For years, I’ve been photographing and been somewhat disappointed with the quality of about 80% of the photos. My photos were almost always soft-looking. Yes after some sharpening in Photoshop and resizing, noone would really call them out of focus, but SOOC I never felt like my focus was always spot on.

It was even worse when my husband took photos- 90% of his were out of focus and 10% had soft focus.

At first I thought it was the camera ( Rebel at the time), and yes after switching to 5D, the quality did improve but the focus was still softer than I liked. Then I assumed it was because of the lenses I was using: my favorite 50mm isn’t exactly expensive or the best quality lens, even though it produces superb images.

After the most recent shoot, I started getting mad. I mean, you pay $3000 for the camera body, you buy what should be decent lenses, and how come some photographers’ shots are just that much sharper. I can’t blame it on experience because I’ve been photographing for with a DSLR for 5 years and I know how to focus properly, damn it!

So I don’t know what exactly brought me to it, but I found out that SOME LENSES HAVE TO BE CALIBRATED TO THE CAMERA IN ORDER TO HAVE THE PERFECT AUTOFOCUS!

As in, lenses out of the box will rarely perform to their full potential. Most of them focus on the front or the back, but rarely on the item you actually want them to focus.

That made sense to me: my 50mm gave us consistently soft focus. And I literally had to FIGHT to get super sharp focus. My other lens did a bit better, but I still wasn’t happy with it.

So I quickly found the appropriate setting in my camera’s menu- most DSLRs have it ( MENU -> AUTOFOCUS CALIBRATION or AUTOFOCUS TUNE UP ( that’s what most cameras call it) and then Calibrate by lens). Then it lets you adjust the autofocus from -20 (forward focus) all the way to +20 (backward focus).

I found a few tutorials on what technique to use to find the right focus, most of which had to do with positioning the camera at a 45 degree angle to some sort of ruler and adjusting it from there.

I tried and tried and tried it. I used rulers, printed out thermometer images, specific calibration charts – nothing seemed to give me consistent results. So I decided to simply experiment on what I shoot most- a person. I sat my husband in front of the white wall and told him to sit still. The I proceeded to take pictures of him focusing on the eye and changing the calibration by 1 point each time. Even looking at the results in the viewfinder, one could tell that at 0 (the natural setting) the focus was always on the nose ( not on the eye like the focus point showed me). It didn’t matter how many times the red spot blinked over his eye, the focus was almost always on the nose, and when it was on the eye, it wasn’t incredibly sharp. At +8 things started improving and at +10 (which where I stopped), I was shocked to see that the eye was finally sharper than I ever remember any photograph being.

I tried shooting moving objects – it was still perfect. It focused exactly where I intended it to focus.

So apparently my 50mm’s autofocus was too far forward, so regardless of where I think I am focusing, it would always focus just a bit up front (the nose).

I handed the camera over to hubby to test it out since we’ve always thought he’s just really bad at focusing. He took six shots. EVERY SINGLE PHOTO IN FOCUS! It was a miracle! I couldn’t believe it!

I decided to fine tune it further and arrived at +11 or +12 as the sweet spot.

Here’s a visual for you guys:

In these images I was focusing on the SAME spot each time – the front ball. The little red “focus dot” peeped and blinked in the same spot on every single shot. And yet look at how different the results are.

At -10, the focus was on the rim of the bowl
At +10, it was on the front ball but a bit too soft
At +11, it was crystal clear and sharp- THE PERFECT SPOT
At +15, i went a bit too far ( the focus is now shifting backwards towards the 2nd ball)

I cannot tell you how incredibly excited and relieved I am that my photos are now properly focused. The few shots I took since then are a joy to work on! I cannot wait to do a few actual shoots and enjoy the results!

I gotta tell you, if you’re seeing even a bit of a soft focus, take the time to deal with it. It’ll save you hours of frustration and wasted effort. Don’t wait years like I did.

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Here’s my Scavenger Hunt Photos:

1. LANDSCAPE

This shot was taken in Epcot – one of my most favorite places.

2. TRIADIC COLOR

A lot of my favorite shots turn out to be in complimentary colors- maybe that’s why they are favorite. I took this shot last week as Andrew was getting ready to go flying.

3.BLACK AND WHITE

This shot is black in white even in color

4.FOOD

I was literally saying “Foooooooooood!!!!” in that picture. Hunger and pregnancy go hand in hand. {self-portrait with bad focus lol}

5.BLANK SPACE

I took this one in Ecuador in a fishing village. I’ve always loved how much blank space there was in the picture. Little people and birds like ants in the distance and the rest is sand and water…

I was tempted to post all of them, but that won’t leave any for another post this week, so here are two shots I took as self-portraits.

After a shoot, I bought the tripod with the camera still attached to it inside and waited for hubby outside, when I noticed that I could easily use my remote to trigger the camera from the other side of the glass. So I goofed around a bit I am starting to feel big at 24 weeks. Not as big as on this photo, but big nonetheless. You can follow my pregnancy here.

I love that my husband doesn’t mind being a part of projects and self-portraits and often even gets excited about helping me ( not always, but often enough). It’s so much more fun to take photos with him!

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Woke up this morning and quickly took this self-portrait. Before I was able to do that, I had hubby put handprints on my shirt with the paint we used for gender reveal. It took forever to dry and that is why I am posting so late. (just an FYI, I am painting while pregnant. I had hubby prep the can and brush before I took the shot)

I’m loving this picture for some reason. I rarely take faceless self-portraits, so this is different from my usual repertoire.

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Here we go- WEEK 31!

Just wanted to say that I will continue being a little bit absent from here for a bit. Energy levels are relatively low, work is busy, I’m trying to concentrate more on my pregnancy and Alexis inside of me and take it easy, as well as write more in my Pregnancy Blog

Photography is slightly on hold right now, so is editing. I will still be coming every week for Selfie Saturdays, as well as reading everyone’s blogs and comments.

I will resume regular postings when Alexis arrives ( obviously), but for now I want to take it easy. That being said, I am not going to be completely gone. Besides, Selfie Saturdays I will be occasionally coming back for photo posts.

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I am really loving having to take a self-portrait a week right now, because it is the only way I can get myself to take the photos for the pregnancy book. This shot will go in the beginning of the book when we were actually reading all the pre-pregnancy and pregnancy books.

This shot took an amazingly shot time to prepare for and shoot. I used manual focus, due to too many objects in the foreground. Otherwise, the focus would have been on the books and the vase. Didn’t really put make up on or anything, just hair in a ponytail and fake glasses ( I don’t wear glasses for reading).

Hubby was semi-cooperative as usual, with only a few complaining comments about this awful shirt that is made from POLYESTER ( The horror!!!) and how hot he was in it and that I should send it back to MYHABIT, where I got it from and that he’ll never wear it. Gosh, men can be so dramatic! I love the shirt- it looks so hot on him (hot as in sexy) and so what that he has to suffer in the name of beauty? We, girls, do it all the time! One can’t have a whole closet full of cotton shirts only… Am I right?

Go ahead and link up your selfies below!

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