My wife and I got to take our two-year-old nephew to the park the other day and I was excited to try and get some good pictures of the little guy. I've loved having my new camera, but because of what's going on in life right now I really haven't had any great opportunities to use it. [Read More...]
I've been quite disappointed lately with how cool my photographs have been coming out when I am taking pictures in the shade. What I finally figured out was to set my white balance to "Shade." I know that sound obvious, but I actually didn't even realize (or forgot I knew) that I had the shade option, only assuming I had "Sunny" and "Cloudy" to flip between in these outside situations.
This was quite an exciting discovering because I was getting a little down at how cool-colored my pictures were coming out using the Auto White Balance. I think the problem is that when you're using Auto WB but are in an outdoor lighting situation with bright sunlight in the background and shade on the subject, the Auto system gets confused. I know this is all pointless anyway when considering editing in RAW leaves the white balance up to me, but I'm glad to know how to better deal with this situation in camera.
Also, I've been working really hard on watching the backgrounds, as I'm always disappointed to see an ugly car in the background or a plant sticking out of the subject's head after the fact. What I learned from this shoot was to watch the foreground as well, because you'll notice that part of the wood wall he is standing behind has a pretty bright sunspot on it. I tried burning it out in Photoshop, but it just made it stand out more. In the end, it's definitely livable, and his cute face definitely takes the focus off the wall, but it's a little something that will always bother me.
This shot was actually somewhat accidental, in that I wasn't completely ready to take the picture. My wife was actually standing over next to him while I was just messing with settings. He started to duck down behind the wall and jump up again, so I just raised the camera to my eye and took the shot (I was using a 50mm prime lens, so I didn't have any zoom capabilities). In the computer, I cropped it and ran a color-boosting action I bought from Leah Profancik which really made this picture work. I look forward to learning how to create my own actions, but for now this works great for me.
So, lessons I learned from this shot:
Set White Balance to "Shade" setting when shooting with a brighter background because the Auto WB seems to get confused and exposes much too cool.
Watch foreground elements as well as background, as the bright spot in the photo is a small distraction.
2 comments:
I think the sunny spot actually works quite nicely in this photo. It's lined up with his chest and head *just enough* that it can almost substitute for the rest of his body visually, which creates a really interesting depth to the picture when at a very quick first glance you see the kid and then you realize you're only seeing part of him, you weren't looking close enough.
I didn't even notice the sun spot on the wood! Your focus is for sure on the little boy's cute face. Good picture.
Post a Comment