Week 4: Natural Light :)

Awesome-ness

This week I had an amazing experience photographing my BEAUTIFUL cousin, Allison who is graduating from an awesome special needs school that we have here in the area. I had so much fun on this shoot, partly because I approached it differently, and partly because SHE is simply awesome and I LOVE her!!!

My priority was for her to just enjoy the evening and be natural. We went to the locations, I found where the good lighting was, and I began snapping away "organic" shots of her being her awesome self. My favorite kind of photography :) Capturing natural moments that they didn't even know existed.

Gettn Technical

• I decided to shoot in the lowest (widest) aperture I could because that's my style...the creative blur makes my eyes happy. I just stayed a bit further away from her, and made sure to focus on eyes.  
• Because I was photographing a person, I decided to use spot metering for the entire shoot to see if that worked out better for me, and it did. I found myself not having to spend so much time metering! Yay!!
• Even though I didn't need to, I started off my shoot in ISO 400. This is because I tend to forget I can adjust my ISO (and not just shutter speed) to meter properly. And I get tunnel vision and don't realize it when I'm shooting in too slow of a shutter speed. This worked great for me. And my camera does well in high ISO's.
• ISO is going to be the death of me!! At the end of the shoot, the sun disappeared completely so I was forced to raise my ISO really high up. That was fine, but when we went to the next location for the silhouette shot, I forgot to adjust my ISO back down. Ugh.

Focus Question: When I change my camera setting to AI SERVO, it doesn't show me with the red square where it's focusing. Is that suppose to happen? I ended up not using this mode because I had to see that it was focusing on my subjects eyes.

Theme Of The Week: Organic Beauty :)

1) Side Lit 

f/2.8, 1/1000, 400

2) Back Lit

I discovered this is what I shoot 90% of the time!!

f/2.8, 1/640, 400

3) Front Lit

I had harsh light the entire time I was shooting UNTIL the sun was completely down. And because I was doing more of a photojournalistic shoot and didn't want to give much direction how to stand or look, I waited it out.

f/2.8, 1/125, 400

4) Natural Reflector

I had trouble finding a natural reflector in the area we were shooting. There was a light brown wall that I tried, but it didn't do the job. It sucked in more light than it reflected. She had on a bright white dress during the evening part of the shoot, so that's what I "used". A bit of a stretch :)

f/3.2, 1/250, 1000

5) Back lit Silhouette

When it was sunset time, some clouds wandered in and made it to where my subject almost blended in with the sky. There wasn't much of a contrast to make her pop. Plus I think I accidentally metered off of the part of the sky that had the clouds instead of the really bright part? I also forgot to turn my ISO down for this shot. I still like it though :) 

f/2, 1/2000, 1000