Hello itinerants all over the world and hive community! What's up with you guys? I wish you all are having an awesome Valentines with your loved ones today. Here in the Philippines, it's already 15th of February so today everything's back to normal from all the thrills and excitement that the Holiday brought yesterday. Like I mentioned in my previous blog, I was just celebrating it at home with my family and did a bit of work so nothing special really happened. Since the start of this pandemic, I have spent most of my time spending with family and learning new hobbies and going back to the old ones like writing and photography. It's really important to always look for ways on how you keep yourself sane amidst this pandemic since this pandemic is really dragging us down emotionally and mentally for the reason that we easily get stressed out thinking about our productivity and not doing the things that we used to do outside like doing our hobbies to relieve stress, dine in our favorite restaurants and have good times with our friends.

Photography is indeed one of my favorite hobbies so I'm trying to make use of this quarantine season to improve my photography & editing skills. Whenever I'm about to get burned out, I just give myself a break and get my camera and try to take random photos of people or objects and it already makes my day. My nieces have always been my favorite subjects and I'm glad that they're also cool and up for some random fun shoots sometimes.

Just a disclaimer, I'm not a professional photographer so please bear with me as I share my noob shots. I am very open with corrections regarding the photography terms that I might mistakenly use so please I beg you to always chime in to educate me.

My first subject is my 9 year old niece. Her name is Greishel. Among my three nieces I guess she's the most shy. In this shot, I just used the Aperture Priority option in my camera. This is my favorite camera settings because it adjusts the aperture to change the range in focus and amount of background blur. There's small value blurs front and back and large value makes even background in focus. I increased the highlight by 1 & brightness 0. I love how the sunset complimented with her skin.

My second subject is my 13 year-old niece. Her name is Geisha. She's the eldest among them and I noticed she has really low self-esteem so I try to build her confidence by having her smile in the camera. I also used the same camera settings with the previous subject. The Aperture Priority and plus one of its highlights and brightness zero.

I've read somewhere that in order for you to find that wow factor with your photos, you should try taking shots from different angles or have your subject pose in different angles. And also consider taking shots when you think that your subject is like talking to you through eye contact.

My last subject is my 7 year old niece. Her name is Angel. I guess she's the most playful and into photography. She likes using social media a lot and believe it or not but she's even way better doing tiktok challenges than all of us in the household. When I showed these photos to their parents, they were really entertained as much as I did.

The camera setting that I used in the photos is also the Aperture Priority but I added plus 1 brightness here. I just experimented with the lighting. I've read that you have to try the different ranges of the highlights or brightness before taking photos and use the one that you think looks better. It's like you are trying to prepare a coffee and it's up to you if you put a cream or sugar whichever you think is best for you.

I really had so much fun with the fun shoot because it's also one way for me to get to know and connect with them better. This pandemic is teaching us to always value our time with our loved ones. We should not just count the days and wait when this pandemic is over, we have to make our days count instead.

That's basically it, I hope you liked this episode and I hope to interact with you in the comment section below. Everyone's glad to hear the stories of yours! Just always remember that learning is a lifetime process. You can learn from your experiences, trips and from other people. The world is so vast. Explore and Learn! Traveling isn't is as expensive as you think! There's a so called travelling on a frugal way with a purpose!
DEUCES!

Regards,
@itinerantph

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