Mimicing a thinker....

BlueHoseJacket

Here is a snapshot I took of my daughter before the Georgia Tech football game on Saturday. On our way to the stadium, we noticed that someone had placed a Rat Cap on the stautue of a former Dean. In older days, freshman students were "required" to wear this hat, you wrote the scores to the football game on the hat (winning scores right side up, losing scores upside down), on the back you wrote "To Hell With Georgia" ( our mosted hated rival), on the brim you wrote "Rat" ((freshman were called Rats), your class year and where you were from. Today this tradition is followed by freshmen members of the marching band. Anyway I was taking pictures of the statue and my daughter jumped in the shot and mimiced the statue..the lighting was very harsh at the time and I lnow very little about photoshopping. What do you guys think?

Awais Yaqub

Nice one he looks littel sad

Skippy

BlueHoseJacket wrote:

Here is a snapshot I took of my daughter before the Georgia Tech football game on Saturday. On our way to the stadium, we noticed that someone had placed a Rat Cap on the stautue of a former Dean. In older days, freshman students were "required" to wear this hat, you wrote the scores to the football game on the hat (winning scores right side up, losing scores upside down), on the back you wrote "To Hell With Georgia" ( our mosted hated rival), on the brim you wrote "Rat" ((freshman were called Rats), your class year and where you were from. Today this tradition is followed by freshmen members of the marching band. Anyway I was taking pictures of the statue and my daughter jumped in the shot and mimiced the statue..the lighting was very harsh at the time and I lnow very little about photoshopping. What do you guys think?

Hi there......... he looks like he is listening thinking real hard about something what did she whisper in his ear ??

They look good, but I would have removed the light on the brick wall behind his head in the second shot .......... Skippy (Australia)

Carbon Based

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Nice one he looks littel sad

I think he was thinking of the indignity's that his statue would have to suffer at the hands of future freshman.

pathfinder

Bluehose, you did not know it, but you stepped into a mine field from a lighting stand point.

That dappled lighting of sunlight shining through trees can be a real killer of good portraits. There is no real easy way to fix this after the fact. It is better handled at the time of exposure, firstly by recognition, and moving the subject, or shading the subject, if possible. In the movies they would use a large scrim to diffuse the sunlight and remove the shadows caused by the leaves.

But you could not move the statue, nor could you put up a large 8 x 8 foot scrim. What you could have done though, that would help manage the contrast range, would be to pop up the flash on your digital Rebel and shoot in Av mode with Fill flash.

Fill flash is a great thing to use in sunlit photos with their high contrast. When the camera is set to Av mode, the flash will light the forground subject, and the camera shutter speed ( along with your chosen aperture ) will expose for the background thus helping to remove the dappled shadows. The flash on the Rebel will only synch to about 1/200 or 1/250th so you wil have to be careful what ISO and what shutter speed you choose to use. Fill flash works better with an EOS external flash like the 430ex or the 580ex that has High Speed Synch, so that you can raise the shutter speed higher if you need to.

I have written about fill flash here and here and [URL="http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=47381&highlight=fill+flash']here[/URL] and here

These threads will give you a good introduction to fill flash.

Here is a thread discussing dapled lighting just like you experienced.

Cute daughter too

BlueHoseJacket

Thanks for looking everyone..

Pathfinder..thanks for the information, I will look over your tutorials and see if I can learn anything, but I am really struggling with this photgraphy stuff. I think I should have found another hobby, this is hard.