Today, I had my first “photo shoot.” My personal trainer asked me to take her baby’s six month pictures. I prepared by asking a friend, who is learning baby photography, about appropriate settings and what to expect. I bought a bounce flash contraption and some reflectors to use to enhance the lighting. I practiced muting the intensity of my flash, hoping there would be a large window to allow enough natural light to avoid using direct flash. As it happened, we shot outside. . . at noon. The sun was intense, even in January, and everything I’ve read and been told is that you just can’t shoot outside at noon and expect to get any results. I took 273 photos in about an hour. There were a couple of people there so I had one person hold the reflector so I could get more light on Faith’s face. Then, when I changed sides, I used it to block the sun. It was a challenge; lots of photos were blown out, overexposed beyond repair. I shot mostly closeups and learned first hand about the warnings I’d been given that if you use too large an aperture, one eye will be in focus and the other will be out of focus. In the end, though, I got some great shots from a precious model. I love three things about this photo: 1) the shallow depth of field, 2) that I managed to get both her eyes in focus, and 3) the drool. One of my photographic quests is getting the perfect water drop. I realize saliva is a little more viscous than water, but I’m claiming the water drop in this photo. Faith’s mom gave me permission to post this photo.
18-200 lens at 52mm
ISO 200
f/5
1/200
These are beautiful, beautiful, BEAUTIFUL! Excellent job with composition, focus, and skin tones! Baby Faith’s family will LOVE these! I zoomed in and I can see your reflection in the perfectly focused eyes! Wow!
Thank you. I was amazed that such tiny adjustments resulted in out of focus eyes. This was a real challenge for me, especially since we ended up shooting outside at noon. But Faith is a precious baby and after all, between the perfect model AND 273 tries, a few had to turn out!