All these questions will be very important and will help to understand how the natural light works in big windows, tall windows, narrow windows.
The challenges of working with customers on location, in their homes, will be always be big, and these studies sharp our skills.
So where do you meter, when taking pictures by the window?
Just sit your subject by the window, in the brightest window of your home. Turn the person 45 degrees towards the window, so the light comes to lit both sides of the face. You meter for the bright side of the face, so you don’t blow out the highlights.
Sometimes, you won’ like the way the light hits your subject, so you may use a closer wall to bounce that light back, so you have a more even light, but with enough shadows to create depth and 3d feelings.
You can use a 5 in one reflector, a t-shirt, a shower curtain, anything white or silver (and gold too if you want warmer tones) to help you to bounce light. A simple window light and one little help from anything that will bounce the natural light back to the darker side of your subject's face.
See the window light coming from the left and one reflector used on the right side to bounce natural light back. Simple, naturally beautiful.
Now, get ready to practice. Find your own window light and go make a beautiful window light portrait!
by Moni Caron
ISO 100 
Here I am! Can you pick me out? No? I'll help a little. I am the smallest dumpling, smiling away for the photographer. 
Winter has always been my favorite season. The idea of a slower moment in life to make us more introspective, thoughtful, a growing inner time in a beautiful season.
Colder days, but that does not mean that we can go back to the cave and come out after 3 months. This reclusive time allow for wonderful photo opportunities.
Winter provides some unique scenes all over the planet, with its variety of different winters.
In some places, a lot of wind, in others a lot of rain, in others, a lot of snow and some places have no winter at all, with their tropical heat all year round.
Since we are in the North Hemisphere and winter is showing up timid, I figured we could use some thoughts about photographing in cold weather.
Snow is tricky. And cold. Did i say cold?? Yeah. Cold. So lets start with some careful preparation in organizing the equipment.
When it is below freezing temperature (Zero degrees Celsius / 32 degrees Fahrenheit), we are subject to condensation when going out to take pictures. Condensation happens when you are outside in the cold and come home to a warmer temperature. Remember when you have the sunglasses in snow and comes inside and it fogs?? That's condensation.
So in order to prevent the camera and lens to "suffer" the cold, and to enjoy winter photography, take some steps:
Now about exposure, making it very simple:
The camera meters for 18% grey. If you meter and your meter bar is in the middle of your viewfinder's scale, you have a "correct" exposure, unless you have extreme contrast or more than average tones, such as white or black, or dark brown and dark blues. They will "fool" your in camera meter. So whatever your meter tells you, it is wrong to start with anytime you are photographing too dark tones or too bright tones. It will tell you to make a grey snow, because it is "averaging" for 18% grey, and snow is not grey.
If you want a white snow, you need to compensate your exposure, in other words, meter for your "correct" exposure, and then change the aperture or change the shutter speed to ADD more light to come inside the camera to reach the digital sensor. This means that after you take your meter you will open up the aperture (a smaller number) in order to allow more light come in- OR keep whatever your aperture you want and make a longer shutter speed than the "correct".
In practical terms: let's pretend you meter the snow scene and your meters says you should have 1/125 in your shutter speed and f8 in your aperture. If you use that meter, you will have a grey snow. Now let's say you like f/8 for your aperture, and your scene is in shade(sun is not reaching the snow), you should take the picture with f/8 and shutter speed 1/60 or 1/45 for a shady scene. That should give you a "correct" snow, which means the snow will look bright as it is and not "muddy" dark grey. Usually, exposure for snow is about +1 to 1 1/2 f/stops if in shade. For noon pictures in the snow with sun hitting it try +2 or + 2 1/2 even +3!! In digital times, you can play and see what you did, and learn from it!
What about themes?
You can think feelings or you can think photo impact. What is not there but it is suggested...is there. Frozen flowers. Stones. Empty benches. Paths in the park. Quiet sunrises. Frozen lakes. Water. Dead trees. Shadows, shapes, shallow rivers. Horses. Door knobs. Windows. People!
Get yourself a cup of coffee, bundle up, get your equipment. Get inspired, go out and make pictures! It is winter after all!!
Hello my photo friends!
My Canadian friend Kathleen from Canada and I (Moni Caron) are starting 2008 with some fun plans to get our creativity going.
You might have seen online, there are lots of websites with 365 project, the once a day picture kind of thing. We know that it is a very hard to achieve goal, so we brainstormed and figured it would be very nice to have a more achievable project, so we came up with ours.
Instead of committing to take one picture a day to share among our online community, we propose to take on 2 projects a month and share 2 pictures a month, one per project.
Everybody is busy and sometimes life does not allow us to take as many pictures as we would like, but 2 pictures a month is a reachable goal and we will try to inspire. Looking forward to hearing from you and your images!
As we go forward in our projects, we will probably do some studies about self portrait, but for now, any picture you have will be fine.
In order to make the blog to be smooth, we will ask you to follow some rules, posted here:
Our goal is to make us think and go out (or stay in) to take more pictures and be beter photographers. When we commit to something, it makes us a better person, and this i about trying harder to get the picture.
Welcome aboard and let's have some fun making pictures!
Moni and Kathleen
