Category: photography

I started photography blogging about 1 year ago.  I had about 10 readers a day on my blog and I thought, who the heck is reading this stuff.  It turned out it was mostly my family and my fiance – Tu.  I guess that is how it always works.

I logged onto to Google Analytics to look at my stats and this popped up today.  I was amazed to see that there were 67 Active Visitors on my site at that precise moment.  And those people were logging in from all over the world.   It turns out someone had posted one of my entries on Reddit and it was getting many of hits.

But I looked further and noticed that I had already notched over 50,000 readers in the last year and possibly on pace for over 100,000 this year.

Are we in the Golden Age of Photography where this much interest is generated on it?  I think so.

What am I going to be able to do with these smoke bombs.  This could be interesting.

I am a former kid. I have lived through the trauma of bad photos taken of me by my father. I was not photogenic and admittedly he had a cheap camera. He had a knack for catching the incredibly awkward moments of childhood in a way that now makes me cringe.   If I could go back in time and give my 1970′s dad a few tips on how to take better pictures of me I would.

As a former kid recovering from the trauma of bad photographs, I feel like it is my duty to future kids of the world to give parents and photographers some tips I have learned on how to take some great photos of kids.  Or at the very least photos that won’t make your kid cringe when they get older.

Two things come to mind.  First, great thanks to my dad for timing this perfectly and second why am I wearing such horribly dirty T-Shirts in every picture?

Thank you Dad for this picture of me in Prison Pajamas pointing at somewhere in Michigan.

At least now I know that those feelings of complete teen awkwardness were not just in my mind.

Dad liked to snap blurry pictures of us posing in front of Trash Cans.  I am actually a little thankful for the fact this shot was out of focus.

Photographing Kids is not difficult

I’ve heard people say that taking photographs of kids is one of the hardest types of photography to master.  I’d have to disagree, in fact I think that photographing kids is just about the easiest thing you could do with your camera.

You don’t have to use lights.  You don’t have to make them pose. You don’t have to explain what looks good and you definitely don’t have to worry that they are self conscious.  You just pick up the camera and shoot.  It’s simple.

Chasing Cuteness

I actually have a term for photographing kids.  I call it “Chasing Cuteness” and I think it’s exactly what kids photography is all about.   My general rule of thumb with photographing kids is to put them in the right place where the light is good, give them a prop or a situation to deal with and then fire away.

I run around.  I get on the ground.  And I shoot.  I shoot a lot of pictures.  Getting a good photograph of kids is about chasing the cute things they do and hopefully capturing those cute things on camera.  In short, you have to really match your own energy level with the energy level of kids which is extraordinarily high.

I come from a huge family – 12 brothers and sisters and it just gets bigger.  I think at last count I have over 20 nieces and nephews so I get an endless amount of practice in taking pictures of kids.   I wanted to give my list of the top 10 techniques that I have learned through trial and error on how to get the best shots of kids.  These are techniques and approach that I use every time I pick up the camera.

1.  Get out of the Studio

Here is the good news.  You don’t need to have a fancy studio setup to take awesome pictures of kids, in fact you are better off if you get out of the studio and get into their natural element.  You only need 1 studio shot a year of your kids and I consider that their school photos.  Get outside.  Go in their room.  Go anywhere to take kid shots – just not in a studio.

2. Get on the Ground

If you read any tips on photographing kids this is the most common thing you will see.  And that is because it is true.  If you’re not cutting your eye level view down to under 2 or 3 feet than your not capturing the kids in the way that they see the world.  When I shoot kids – I am sitting, and often times, laying on the ground even lower than them.

She’s under the bed hiding.  I could only get this shot by laying down under the bed too.

3)  Create a Situation, watch what unfolds

Kids are unpredictable in a predictable sort of way.  Sure they can do anything at any moment but if you put a bowl of chocolate ice cream in front of them without a spoon what do you think will happen?  My prediction is that you will end up with some hilarious shots of your kid with Ice Cream all over their face.

This is my favorite of all techniques.  I try to come up with creative situations that will later tell a story about what is important to that kid.  If they love to watch Mom put on makeup then I give them a mirror and some makeup brushes and create a situation where I am almost always guaranteed a great shot.

We gave this little boy in Vietnam a kitten to play with and ended up with some great shots.

4)  Use a Fisheye Lens

If you’re going to take a lot of pictures of kids – invest in a fisheye lens.  Not only can you capture a wide scene of whats going on but you can capture the mood of what its like to be a kid where everything is slightly larger than life.  I like to use a technique called the Jarvie Window which I wrote about here.  It’s a great technique to use at Kids Parties and can be a lot of fun. The Jarvie Window Technique

Using a Fisheye lens lets you capture the energy of kids and is also wide enough to capture all of the chaos.

5)  Machine gun shoot.

A lot of people don’t like it but with kids you have to do it or you will miss the best moments.  Put your camera on high speed mode and shoot.  The average adult will blink 25 times a minute.  The average kid will change their facial expressions dramatically almost as often so you have to machine gun shoot to get the cutest shots.  Sure you end up throwing out a lot of the shots but there are those golden gems that are priceless that you could not get without employing this technique.

 All these pictures were taken within 30 seconds.  She goes through all the human emotions in that short period of time.

6)  Let them see your pictures.  Let them take a couple of pictures.

Kids love to see their pictures. If you stalling out in taking cool pictures of kids. Show them your viewfinder and what you have come up with and I guarantee they are going to come up with a bunch of new ideas for you.  Of course you can give them the camera and take some cute pictures of them trying to take pictures. That works too.

7) Put them in big stuff.

Kids pretending to be adults is a sure fire way for cuteness.  I like to put big shoes on kids (like their parents shoes) and take pictures.  You can also give them your parents guitar, or put them on their parents drum set.  Whatever you can do to put the kids in a situation where they are acting like their parents in a cute way works pretty well.

8) Don’t say no

Half of why photographing kids is so cool is because their imaginations and their creativity is way beyond our adult minds.  I usually come into a situation where I am photographing kids with my own notion of what I want to capture and it is never what I actually do.  My rule of thumb is to pretty much never say No to a kid about their ideas.  Most of them are good.  No, in fact most of them are great.  Just let them run with their ideas and you will probably be much happier with the result.

Let a kid be awesome without saying no to whatever silly thing they come up with in their mind.

9) Get a helper behind you

Kids have short attention spans and sometimes you need someone to help you keep them in one place long enough for you to shoot something spectacular.  One technique that I like to use is to have a helper behind me who can coax the kids into doing cute things.  The benefit of having a helper behind you while shooting is that you can get the kids to appear to be looking straight into the camera for some great shots.

We were able to get her to make some incredibly cute poses by showing her what to do. I could not have done this alone.

10)  Don’t stop the camera when they cry

When I am taking pictures of kids and they start crying, my first instinct is to stop shooting.  I guess in my mind I have been programmed to believe that all pictures should be happy.  A while ago, I started ignoring those instincts and just kept the camera going.  I find that these shots are often just as good as any others.  It’s part of growing up and its part of who kids are so I just try to capture it as it happens.

He was crying because he was afraid of a fish.  Now he has a good picture and story to tell when he is older.

Anyone can take great Kid Photos with patience and energy

The great thing about photographing kids is that just about anyone with enough energy and patience can capture some pretty good kid photos.  You don’t need an extraordinary camera.  You don’t need to have expensive lighting.  You don’t even need to understand all those complicated buttons on your camera.  Just make sure you have good lighting, an interesting situation and chase the cuteness down.

If you want to check out some of my other kid photography you can see them in my gallery here – Frank McKenna – Kids.

I submitted the picture, Sea Life, to 500PX weekly photo contest and it was one of the pictures featured on their blog this week.  Pretty cool!  Here is the link to the blog post on 500px. Weekly Photo Contest at 500px.

My brother Patrick had the foresight to purchase the domain www.frankmckenna.com many years ago.  I wasn’t quite sure how to use it at the time but now I have put it to use as place to share my 500PX photography.

Check out www.frankmckenna.com and tell me what you think of the new design and style. I think it looks pretty nice and shows the photography well.

Another article published in PetaPixel this week.  I am so happy about that.  I love the guys at PetaPixel and think they have the best photography blog on the web – hands down.

This was a primer I wrote on how to do the Jarvie Window, a technique that was popularized by Scott Jarvie.  You can check out the whole article here – How to Build a Jarvie Window.

If Herman were a human, he would be a model.  I think he might model for Polo Ralph Lauren. He would show up.  He would make $2,500 an hour.  He would not model clothes.  His presence and sheer handsomeness would sell clothes.  Just the fact that he was in a picture with the words Polo Ralph Lauren on the picture would sell billions in high fashion clothing.

Or he might be a CEO.  A guy in charge of a big company.  He would show up casual, call the shots and take long lunches – all the while collecting big checks.

Or, he might be the Mayor of New York.  Mayor of the most important city in the world laying down the law and controlling things like a boss.

My favorite photography site is PetaPixel and I was greatly honored today when they published one of my blog post entitled Top 8 Reasons why I am a Big Believer in 35mm Lens Photography.

After 400+ post on my own blog this was a really nice achievement since I am such a huge fan of their site.  They have put together a pretty incredible site that is the place to go for news, articles and general interest stories around photography.

It was dark.  I was in the basement of the Fendley’s new home – the historic Bridges Estate – and I was rummaging for goodies.  I knew this place would yield treasure.  The house is almost 100 years old and was owned by one of San Diego’s most prominent and rich capitalist.

I opened the door of an old wooden cabinet in the dark recesses of the basement and grungy Christmas ornaments spilled out.  They didn’t appear to be anything special or unique but a box hiding way up on the top shelf looked like it might contain something interesting.

Stupidly, I ripped a piece of the box open to see what was inside.  It appeared to be cans.  But cans of what actually I had no idea.  I pulled the box down from the shelf, opened it a bit more and saw the word “Billy” printed on the side of the cans.  Then I saw the word beer below it and I realized what it was.  My mind raced back to the mid 1970′s when I used to watch the news with my dad and we would make fun of Jimmy Carters drunk brother Billy.

For 35 years this dusty box filled with 24 Billy Beers sat in the basement aging to perfection. Or not.

I remember Billy started his own beer company and sold a beer called Billy Carter Beer.  And now, 35 years later I was holding in my hands an entire case of the stuff.   This was a bit amazing.  This was a find that I got kind of excited about.  But how much was it worth?

An entire case of unopened Billy Carter Beer.

Two Lives

Jimmy Carter graduated from College (A neuroscientist), and later went on to become President of the United States and even later went on to become one of the greatest peacemakers of all time winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Billy Carter dropped out of College, later went on to become the nations most famous drunkard and later went on to die at the early age of 51.  I am not sure that there ever was or will be a tale of two brothers whose lives and impact on the world could have diverged more.

As I looked at the case of Billy Carter beer it seemed tragic that they embodied the joke of what the country made of his sad state.  Reading the side of the beer can I read the inscription that say’s, “Brewed expressly for and with the personal approval of one of America’s  All-Time Great Beer Drinkers – Billy Carter.”.

I guess back in 1970 calling someone the best beer drinker of All-Time was a compliment.   This was the same era that praised woman that smoked with the slogan “You’ve come along way baby”.  That was the enormously successful Virginia Slim advertising slogan that seemed to grace the back covers of just about every woman’s magazine during the 1970′s.

Billy Beer

Billy Carter’s beer was actually called “Billy Beer” and it was first brewed in 1977 by the Falls City Brewing Company.  To promote the beer, Billy wrote on each can. ” I had I had this beer brewed up just for me. I think it’s the best I ever tasted. And I’ve tasted a lot. I think you’ll like it, too.”   But apparently the beer tasted so bad that it was an instant flop.

People claimed the beer tasted yeasty and unfinished.  It also turned out that Billy’s claim that the beer was the best he ever tasted wasn’t true since he supposedly preferred and drank mostly Pabst Blue Ribbon.  Billy Carter apparently later remarked that he thought he was probably drunk when he picked out the recipe for his beer.

Can we sell these cans for millions of dollars and recoup the Fendleys cost of the home?

In 1981 after just a few years in production, the beer production ceased and apparently people began to cash in on the perceived value of the cans as collectables and began to try to sell them for hundreds and thousands of dollars each.

Now this got me interested when I read this because in my head I began to do the calculations and with 24 Billy Beers I figured we might have a gold rush on our hands here.

This album looks like a hunk of junk.  And thats not Billy Carter on the fence drinking beer.

But alas, even in 1981 those cans were only worth about 50 cents each since millions of cans were produced and apparently lots of people had the idea that they would be collectors items so they began to stockpile them in their homes waiting for the big payoff someday.    As a result this unopened case of Bill Beer might only be worth between 50 and 200 bucks at best.

Other Ventures

Owning a failing beer enterprise was not Billy Carter’s only escapade.  He also owned a gas station in Georgia which is now a Museum and being petitioned as a national monument.  You can check out his website here – Billy Carters Gas Station Museum.

Billy Carter at his Gas Station and his Red-Neck Power Truck

But perhaps his most famous ham-handed venture came when he made 3 trips to Libya in early 1978 and 1979 to establish oil trade with them.  He later registered as a foreign agent with Libya and received a payment of $220,000 for his trouble.  This got him in a whole heap of trouble, opened an investigation by the FBI into him and put him front of a senate subcommittee that was investigating why the Presidents brother was acting as an agent for a foreign government.  It was another Billy Carter fiasco.

An Interesting Find

Remember these old pull top cans?  Those tops would be littered everywhere.

So the cans won’t make the Fendley’s rich but I am sure that at least one of the six packs will rest on a shelf somewhere and prompt many an interesting story about the interesting things they found in their historic home as they renovated it.  Kids will probably look at it and wonder why the cans have that funny opening at the top and not the traditional can opening that you see today.

You can just imagine Billy Carter day after day pulling off tab after tab and chugging down these beers one after another while his brother Jimmy sat in the oval office doing worldly things.

Billy McKenna holding Billy Beer.

You would have to see it to believe it.  It sits on the worst real estate in San Diego, it was recently subjected to a police raid for a suspected meth lab and the entire surrounding neighborhood appears be crawling with drug addicts.  It’s called the EZ8 Motel and while EZ8′s are not known for luxury this one takes the cake.

I like to cruise San Diego looking for interesting pictures and I just happened upon the EZ8 Motel in Old Town.  It sits directly under a major interchange where 3 of the busiest freeways in North America intersect (The 5,  the 8 and the Pacific Coast Highway).  Now that is the freeways but if you look closely you will also notice that there are train tracks right next to the hotel too.  Well that is because the Amtrak train as well as freight trains run right through this motel too.  What a gem!

To truly grasp the ludicrous location of this hotel take a look at in the google map below.  You can see traffic is merging from the East, North, West and South.   It is a crazy snarling mess of a place and the hotel sits smack dab under it all.

I cruised in the EZ8 Motel not sure of what to find.  But as I expected it appeared to be crawling with drug zombies.  A few of them were raiding the Ice Machine and others appeared to be wandering around peeking in windows.  Holy crap this place got a 1 star on Yelp which is about the worst I have ever seen but somehow they stay in business.

They built this huge tall sign so that people rushing by on the freeway can see the hotel.  Perhaps they think that the crusty old sign will entice people into this wonderful place.  I don’t think so.

Drugs

I was doing a little research on this place and discovered that just a couple of months ago the Fire Department raided the hotel and found a meth drug lab operating out of one of the rooms.  Why does this not surprise me?  You can read about here.  EZ8 Motel is a Drug Lab.

Reviews

When someone headlines their review, “Feared for my Life” you know it’s going to be bad.  Here is what one review on Trip Advisor had to say about the motel.

“NO STARS!!THIS SHOULD BE CLOSED DOWN!!!Please RUN! This was a complete farce. This is a very very scary Motel.NOT in OLD TOWn at all. We pulled in to find a frightening, filthy dump under the freeway. The photos on the ez 8 website are a lie. It is not near a trolly.. there is no restauraunt across the street. The room was disgusting and had blankets with cigarette burns all over and thru them. There are full time tenants living there with animals and sitting all over the place smoking.. The smoke smell is so pungent i couldn’t breathe in.. People hanging on the corners soliciting and selling.. We got our bags.. cut our losses and saved our lives and left.. ( oh and my room was 80 bux)”

And another reviewed which was titled “Episode out of Cops” tells the woes of another inhabitant that got stuck in a room next to a drug dealer.

Unbeknownst to us our neighbor was a recovering drug addict that stayed up late at night. First night was okay, but second night she got in a fight with her boyfriend over $40 and she called the cops on him. The boyfriend had left by the time to cops arrived, but we got to listen to her tell her life story and embellish her boyfriends misdeeds to cops for about an hour. The next night she spent on her phone yelling at her boyfriend and then of course he finally returned to her place so they could continue to argue the final night we were there. Why didn’t we leave, well we only had one day left before returning home.

But Mostly its the Location

But the real reason I vote this the worst hotel in San Diego is the location.  And here is the picture to prove it.  These rooms are all located directly under the freeway.  I mean cars and trucks are whizzing by just 20 feet over your head when you stay in this hotel.

You know what makes me happy?  Taking my camera out for a sunset stroll and all of sudden coming on to a view like this.  Sometimes I look out onto this place and can’t believe that this is my front yard.   The world is a beautiful place.

Darla demonstrates her amazing ability to brush off the sad clouds and get happy.

It only takes a few moments to completely change your attitude and get on with a good day when your sad.

Another valuable lesson from Darla.