Billy The Kid

We were at a friend's house out on a farm for the afternoon and I wanted to take some pictures of their youngest son doing "farm things." He was wearing a shirt with some distracting text on it so I suggested he go put on a white A-shirt. His mom was aware that I was going to take his picture, but she did not know I had asked him to change his shirt. Apparently it was a much more difficult task than I had imagined. Apparently I have forgotten about being eleven. [Read More...]

I really figured it'd be easy: farm boy with an A-shirt just seemed to go hand-in-hand in my mind. Well he looked all over for one, then asked his mom to come help, then she couldn't find one (wasn't sure he even had one), then they were both asking me what I wanted instead, and we finally settled on the shirt he's wearing in this picture. What was just a casual comment from me trying to get rid of a distracting shirt turned into a ten minute ordeal. It was pretty funny.

This little boy basically had one look, and so I had to get creative to get him to change it up a bit. A lot of times I would make jokes, but he wouldn't crack a smile until after he heard the shutter. After I noticed that I began shooting multiple frames in a row, so I could catch the different facial expressions. He also defaulted to just one posture, so I would say, "Look at the tractor!" or, "Look down at my feet!" or, "Look at the goats!" It was the only way I could get him to move his body around. It was definitely a good learning experience.

I got a lot of shots from the thirty minutes or so that we were outside, but this one is by far my favorite. This session was somewhat of a turning point for me. I think for the first time that I started to trust my metering more than what I could see on the screen. Because it was so bright outside, every picture seemed poorly exposed, but I just kept moving. My biggest struggle right now is being able to recognize the light and colors in a scene and how they will affect a given metering mode. I need to get better at that.

ABOUT THIS PHOTO: Canon Rebel XSi (450D), 50mm, f2.8, 1/2000, ISO 200.