Toddler C&C Welcome

[form3hide]

Two shots I took over the weekend of a friend's toddler

 

[MohaimenK]

1st one is out of focus so is the 2nd one. Try to capture the entire subject in focus leaving the background out of focus
But LOVE the expression on the first photo! Great catch!

 

[form3hide]

I think I'm struggling with the whole entire subject in focus thing

 

[MohaimenK]

raise shutter speed and play with the f/stop

 

[MohaimenK]

Here is a good article on it

Understand what is Aperture in photographic basic

 

[myfotoguy]

Welcome to TPF!

What settings were you at? In addition to shutter speed and f/stop you may need to supplement with flash depending on your lens. Also, if you are using auto area focus that can sometimes choose wrong verses selecting the focus point yourself.

Typically for perople lock on the eyes, in low light, and again depending on the lens and camera settings you may get an image that is out of focus because the camera had trouble locking on.

Just some ideas.

 

[OrionsByte]

Shooting toddlers indoors, with no flash, is always going to be hard. You either have to use a wide-open aperture, meaning the whole subject will likely not be in focus, or you have to use a longer shutter speed (and a tripod), but since toddlers are rarely still even for 1/10th of a second, you're going to end up with motion blur.

I like the 2nd one other than the fact that you cut off his foot - I think the B&W edit works well and the composition is pretty good. Might have been better as a landscape-oriented shot, but I don't know what else was in the room, so you may have been intentionally avoiding something that would have been visually distracting.

The 1st one... I really don't like that there's a shadow, albeit a very soft one, that falls across the bottom half of his face and his left arm. I don't like the corner in the background either. I love his expression though, so I think for his parents that's definitely a keeper (they both are!), but for a purely technical standpoint I think there are a couple things you could work on (just like the rest of us).

So yeah, in the future, find more light so you can stop down the aperture and get some more depth-of-field, and make sure you get the whole kid in frame as well.