My Daughter- CC

[DavidR]

Hello,
Im a new member here, and am a student taking photography. Im very new to the technical aspects of Photography. Before this last few weeks of class all i knew was snapshots. I look forward to progressing my skills, since i really have come to enjoy it more then i thought i would.

I have an assignment from class, where i have to take several portraits indoors, under window light. These are some shots i took of my daughter,and im interested in some feedback on them.

My daughter is very hard to photograph, probally as most two year olds are, since she doesnt hold still for longer than a split second.

I dont have any photo editing programs yet,(will get soon) but my teacher doesnt want me to use them yet anyways, he wants us to work on getting the picture right with just the camera first. Also have to take pictures in jpeg format for now in the class(will be working with RAW next semester i beleive)

 

[Derrel]

For unedited SOC (straight out of camera) JPEGs, these look pretty good exposure wise. On the first, her fsce is slightly out of focus or OOF as we say. SHot two has perfect focus and lighting. Shot three, "Contemplation of a Pickle End Piece" is cute,and shows good timing at capturing a fleeting expression. The fourth shot is a bit overexposed, which shows up as a brighter-than-normal image, and the slight blurring in her hair in the lower right hand corner tells me that the shutter speed is a bit slow for any movement of the subject at all.

The last shot shows the big, bright catchlights that a window can provide,and comparing shots 4 with 5 shows something called the Inverse Square Law. it's simple,yet complicated, but one thing to note: when shooting with a softbox or a window as one's light source, if the subject is just a FEW inches from the window, the exposure will fluctuate VERY greatly over the distance of only a few inches. if the subject is farther away from the window or softbox, the light's falloff in intensity is much more gradual.

Compare her hands on shot 4--back of the hand is over-exposed and burned out, but the right hand side of the frame is rendered acceptably. On the last photo, her hand and her face are not burned out.

Overall, good shooting for window light and being involved in a class shooting a 2 yar old. My suggestion is to raise your ISO setting a bit more, which will build shutter speed,and give you a little bit more depth of field. ISO 800 is quite useful for this type of shooting with window light. I hope these tips help you a bit.