Snow day

[adamhiram]

I seem to always post when I did something wrong rather than when I got everything right, but those tend to be my favorite captures.

I wanted to get a few shots of my son playing in the snow, but I was basically shooting in a blizzard with a toddler who won't stand still for more than a few seconds. I wanted a fast shutter speed to freeze the snowflakes in the air so I just set my ISO to 1600, shot in aperture priority, and figured I would deal with any underexposure caused by the snow in post. I had about 2 minutes until my camera was so wet that weather sealed or not, I was done.

I wound up being underexposed by about 1.5 stops, and I overshot the shutter speed by around 3 stops. A longer lens would have been nice, so I wound up having to crop a bit as well. Basically the culmination of every possible way to add noise to a photo. All that being said, here was the end result - a candid capture of a kid who couldn't be happier to be playing in the snow.


20180307-DSC_6041a by adamhiram, on Flickr

 

[smoke665]

Just a personal observation, but the fence/wall being in such close proximity on both sides seems over powering. To me I prefer a tighter crop.

 

[otherprof]

I seem to always post when I did something wrong rather than when I got everything right, but those tend to be my favorite captures.

I wanted to get a few shots of my son playing in the snow, but I was basically shooting in a blizzard with a toddler who won't stand still for more than a few seconds. I wanted a fast shutter speed to freeze the snowflakes in the air so I just set my ISO to 1600, shot in aperture priority, and figured I would deal with any underexposure caused by the snow in post. I had about 2 minutes until my camera was so wet that weather sealed or not, I was done.

I wound up being underexposed by about 1.5 stops, and I overshot the shutter speed by around 3 stops. A longer lens would have been nice, so I wound up having to crop a bit as well. Basically the culmination of every possible way to add noise to a photo. All that being said, here was the end result - a candid capture of a kid who couldn't be happier to be playing in the snow.


20180307-DSC_6041a by adamhiram, on Flickr

Great memory! I like the photo a lot, but agree with smoke665 about a crop. For me it gets better in 8x10 format, cropped down from the top.

 

[ceemac]

I disagree. I like the crop. It makes your son look like he's up for a big challenge.

 

[adamhiram]

Thanks for the feedback! I actually chose the wider composition for 2 reasons:

• Lately, I've been either shooting tighter shots where context is not important, or wider shots to convey that he's just a little guy in a big world. I liked how the height of the fences conveyed this, and thought they provided some nice leading lines to the subject.
• My settings were so off that I just didn't like the amount of resulting noise in a tighter crop, and didn't like the loss of detail with any noise reduction applied. In this shot, the starting point was 1/3200, ISO 1600, and I had to bring the exposure up by +1.7, effectively making it the equivalent of around ISO 5000 before trying to bring out shadow detail, then cropping it to 1/4 the original size. In hindsight, I would've liked to see a tighter shot as well, but properly exposed and framed. I got a few more shots in after fixing my settings (1/3200, ISO 1600 --> 1/400 ISO 400), but by then they were all of him running away!

 

[zombiesniper]

It's a cute image for the album and an excellent image for photography.

The photographic excellence comes from you more so than the image because you have recognized many detail that could have improved the quality of the final product which I guarantee will pop into your head the next time you shoot a similar situation.

Not every image is about the perfect shot. I have MANY that are good enough to put on Facebook but are better at reminding me what could have been.

 

[smoke665]

he's just a little guy in a big world. I liked how the height of the fences conveyed this, and thought they provided some nice leading lines to the subject.

An equally strong argument for the OP and Artist vision trumps personal opinions anyday!