Playing Dress Up

[cmarie87]

Just wanted to share My oldest daughter loves dressing up in old recital costumes. Sorry for the awful crop. It is rare for me to capture a good shot of her. She hates the camera! So I cropped out toys on the floor. CC is always welcome!

Canon xsi
50mm 1.8
Iso 100
f/1.8
SS 1/200

Temp/fill light/black adjustment on RAW

 

[Designer]

Pose not too bad, but your light was quite low.

 

[vipgraphx]

You missed focus, Pose I'm not fond of, looks like she lost her balance and reached for that black whatever to help her from falling. I don't mind when kids or people are not looking into the camera, I am actually quite fond of that look.

lighting is not to bad, no harsh shadows.

 

[cmarie87]

Thank you both for your opinion. There is a french door camera left letting in 11am sun, the blinds were cracked and I had pinned a white bed sheet over the doors to help diffuse the light.

I'm not entirely ok with the pose, leaning on the shelf, but beggers can't be choosers. Since it's rare for her to want to be in front of the camera, I'll take it!

How would you have focused? I always focus on the subject's eyes.

Thanks again!

 

[robbins.photo]

Well the eyes are probably the best focal point but in this case your DOF (depth of field) is probably the issue - since this was shot wide open at 1.8 you have a very narrow depth of field and she's turned at an angle to the cameras plane of focus it causes the focus to fall off quickly. You can increase the DOF by stopping down the lens just a bit (decreasing the aperture) and it should improve shots like this quite a bit.

 

[cmarie87]

Oh I will keep that in mind for the next time I have the opportunity to shoot similarly. Thanks! When shooting against that wall, I've made a habit of shooting wide open to hide flaws. I don't particularly love post processing and try to do as little as possible. I would rather a focused subject, though!

 

[robbins.photo]

Oh I will keep that in mind for the next time I have the opportunity to shoot similarly. Thanks! When shooting against that wall, I've made a habit of shooting wide open to hide flaws. I don't particularly love post processing and try to do as little as possible. I would rather a focused subject, though!

If you can get her to move a little further away from the wall you can stop down the lens a bit more and the wall will still remain out of focus even with the increased DOF. I know it can be a little difficult with an uncooperative subject but might be worth a try.. lol. If nothing else, I've found a good bribe usually does the trick