Susan Shetler Photography

Students

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:38:00 +0000

The students where I work are always game to let me take their pictures. I needed a group shot for a bulletin board and this one is my favorite from today.

Wedding - Jim & Laura {Eagan Photographer}

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 02:24:00 +0000

Most of my wedding photography is done with Noemi Hedrick of noemiphotography.com. I often use my Canon 70 - 200mm lens during wedding shoots. It's a portrait lens that also works for group shots.

People will ask me if I take wedding photos and I say, "Yes", but in the next breath I'll recommend Noemi because she is great at setting up shots and making everyone laugh and have a good time. I love working for her and people love having her as their photographer.

Sheila & Pro

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:38:00 +0000

Autumn

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 03:46:00 +0000

Fall is a beautiful time of year to get family portraits.

Thanks, Neterers, for letting me take photos of your handsome family!

Little Mr. Jayden

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 01:56:00 +0000

What a sweet boy.

And his auntie.

Grandpa's helping him stand.

This is a team effort.

We missed having grandma with us. Next time!

I look up to my auntie.

Plop me in some weeds and I'm still content.

And this is my favorite.

Thank you, Evans family, for letting me take pictures of such a handsome, young man!

Jennifer {Senior Portraits} part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:12:00 +0000

Jennifer really is as sweet and cute as she looks in these photos!

Thank you SO much, Jennifer, for letting me take your senior portraits. You and your mom are great!

Jennifer {Senior Portraits} sneak peak

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:14:00 +0000

I ENJOY doing senior portraits for friends and family! Jennifer is the beautiful daughter of a college friend.

There are many more great photos of Jennifer. I'll post a few more within the week.

Thank you, Cynthia and Jennifer, for a FUN time last Saturday morning!!

Kristina {Senior Portraits}

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 02:35:00 +0000

This is my niece. I love being her auntie! Isn't she beautiful? She has more friends than Oprah and she's tons of fun!

Picnic

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 17:56:00 +0000

I had an opportunity to take photos at a big picnic in Bloomington. Many of the people were friends, classmates, or business associates from over the years. It was a wonderful day! Below is a sampling of people who attended.

One of my favorite areas was the photo booth, where people could wear funny hats and get portraits taken. My favorite photo of the day was taken by a friend who used my camera to get me and my husband sporting a Ma and Pa Kettle look. You'll see.

Bloomington Family {Eagan Photographer}

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:28:00 +0000

Family Black and Whites

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 01:53:00 +0000

I had the opportunity to photograph a really sweet family today. As I was editing the photos, I realized I was making a lot of them black and white. I love black and white photos in thin black frames with wide white matting and white frames with wide white matting. Either way, their classic. There are so many great frames out there that hold several pictures and black in white photos in these look really sharp, too!

I have more photos to edit, but had to share these black and whites!

3 months and growing... {Eagan Photographer}

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:43:00 +0000

Here's another photo of Jayden, taken in his back yard. Precious!!

Jayden and Grandpa {Sneak Peak}

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 03:44:00 +0000

I met a really nice family tonight when I took photos of 3-month-old Jayden!

It's late, but I really wanted to post at least one photo tonight. I LOVE this one. More will follow...

Cutie Pie! {Eagan Photographer}

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 02:27:00 +0000

Photos taken June 3, 2011.

Portraits of Vilma {Eagan Photographer}

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 01:55:00 +0000

Vilma wanted fashion portraits while all dressed-up in gorgeous gowns. We were near some townhomes and didn't have much in the line of great backgrounds, so I used some trees and also some open apertures to get blurry backgrounds.

Isn't she beautiful? She has a warm personality, too!

Backyard Dandelion

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:34:00 +0000

What a nice day today! I HAD to go outside and take my camera along. There were no neighbors to take pictures of (I prefer people pictures), so I took a macro shot (my second favorite kind of photo). One of these days I will get a macro lens, but in the meantime, I used my Canon 70 - 200mm at 200mm. ISO 200, 7.1 at 1/500.

You can click on the photo to see it larger.

I hope you're enjoying this fall-like, Minnesota day!

Wedding Poster

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 23 May 2011 14:15:00 +0000

Fellow photographer, Noemi Hedrick, gave me some of her images to make a wedding poster for the Burnsville, MN Costco (where I work part-time).

I've worked with Noemi (as her second "shooter" at weddings) for three years. Her images are gorgeous. She knows how to set up shots to get those kinds of images you want to make into large canvases (very artistic and creative). Plus, she has a great personality and is fun to work with!! Check out her blog here.

Thanks, Noemi!

Girlfriends!

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 11 May 2011 03:27:00 +0000

I had to take pictures of these gals today. They are good friends and they were looking pretty as ever!

Week 17 - Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 04 May 2011 01:15:00 +0000

The trees in Minnesota have buds that are beginning to open, but there are no leaf trees that have completely leafed out, at least not in the Twin Cities. So I focused more on the pine trees we have in our "Back 40" at Bethany International (where I work one day a week).

If you've just stopped by my blog for the first time, you may wonder why I'm taking tree photos. Well, I'm taking at least one themed photo each week in 2011 and the theme this last week was "Trees."

I have to admit, I added the eyes to the smiley face on the above tree (I couldn't help myself), but everything else is the real deal. Imagine tree eats a big bowl of berries (not people).

Sometimes my pictures aren't all that great, so I'll add more saturation, contrast, or some shading around the edges. The picture above has a filter on it (from Adobe Lightroom). It made the picture "pop" more. This is called "cheating" in the photography world...taking a so-so picture and trying to make it better by adding a filter. It works for me!

I guess I let in too much light in the above picture. I don't know what those prisms are called, but I should probably be a little more careful in the future. I wanted to get the star effect when the sun shines through something. I kinda got it.

A broken tree branch jutted out with it's leaves opening up. I like how the sun is shining against the backside of the leaves.

I found a bud with really pretty reds in it. When I take nature pictures like these, I can't help but believe in God. I don't think this kind of beauty could happen by chance. There's complex design to it. Evolution? Maybe some of it has evolved somewhat, but I don't think all of nature (including the animals) could have evolved from a big bang or from cells globbing on to each other. There's something more to it—nature points to a Master Designer.

Upcoming Themes:

May 2 Mother - due before May 9

May 9 Up - due before May 16

May 16 Anger

May 23 Temptation

May 30 Looking in

Jun 6 Party

Jun 13 Father

Jun 20 Swing

Jun 27 Lighting Experimentation

I love kids! {Eagan Photographer}

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 02:14:00 +0000

On my way back from taking some "growth" photos in a nearby woods, I heard the kids playing outside. They are big hams and enjoy seeing their pictures on my blog. So, I took a few pics and here they are...ta daaah!

These kids are like my grandkids. Not only are they sweet, but they have great parents, too!

Week 16 - Growth

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 02:55:00 +0000

I almost didn't capture any "growth" pictures for my weekly photo challenge, but I had some free time this evening and the weather cooperated (it's been cold and rainy around here).

The trees are budding and leaves are starting to open up. Every year I get excited for the spring changes, including seeing much more green! I check each day how far along the shrubs and trees have gone from bare branches to fully opened leaves and seed pods. So, it made sense to try to capture some of these changes for this week's theme of "growth."

I don't own an actual macro lens, but I still try to get macro shots with my 70 - 200mm lens. For a lot of these shots, I used an aperture of around 7.1, shutter 1/160, fully zoomed in to 200mm, white balance of "cloudy" and ISO of 400. There was a lot of noise in the pictures, for some reason, so I used Adobe Lightroom 3.0 to reduce the noise.

I couldn't zoom in as close as these photos are...but rather, I cropped the images significantly.

The photo below was cropped...

and then I cropped it more to get in real tight.

My lens doesn't produce sharp, macro images...

but it's fun to try!

The theme for next week is "trees." If you'd like to join me in taking a tree photo :-), feel free to post one on my Facebook wall to be critiqued by me and other photographers.

I'd also like to mention that I am booking photo sessions for this spring and summer! I love to take photos of families, seniors, and children. I have a special going right now until the end of May, so call me if you'd like to book an hour session. 651-528-8221

Week 15 - Work

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 22:13:00 +0000

I am without my camera for most of this week, but before I gave it up, I took this photo of a student practicing her guitar. I guess this can be my "work" photo of the week as it does take work to learn to make good music.

Next week's photo theme is "growth." Even though it's slightly snowing right now, I trust that within a week's time I will be able to capture some new growth outside.

Week 14 - Excitement

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 01:13:00 +0000

It was fun taking "excitement" photos last week! Next week's theme is "work." Feel free to submit one photo on my Facebook wall if you, too, want to take a "work" photo. Photo due by midnight, April 17.

Apr 11 Work
Apr 18 Growth
Apr 25 Trees

Week 13 - Children {Eagan Photographer}

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:47:00 +0000

I love children's photography so was happy when this week's theme was "children." The neighbor kids know that I love to photograph them and fortunately they like to be photographed!

The weather warmed up enough one day this week to bring out the kids...

I asked the younger kids to stand on a retaining wall to compose this first shot.
f 5.0 (so that everyone would be in focus)
ISO 250
White balance: shade
1/400 sec (it's good to use a little faster shutter speed when photographing kids)
135mm (used the 70 - 200mm lens)

The younger kids didn't want to hang around for any more pictures! But the older ones were willing to smile and say, "Hey." That's a little trick I learned from Noemi H...have your clients smile and say "Hey" and you get those fun smiles where people look really happy! Try it!

I asked the kids to pull away from the pine trees. I wanted the pine trees far enough back so that they would be blurry (this is another trick to simplify your background and get that nice blur...have the background a good distance away from your subject). I left the aperture at 5.0 so that the kids would still be in great focus.

The kids were running and I knew I'd need a faster shutter speed to stop their action and not be blurred. I increased my ISO to 800. It was a cloudy day anyway. By increasing the ISO, I had a shutter speed of 1/3200 - plenty of speed to stop their action. I generally aim for 1/2000 to stop action (e.g. when groups or individuals jump up in the air and you don't want any blur...make sure your shutter speed is up near 1/2000 of a second). BTW, if you wonder why I share all this photo info...it's because I have some young friends getting into photography and they like to learn these kinds of things. I hope I'm not boring the rest of you!

I stood up on that retaining wall to get a shot from a different angle of Joanna.

She was climbing a prickly pine tree in this last shot.

I'm sure you'll see more of these kids in future posts!

Next week's photo challenge is to take a picture with the theme "excitement." If you want to join me in capturing "excitement", feel free to post one photo on my Facebook wall by midnight, April 10.

Week 12 - Portrait Contest Winner

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 03:18:00 +0000

For week twelve of my personal photo challenge (taking themed-based photos each week), I asked a few friends on Facebook if they'd like to submit pictures for a contest. So, the challenge was taking a "Portrait of a wonderful person." I will first show you the two pictures that were submitted, tell you who won the contest and then show you portrait pics that I took.

The first picture was submitted by Sarah Ussery. This is her husband. Isn't this a unique portrait? The person judging this contest (my son) said he could see this photo being used in an advertisement. He really liked it!

This next pic was submitted by Casey Gilboy. It's her husband and their daughter, Sitora.

Now I must admit, my son had an AWFUL time choosing a winner. He really liked both of these pictures and asked if we could make the contest a tie. So, I brought in a second opinion from a third party and the winner is...

the second picture of father and daughter by Casey!! Casey, you'll get a $10 Caribou or Starbucks gift card (you choose). Thanks, gals, for entering the contest. I DO love viewing other people's work and holding contests.

Here are the pics I took today.

This is Andrew. I went to his table at lunchtime and asked if anyone would help me out by letting me take their portrait. Andrew was a willing subject!

And Naomi was also willing. What a beautiful girl! Her eyes are gorgeous.

Both photos were shot at ISO 400, using natural light coming through a window. The aperture was 3.2 and the shutter speed was 1/160. I used the Canon 50mm 1.8 lens.

For those interested in challenging themselves in their photography, here are the upcoming themes.

March 28 Children (due by midnight April 3)
April 4 Excitement (due Apr 10)
April 11 Work
April 18 Growth
April 25 Trees