I've learned that the very best photographs of children happen when you allow them to play, and follow them with your camera. This little guy was climbing all over the playground equipment, so I crawled beneath him and shot up. I'm amazed that I caught both the smattering of freckles across his nose and the gleam in his eyes, despite the fact that he was backlit and I wasn't using a flash.
Shot with Nikon D200 + 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Nikkor lens; 1/640s at f/5.0 & ISO 200.
As I sat in the stands, waiting for Veronica's 2nd halftime show, it sure felt like I could reach out and touch the moon ... at least, with my camera. I shot this hand-held - as in, without a tripod or monopod - while sitting in the metal stadium bleachers. That is a huge testament to the vibration reduction (VR) feature on my telephoto lens.
I had my camera in manual mode that night, and played with a series of exposure settings. I remember reading that when you're taking pictures of the moon, you don't need to leave the shutter open nearly as long as you think you might. It's such a highly reflective surface, if the camera's meter shows it's going to be underexposed a bit, you're in the right ballpark.
Shot with Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-300mm AF-S VR lens; 1/500s at f/5.6, ISO 800 @ 300mm. And, I repeat - hand-held.
We know this gorgeous family through church, and when they asked me about doing their photos, I was delighted to oblige. The littlest guy wasn't precisely in the mood to have his picture taken, so I kept my camera in continuous-shot mode and we did our best to distract him.
It turns out he was in the mood for the swings, though, so we moved fast and got everyone gathered around him. That's something I've learned recently: if a little one isn't cooperating, find something that makes them happy and then move everyone else into the photo.
Of course, the lighting is better in the first photo - it was a bright, sunny day, and when you're working with an unhappy little guy, you really don't have time to get your diffuser set up - but lighting aside, I still think the second one is a fun photo of this cool family of five.
Both images shot with Nikon D200 and Nikkor 70-300mm AF-S VR lens.
What do you get when you combine a toddler, a slide, and flexible parents? The magical photograph above.
Logan had never been down a "big kid" slide before, so this was a complete experiment. Lucky for us, he loved it.
To capture these, I used a combination of my new zoom lens (Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 with VR and SWF) and my favorite fixed 50mm f/1.4 (which I used for the first photo in this post ... capturing his expression when he got to the bottom of the slide by standing right over him). I should have been shooting in shutter-priority mode, rather than aperture-priority - it would have eliminated the blur you see in his feet above - but I vascillate on whether or not I like the effect.
The one thing I'm sure of, though, is that the trick to dynamic photos of a toddler is finding something they enjoy and allowing them to do it, while you chase them with your lens. Just make sure you're wearing lace-up shoes, and bring a change of clothes. Some of the best shots require kneeling, crawling, or sitting in the dirt.
I'm learning that, when shooting a toddler, one has to be both patient and always at the ready to fire off the camera. This photo was the result of that patience and of being down at Logan's level. I didn't much care where the adults were ... I was following him ... trying to capture the world through his eyes. And even though Chris's face isn't in this photo, I think it manages to capture an aspect of his relationship with his son quite nicely.
Shot with Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 lens, 1/90s at f/5.6 and ISO 200, using natural light on an overcast day.
I love this portrait. Love, love, LOVE it. It's a combination of my slowly-improving photography skills, an awesome lens, and some Photoshop magic.
Here's the original photo, straight out of camera (SOOC):
By itself, it's a pretty good picture. But I used Lightroom to crop it in tight on his face (and rotate it a bit, because I find there's more energy and interest in angled images) and tweak the exposure just a bit.
Then, I took it into Photoshop and used a couple filters to pump it up (Bring On the Eyes from Pioneer Woman Action Set 2 and Bitchin BW from Totally Rad Actions). Finally, I added an "edge burn" layer with a feathered-edge parallelogram rather than a circle to follow the same angle as his eyes.
Voila! Photo to portrait.
Eddie hates my camera. He ducks his head and hides every time I pick it up. But last weekend, when he realized I wasn't using my speedlight, he was much more cooperative. (And having Jim standing over my shoulder getting his attention helped a lot, too.)
These were both shot with my new 50mm 1.4 Nikkor lens (set at f/2.0, using natural light from the nearby door). I may not be entirely sure how to pronounce "bokeh" but I sure know how to shoot it - and this lens creates some of the yummiest effects.
C'mon - when his eyes are in focus, but his nose isn't? That's just cool. Love me some bokeh.
At our Spring 2009 photo shoot a few weeks back, once we'd gotten all the smiles and giggles out of Logan that he was willing to give up that morning, we left him to play with Uncle Jim while I shot a couple couple-shots of Audrey & Chris.
Lesson #1: If you're creative, you can find interesting backgrounds in all sorts of places. As of April 11th, the grass in McKinney was still spotted with the yellow-brown of winter and the trees were mostly naked. The evergreen shrubbery in their front yard, however, was a beautiful green that made for a perfect backdrop.
Lesson #2: Hope for adventurous photo subjects. Audrey and Chris are awesome about this... whether I ask them to climb a wall or a tree or, in this case, to sit in their landscaping ... they're game for just about anything.
Lesson #3: Sometimes it's the photographer who has to be adventurous. Audrey and Chris have a beautiful covered front porch which has awesome indirect lighting in the morning hours. But in order to take this shot, I had to climb through their shrub beds and wedge myself between a bush and their porch railing. Chris didn't cringe too much.
Right now, I'm obsessed with texture, so this photo makes me ridiculously happy - what with the brick and the wood and Audrey's hair and ...
These photos were shot with Audrey's new Nikon D300 and an 18-200mm lens at f/5. Mmmm... it still had that "new camera smell..." Thanks for letting me play with your new toy, girl! I'm trying to fight the camera-envy.
I'm learning that some photographs are just way more interesting when you convert them to black-and-white. The color version of this is all very blah ... her hair and shirt and vest are all the same hues ... but when it goes black and white, suddenly it's all about the textures.
And I also learned that the light in the sandbox, which is under the kid's playhouse, is diffused and gorgeous. Shot with Nikon D200 at 140mm, 1/350s at f/4.5, December 29, 2008.
Recent Comments