Posts Tagged ‘depth of field’
Elle - Final © Tim Pannell Photography
I was setting up to take some “birthday party” pictures for a self assigned stock photo shoot. It happened to be the day after Valentine’s Day and we had these balloons sitting around so I decided to do a little lighting test with “Baby Elle” my first victim that day.
She’s absolutely adorable and a great sport, especially when you consider how young she is. Her mom is a really good photographer in her own right so Elle is used to “photographic abuse“.
I never show outtakes of images from a shoot, it’s almost like sharing how to do a magic trick, but since this is about instruction……here goes.
This image was taken under my covered patio. It gave me some
Elle - 01 © Tim Pannell Photography
nice open shade and it also allowed me to lighten up the background considerably so that it wouldn’t compete with my subject.
My backyard, which is the background, was lit by direct sunlight so when I
opened up the lens to correctly expose my subject who was in open shade, it naturally overexposed the background until it became almost white.
Photo image – Elle-01 shows what the background looked like
shooting from my perspective instead of being at Elle’s height. The background is way too busy for my taste as I prefer my backgrounds to be non competitive with my subject.
Photo image – Elle-02 shows what happens when I don’t change my perspective, but alter the crop. I like the crop of this image better. The strobes aren’t exactly firing the way I want in these
Elle - 02 © Tim Pannell Photography
first 2 images so the light is not quite what I like.
Elle-03 shows the image with the cropping I will use, but without any strobes firing. You can also notice that I got a lot lower on the ground so that I minimized all the extra clutter from the backyard in the previous 2 images. You can see reflections of the strobes and me in many of the mylar balloons.
Once I was ready to shoot I had the balloons turned to minimize the reflections as much as possible. My expectation was that I would have to do a little photoshop work on the image to get rid of some of the unwanted reflections.
The final image shows how everything came together. I shot this at f2.8 and 1/250th of a second. I had a strobe left of camera shooting through a white sheet as well as a strobe right of the camera and behind Elle to give her a little highlight from that side.
The background is nice and soft, but with a bit more interest than just a white seamless background. I like the eyes looking up,
Elle - 03 © Tim Pannell Photography
but not too much. And, as often is the case I went with an image that wasn’t just a big smiley face. I find the “say cheese” images that are so prevalent very hard to look at for an extended period of time.
Tip #1 – Open up that f-stop, keep the background soft.
Tip #2 - Shoot from your subject’s level, try not to shoot down on kids.
Tip #3 - Use lighting to accentuate your images, make them interesting….nice shadows, nice highlights, some directional quality.
Tip #4 - Don’t over-direct. Try letting the child do her own thing.
Tip #5 – K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Stupid – One of my art director’s favorite lines.
In any case, Elle’s her typical adorable self….she’s a teency little superstar!
