Posts Tagged ‘photo tips’
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!
digital portrait lighting © Tim Pannell Photography
Where do you start when you want to help people take better photographs of their children?
I remember when I started out taking pictures when I was in High School I knew absolutely nothing. I was a blank slate. I had nothing.
I had friends that had been taking pictures for years, so I relied heavily on them to show me the ropes. Them and whatever crappy photo books I could get my hands on at the time.
I learned your basics about exposure, f stops, shutter speeds, lens choices and that was about it.
I shot scenics and some pictures (lousy ones) of my girlfriend at the time. When I look back I’m completely embarrassed at how bad my stuff
Portrait Lighting Setup
was at the time.
My lens choices were crap, my angles were all wrong and even my exposures could have been tidied up a bit.
I didn’t know anything about cropping, but mostly I didn’t know a thing about light or the quality of light.
I didn’t realize at the time just how important great light is to an image. That’s really what separates the men from the boys. LIGHT!
My friends did the best they could. they taught me everything they knew. They got their info from other friends and other crappy photo books that were available.
I’m gonna skip ahead a few years. Suffice it to say that I really enjoyed photography, but had yet to be exposed to anything that really helped me a lot.
I decided to turn pro when I was in college for Design Engineering and Economics. I was going to go on and get an Architect’s license after that.
I had about a year left and made a huge change in direction when I decided out of the blue that I really just wanted to be a photographer.
I started out shooting weddings and engagement portraits. It was fun for about a week or two and then it started getting really repetitive and boring.
I began pouring through commercial photography books, Communication Arts, Photography Showcase and the Black Book of Photography.
I would spend weeks and even months going over the images in those books one by one, identifying all the images I liked and then trying to understand what it was I liked about them.
This is when I really started to learn about the importance of great light. I would then pick an image that I loved and then I’d go out and do my best to reproduce that image.
This wasn’t for my portfolio, it was just an exercise to learn about lighting. I set about to learn what kind of photography moved me so consequently I would know what avenue of photography to pursue.
So, ask yourself, what kind of photographs have you seen that you really like? Have you actually seen great photography of kids?
Do you like images that look like classic portraiture or do you like images that have more of an editorial feel? Do you prefer images that lean a bit more towards a commercial look?
Maybe you like a little bit of everything and that’s fine too. The more you play with photography, the more you’ll come to recognize your particular vision and way of seeing things. This is the fun part!!
As you learn how to apply different photographic principles to your images, you’ll be able to see photographs and figure out how to go about producing those types of images. That’s at least the ultimate goal.
Seek out great photography, learn all of the child photography tips you can get your hands on, get yourself a target to aim at and let the adventure and fun begin.
