I Heart Faces Challenge: Friendship

I am entering the I Heart Faces monthly challenge with this photo of siblings. The theme is friendship. I've been impressed with the quality of the blog posts at I Heart Faces. They are very informative to anyone interested in improving their people photography!

I took this photo a couple of years ago, and even have it printed large (20 inch by 30 inch canvas wrap) in my house. I focused on capturing their hands holding, and in the process also captured their thoughtful faces and the Star Wars themed shirt he wore.  Not only does it capture the friendship between them, but the contrast between who each of them is - her shirt with cat print and his with Star Wars. I took this right before the sun went down, and changed the color in post processing.

My aperture is f/2, speed 1/100s - barely fast enough for catching them with my 85mm lens!

Light and Expression

I typed that title and now I see I could say a lot with those two words. Well, here is just a little bit.

I grabbed a few moments to take some photos of my littlest daughter last night after the sun had set. I could only get enough light outside, but I liked the quality of the light. It was soft, and rather flat, but at a great angle. Lots of open sky makes a gigantic (soft) light source, and with our deck and wall and nearby trees, the light was slightly up, so there was still some shadow cast by her nose and chin. This you do want in the photo as it gives the face shape. (on-camera flash completely flattens a face and washes out shape) I liked it because I wanted to emphasize her eyes and mouth particularly. She will be 17 months tomorrow and often what strikes me so much about her is the way she looks at me and expresses herself. The images ingrained in my mind are her eyes and mouth - conveying her intensity and interest in life.

I intentionally overexposed my images by 2 fstops, while placing her against a white wall. I didn't want to show much texture in the wall and wanted her skin to be soft compared to her features.

Oh, and when I'd say "hi!" to her she would respond with an "-eye" every time.

And sometimes I like monochrome:

Do you see the flour on her dress? Yes, I left it :-). She had found the flour bag when i was cooking and proceeded to pull out handfuls and dump them on the flour. She keeps me hopping, continually trying out something new, exploring, studying....never daydreaming for a moment.

I also looked for other photos as she moved about the deck. The light was fading, and I only could get a couple before we were done. I love this photo. My aperture was f2 (very shallow) which barely kept the front of her and her dress ruffle in focus, as I was quite close to her and was using my 135mm lens. This captures her spirit as well.

I do not leave any photo alone as it comes from the camera. As an artist I do not only look for the image I want in the moment, constantly recomposing and reaching for what I want, I also evaluate every image afterwards, and work with composition and the processing that I feel conveys what is in my mind. And there is another meaning you could draw from the word "expression"!

Here is one last image of her from last week. She was looking out the window at her sisters who were at the neighbor's house, knocking on their door (good friends of ours). Here I was using my 85mm prime lens with an aperture of 2.8 and I only over exposed by 2/3 of a stop. The window gives the  lovely directional soft light.

Albuquerque Sky

I did an engagement photo session a week ago. We went out in the foothills around 7PM, and found the light rather interesting to work with as smoke from the fires in the Gila National Forest have enshrouded Albuquerque. Here is a photo of the western sky! (yes, that is the sun)

And the hopeful blue sky up above:

We got some beautiful silhouette photos as well. I want to share a touch about silhouettes. What I do is figure out what settings my camera needs to have in order to expose the sky correctly first. I set my camera on manual, and adjust the aperture and speed accordingly. I can then focus my camera on my subject and frame and shoot away. The result is a lovely sky that is not over exposed, and detailed silhouettes.


On another note, my husband and I have started a new blog! If you know us, you would know how passionate we are about what good education really should be about. So we've started this blog as a way to chronicle our research and experiences, and hopefully share what we learn with others who are interested. When we talk about education, primarily we are talking about educating children, but good education of children starts with adults who are interested enough to educate themselves. We will be working to keep it updated regularly with articles, and links to valuable/interesting material and other websites, and also use our photographs to augment. :-)

Feel free to follow us at:

( www.educationreimagined.org)

Lastly, we watched the annular eclipse over Albuquerque on May 20th. My husband used a 10 stop neutral density filter over his 100-400 zoom lens, set at 400mm, to take a whole series of photographs as the moon crossed the sun. The kids and I watched the change by looking at the pinhole image on a white piece of foam board (and running over to see what the camera had captured). Here is the final image he took just before the sun went out of site. I love that you can see sun spots!

Mom and Daughters

Sunday I had the chance to take photos of a friend and her daughters. They live in Arizona and were here for just a short time, visiting family. Her husband couldn't come this trip, so we just took photos of the three of them this time. Kara is also a photographer! We had fun taking photos.

The weather was intermittently slightly cloudy with sunny. When I am working with a lot of sun, and with moving targets (children, or even large groups), since I don't have an assistant to hold lights or reflectors, I mainly work to put the sun behind my subjects and light their faces with the open sky. If we can find a nice shady place, even better, but that isn't always possible. With the sun behind, I know my background (and sky) will have to be blown out in order to get their faces lit enough. I over-expose in camera and also adjust it after the fact when I'm processing the photos.

Here are some of my favorites:

 

sun and reflector

I took five minutes to take a few photos of my littlest yesterday, who is now 9 months! On our back porch I used a large foam-board for a reflector to reflect light from the low sun behind her back on her face. I have two large pieces of foam-board (from an art supply store) taped together along the long side. This enabled me to fold it out so it could stand itself (on its side) and reflect light back on her.

 In this one, I decided to include a little flare from the sun. I like the way the sunlight rims her jacket hood and shoulders.

After we returned inside, she was exploring our stairs. I stayed close and took a couple of photos making use of the light from the window that was lighting the side of her face as she looked down at me through the rails from the landing.

Fun times with off-camera flash

I took these yesterday with my little canon camera flash, with a diffuser on it, mounted off camera on a stand to camera right, and a large white reflector to camera left.

I did not mount the flash to point directly at her. Instead, I pointed it at the reflector so to feather the light onto her. The sky was overcast, providing very soft light which was nice but it was still too much overhead, causing "raccoon eyes" (shadows in the eyes). It did provide some highlight on her hair and shoulders, however, so my off-camera flash provided the main light (and the catch lights visible in the upper left side of her eyes). I always tell people to turn off their camera flash and use light from off the camera. When you use the flash on the camera, it flattens your subject (producing almost no visible shadows), and causes the catch lights to be dead center in the pupil (the cause of red-eye - not to mention just not looking great).

When photographing a two or three year old, you have to engage them. She was willing to pose initially, but quickly got bored. I wanted genuine expressions and smiles. I talked with her about her upcoming trip to her grandparents' house and that initiated the excitement in the third picture.

Reflectors

I want to briefly discuss the use of reflectors: some sort of object used to reflect light on to what you are photographing. There are 5-in-1 reflectors on the market that are a diffuser covered by a reversible case. Each side of the case is a different color for a total of four once you've turned the case inside out and re-inserted the diffuser on the round frame. These are relatively inexpensive, and very handy to carry along. But you can also use many other types. There are expensive ones on large collapsible frames (scrim jims) that are useful for providing a larger area of light. You can use a piece of white foam board for a nice white (diffuse) reflection, or even the bottom of a large white box.

So here are some examples. First is an example of using a reflector to bounce extra light onto the already lit side of the subject. I had my husband standing to my right holding a white reflector to lighten the shadows under the eyes, add extra light to the side where the main light came from (the sky) and therefore a bit of contrast (difference between the lit side and dark side), and also add catch lights to the eyes. He had to stand so as to catch the light from the sun and bounce it back onto the subject who was sitting in the shade:

Here she is without the reflector. I had to brighten it more in post processing.

Here is another example. Again in the first, my husband is holding a reflector to my right (adding light to the lighter side, adding catch lights, and lightening the shadows under her eyes):

Here she is without the reflector. The "catch-lights" in the eyes are actually reflections of sunny patches on the sidewalk in front of her. It required a little more editing on my part to brighten up her face.

Here is an example of a photo I took a few years ago with window light. I was following around my two children with a reflector, looking for an opportunity. Here they wanted me to use the reflector as a "roof" and willingly snuggled together to wait. I grabbed the shot and then did as they were expecting. I actually took the photo upside down looking straight down on them, then flipped the photo around later. The window light is lighting them from below, and my gold reflector is reflecting light onto the tops of their heads:

This last shot I also took several years ago with one studio light. A large white foam core (you can pick up at art supply stores) is to my left reflecting light onto the shadow side of their faces. This is called the "fill". The catch light in the upper left of their eyes is from my large softbox.

A simple study of light

I took several photos of some flowers we picked in our backyard yesterday with my iPhone. I just took them for a record so I could possibly work on identifying them with my children. I think they do a good job of demonstrating the effect of light direction.

This first was taken with the camera flash on (coming directly from the iPhone). Notice how it effectively flattens the appearance of the flowers in the water. This might be the look you are after or it might not.
I find it very interesting.

In the next two I simply turned the flash off so that the flowers were lit by the light coming in from the windows to my left. Notice how the flowers appear more dimensional.
But in the first, the large flower is turned away from the light. Notice where your eye is drawn.

In this last one, I turned the large flower to open toward the light.

Sun

A couple evenings ago my daughter was wearing a brightly colored outfit and I asked her if she wanted me to take a picture of her. We grabbed a large piece of lace my children were given for play and she was happy to wrap herself up in it. The sun was low in the sky and I saw this as a good opportunity to get backlighting. As my 2 year old is not going to be still for long, and I had no assistance at the moment, I didn't even try to use a reflector to bounce light back onto her from the front, although this would have been nice. She wanted a photo with our dog (he's old and rather deaf). Once I got his attention and told him to sit, I had to move my daughter so she wasn't between the dog and the camera. I intentionally placed myself so I could see the sun coming through the lace, and I captured the moment before either subject moved on. I wanted a fast shutter speed so any movement from either subject wouldn't cause blurring, so my ISO was set at 800 so I could get a shutter speed of 1/800 second with an aperture of 6.3 (I wanted both of them relatively in focus). I also used evaluative metering, increasing the exposure by 2/3rds of a stop.

Below I decided to make use of flare, which is caused by rays of light hitting the lens. Some photographers use flare a lot. It is a stylistic choice. It used to be that it was something most photographers considered a mistake until some started using it intentionally. It is relatively popular now, although you will find photographers who still really do not like it.

In editing I raised the black point to increase the contrast, warmed the color temperature, and desaturated as well as reduced the vibrance until I liked it.

Here is one with even more flare! There is even a large sunspot where the light directly hit my lens.