My Little Caitlin, C&C Please

llubnrut

She has just started to understand the whole photo thing and is eager to sit for me and say cheese! Thats in between running towards the camera to see herself in the display. Please give honest C&C, looking to improve enough to attempt a family shoot of our 4 kids in the future.



Cheers Craig

dadwtwins

Inorder to have a great shot compared to a snap shot, one most make there subject matter the only focus for the viewer. Of course the subject matter can be anything but it needs to draw the viewers eyes to the subject you are trying to show.

This picture has a great subject but too many other distractions for the viewer to enjoy your little one. The background takes away everything great about your subject matter. You will need to chose a different background or even better control your Depth of Field to completely blur out the background and keep your subject in focus.

Cropping is also a very handy tool to rid of distractions and keep the viewers attention on the subject at hand.

The absolutely most important thing to remember when doing portrait shots of this type is to have the eyes properly lit and absolutely in focus....I can not stress this part enough. Also, eyes without a "catch light" makes the eyes look hollow and not very lively.

I hope this all makes sense, if not ask away

If it does not, here is your picture without the distractions and a little lighting adjustment.....I hope it is ok that I modified your pic just to show you what I meant in my earlier comments...if not, I will delete immediately.

bendruckerphoto

Two biggest issues here:

-Distracting background
-Harsh, dappled light

MissB

dadwtwins wrote:

Inorder to have a great shot compared to a snap shot, one most make there subject matter the only focus for the viewer. Of course the subject matter can be anything but it needs to draw the viewers eyes to the subject you are trying to show.

This picture has a great subject but too many other distractions for the viewer to enjoy your little one. The background takes away everything great about your subject matter. You will need to chose a different background or even better control your Depth of Field to completely blur out the background and keep your subject in focus.

Cropping is also a very handy tool to rid of distractions and keep the viewers attention on the subject at hand.

The absolutely most important thing to remember when doing portrait shots of this type is to have the eyes properly lit and absolutely in focus....I can not stress this part enough. Also, eyes without a "catch light" makes the eyes look hollow and not very lively.

I hope this all makes sense, if not ask away

If it does not, here is your picture without the distractions and a little lighting adjustment.....I hope it is ok that I modified your pic just to show you what I meant in my earlier comments...if not, I will delete immediately.

ditto! I added an edit too for further suggestion. I will be happy to delete it of course if its a problem:)

it may be a tad brighter than most would prefer.. however i was trying to show a more even lighting.. the shadows around her eyes really dull this image. This is tough time of day to shoot.. the high sun makes me think its about noonish??

try moving your family into some open shade.. and use a larger aperature... that way you can do the portraits in the shade without a flash or harsh light AND get that nice blur.

llubnrut

Thanks for the suggestions and the edits are fine, I don't mind at all. Was actually taken 10am in the morning but I understand fully what you are saying. Need to organize myself more and prepare ahead rather than quickly running for the camera and tripod.

Thanks again.

Danny Bates

Definitely simplify the background - and think about tones that compliment or at least don't clash with the subject's hair and clothing.

Find some shade and only use indirect sunlight, if possible. In my opinion, the best and most commonly available example of beautiful light is inside a garage with the door wide open and the subject sitting 3-5 feet into the shade (inside the garage).

Here's a very basic example, shot inside a garage with a translucent panel placed about 4 ft behind her:



The mouth of a large cave is excellent too - or any kind of tunnel or covered structure where the light falls off gradually. Of course we don't all have caves nearby, but I think the illustration may be helpful.

bendruckerphoto

Danny Bates wrote:

Find some shade and only use indirect sunlight, if possible. In my opinion, the best and most commonly available example of beautiful light is inside a garage with the door wide open and the subject sitting 3-5 feet into the shade (inside the garage).

This may not apply in your situation, but there's a lot of ways you can create a similar effect with strobes and some inexpensive or some fairly expensive modifiers. Obviously a garage is great if you have it, but often we have to create our own light. Here's some ways to do it:

1) A translucent shower curtain with strobe(s) firing into it. This will make a very large, diffused light. If, say, you're doing a portrait with a lot of people and need a little more power and coverage, try using two strobes behind the curtain. Your only expenses (beyond your strobes) will be the shower curtain (cheap) and two light stands and maybe some sandbags to hold it up (around $100).
2) A large octobank or even a large rectangular softbox. If you get a really big softbox, you can create window light. The only problem with this setup is cost. A strobe with enough power to really illuminate one of these could run several hundred and the softbox could be a few hundred as well. Not to mention the cost of either very heavy-duty light stands or C-stands.

I recognize that this was really a candid portrait and so you wouldn't have had time to create a whole elaborate setup. But, in the future, keep these ideas (especially the first) as well as the garage in mind when you really delve into precise portraiture.

Photometric

One way to control this lighting also, is shutter speed. Shooting in broad daylight with a high enough shutter will kill the ambient light, but preserve the light being used with the flash, bringing more of a balanced look.

The Nikon D40 excels at that, since you can do a flash speed sync of 1/500 on it, so you can really tune your exposure.

bendruckerphoto

Photometric wrote:

One way to control this lighting also, is shutter speed. Shooting in broad daylight with a high enough shutter will kill the ambient light, but preserve the light being used with the flash, bringing more of a balanced look.

The Nikon D40 excels at that, since you can do a flash speed sync of 1/500 on it, so you can really tune your exposure.

That will give it an unbalanced, not a balanced look. With a situation like this, you probably want the background 1/2 a stop underexposed. If you totally kill it (2-3 stops underexposed), you'll get the subject-on-black cave look that we try to avoid. You really never want to use a shutter speed of 1/500 indoors with a flash if there's any ambient.