I used a white reflector to bring light into her eyes here, while her brother helped hold the reflector and peaked around it at her getting her to smile. If you look closely at her eyes you can see the round white reflection in the upper part - the reflection of the reflector. I'm using a 5-in-one collapsible reflector here and chose the white side as it produces a softer light for filling in shadows. You can see the sun is coming from behind and slightly from the side. I am not happy with the patch of light on her hair and cheek in the last three pictures- I normally try to avoid bright patches of sunlight on people. However, she'd just awakened from a nap and I was happy to get something where she was half-way happy and decided to not try to push her into posing elsewhere. She was not interested in my other ideas!
My aperture was f/2.8 here - pretty shallow for my 85mm telephoto lens. Speed was 1/500 second - which is about as slow as I like to be for a moving child.
Here is a photo in color of my son. I had him lean back on the wall in our back yard. The aperture is still f/2.8, but here the speed is 1/250 sec. This is a little slower than I like, and I made sure to take several photos to get the sharpest one. The light is coming from between our house and the wall behind me:
Here is my second daughter posing on her bed. I chose this position as there was direct sunlight coming in from behind her through her pink curtains and I didn't want the direct light on her. From her left is another window with the curtains opened. This is more perfect light as it is coming from the sky, rather than direct sun, is diffuse and softer. I also used the reflector here to lighten the shadow on her right side - but it is not far enough forward to reflect in her eyes. Aperture was f/1.8, with speed at 1/500 second. This is an even shallower depth of field. I shoot primarily in Av mode on my camera - so I set the aperture and the camera adjusts the speed to compensate. I also tend to shoot with evaluative light metering set to +.75 or +1. here it was at +1. One other thing is that in order to get my shutter speed up, I had to raise the ISO in the camera to 1000. Outside I'd had the ISO at 200. ISO originally referred to the sensitivity of the film to light used in cameras. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the film (so it could be used with lower amounts of light), however the film was grainier. When cameras became digital, the camera was designed so that you could change the "ISO" in the camera - so the sensor was more or less sensitive to light. Typically, the higher the ISO, the grainier the picture. However, with the good digital cameras, this has gotten better, and you can pump up the ISO in the camera much higher with great results in the digital cameras than you could with film cameras. The only issue I have with these pictures is that the pink light from behind is quite obvious on her hair! I've left it in this picture as it kind of "surrounds" her in pink - which she loves - as my husband pointed out:
Here she is lying on her bed facing a different direction, with the light coming through the pink curtain to light her face, and the light from the opened window lighting the back and side of her face. I did not use a reflector here. If the curtain was white, it would have been a more pleasing light with the sunlight diffusing through. I also try generally try to look for the light to be brighter on the face than on the back or side of the head. There are exceptions to this though. I had to do some adjusting of white balance in the post processing (I always shoot in RAW format) to tone down the pink. In fact, I always check and work with the color balance in post processing. In this picture, I was at f/1.8, but my speed only at 1/80 second! This is generally too slow with my hand-held camera and a moving child. The eyes are not as sharp as I would like them, but this isn't noticeable unless you really zoom in on the picture. Therefore, I'm still happy with the photo at most sizes it would be printed.
These three I converted to black and white. I have my own process for getting black and white. I developed my own preset in Adobe Lightroom to get it the way I like and I always check it to make sure the photo is bright enough, and the lights and shadows where I like them. These are my favorites from the whole set.
I am planning to post a blog soon to talk about post processing. As a photographer, and an artist, my work with someone's photos only begins with the session. Much of my work is after the session sitting in front of my computer editing and processing every photo extensively to create something I like better. I plan to talk about some of the things I do.
Thanks for looking. Have a lovely Christmas!
