Type A Parent Blogging Conference In Photos

Following along in the tradition of Photography Thursday here at Water Water Everywhere, today’s recap will be mostly photos. There are dozens of recaps of the conference all over the blogosphere now, including my recap of the Ethics session, so I don’t feel the need to rehash all the content.

But I will tell you how I managed to get all these pictures in a very unforgiving light situation. In a minute. 

My awesome friend Kelly speaks about Klout and such.

First up let me say that the conference was awesome. I’m a bit amazed at how totally laid back the vibe is, considering its name. In fact I originally did not follow Kelby’s blog or have interest in the conference several years ago because I am sooooo not Type A. I know better now! Kelby rocks and if she’s really Type A, she doesn’t come across that way to me at all. At. All.

Lisa appearing beautiful, fierce, and serene. 

The best part of the conference for me had to be my roomates. I had not met Hillary or Teri Lynne in person before last week but I knew both of them pretty well. Hillary is a Philly Social Media Mom so we share that geography and culture very much in common. Teri Lynne is a Christian writer and worship pastor’s wife from Alabama so we have a strong bond through our faith and church experiences.

My awesome roomies Hillary and Teri Lynne plus the amazing Sarah.

I could NOT have asked for better roomates. The strong, diametrically opposed accents were fun too. I think I learned that I am more prone to unconsciously mirror the southern drawl of my current surroundings than the Philly twang I grew up with. I’m all mixed up.

Jenn, Kelly, Grace and Julie.
Danielle, Adam and Aliza.
Robin’s Just Dance team, the Madonnabe’s. 

Ok so my tools for photos like this? 

  • I used a Nikon D90 DSLR. Not that important what kind of SLR it is, so long as you KNOW how to use it. 
  • All of these photos are shot with a 35mm f/1.8 prime lens. That means no zooming but much better in low light. Wider than my 50mm b/c in crowds I am too close to people for the 50mm. 
  • Center point metering. This is crucial for getting faces exposed properly. 
  • Single point autofocus. I tell the camera where to focus instead of letting it choose for me. 
  • I shot all these in aperature priority. I set the f-stop and ISO and let the camera choose the shutter speed. 
  • Usually wide open shots, especially in the sessions where I won’t use a flash. So a higher ISO (like 800) and f/1.8. 
  • I also use exposure compensation bumped up +.3 because I like things slightly overexposed. 
  • For the party photos the light was incredibly low so I used an EXTERNAL flash. Speedlite with a diffuser cap on it aimed at a 45 degree angle to what I was shooting at. That way the flash doesn’t totally wash out and blind the faces or cause terrible undereye shadows. 
  • I shoot exclusively in RAW so that underexposed photos can be brought up safely. 
  • I leave my white balance set on automatic and adjust it in post processing later. 
  • After deleting the obvious misses in the camera I download and edit using Adobe Lightroom.
  • I always always always crop for better framing. My camera has a crop sensor so what I see in the viewfinder is not what I get, but I usually forget to compensate for that. Sometimes I remember. 
  • Most room photos had a very yellow tinge because of the lights, so I adjusted the color temperature down a touch to the blue side.  

And that’s it! If you understood all that…GREAT! If you didn’t, no big deal. Just keep practicing 🙂

You can find a few more of my photos from the conference on She Posts and the whole collection on Flickr here.

Author: Sarah

Mom of three. Triathlete.

5 thoughts on “Type A Parent Blogging Conference In Photos”

  4. So glad you got to meet Hillary! She and I were friendly in college … eons before the Internet was invented, so it’s neat to be friends with her in this way too. 🙂 

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