Well last night I took my baby on an excursion (again!). The idea was to work out at exactly which point in the skythe sun would be best for evening portraits or at least how it differed as the light changed. I was looking for how it affected my camera and its settings and of course the composition. I started way too early. I had harsh sun, my camera struggled and the sun flare was crazy intense. I managed to semi salvage a few photos. These are a couple.
I will try again tonight.
What makes us human? To me it is the emotions that we feel and the way we convey them to others. That is why I decided to focus on portraits. I love to freeze those beautiful reactions in time. From my perspective, the more you can connect to and feel the emotion you are viewing in my images, the more I feel I have been successful in my job.
By the way, the secret to success with kids aged 3 onward is to just say….. bottom
I love the sparkle.
As a mother I see my beautiful baby. CHEEKY!
As a photographer I can’t help wishing he had moved his chin down ever so slightly to get the best angle.
He LOVES that pillow.
A family affair. My husband and three boys came along. Here is the first location with my very helpful subject.
He felt like he was flying.
It may surprise you to know that babies aren’t always cute, cheeky, happy little cherubs.
What mother has not seen this face?
This face happens daily. It may be because he has had enough of sitting in one place. He may want to be picked up. He may not be able to reach the toy that is tantalisingly just out of reach. He may have tried to move toward it, only to find he went backward! He may… a million things.
He is my son. I cherish this face as much as the others he makes.
I want to remember it when I look back.
I have been studying. A main point that stood out to me as obvious but sometimes overlooked is that the lightest area in a photo is where your attention is drawn. By squinting your eyes you can see those areas more obviously. In a portrait the main focus is most often the face and eyes. This portrait was snapped outside in the garden and it is busy. Busy colour, busy environment. In this instance I felt the environment framed the subject well, but distracted slightly from the face so I decided to make it black and white. I converted it to black and white in Photoshop then identified the colours that needed to be altered slightly to enhance the face region while retaining as much detail as possible and minimise the background. When I felt I found a balance I liked I used a high pass filter with a layer mask to sharpen the outer edges of the face to emphasise them from the background and that was that.
Here is the result. As always with my photography it is a work in progress. I would love to know your thoughts. Particularly any ideas for improvement. My own critique included less contrast to reveal more detail in the face next time. I find it difficult to work that out. Monitors seem to make them varying brightnesses etc. Ah, well, back to the drawing board.
This is out the front of our house. Its as close to the street as my son is allowed to go without supervision. Ever since I Photoshopped him in his cape into a cityscape he has been obsessed with me photographing him as a superhero. That is him being very serious about superheroing. Followed by him being very serious about preventing me photographing him at all by rolling around on the ground. Fortunately it only takes a fraction of a second to get him when he checked to see if I was still watching.
Learning the Light 