Today I took photos of Faith who will be turning two next month and who needed photos for her party invitations. She is all decked out in a dress made to look like Jessie, Faith’s favorite Toy Story character. Her mother is my friend and personal trainer Noelle. Our photo shoot started at 5 PM and the sun was harsh and beating down on us. I found a shady spot near the goats and started shooting there. I tried to keep in mind all of the lessons from my photography class and made a mental list of things I needed to do for a portrait shoot. I made sure I set up the camera ahead of time so I could just worry about evaluating the scene and deciding on the best locations with the best lighting conditions. Everything went wrong quickly when I inadvertently changed a setting on my camera that set up complete auto focus, a setting I have never used on my Nikon D800 and which I was powerless to modify. I had absolutely no control over which focus points were operative and as a result, about half my shots were not properly focused. I have come to the conclusion that I need to become a hermit and spend about a week with my camera learning every nuance and do absolutely nothing else. I still have not been able to reset the focus so that I can tell the camera where to focus. Shooting a rambunctious two year old is very challenging and I got as many shots of her back as I got of her front, so focus was not my only issue. Despite my faux pas, I did manage to capture a few adorable shots of Faith.
As usual, when I’m shooting Faith, I take lots of photos. Today I took 348 shots and as I mentioned above, many are not usable because of focus issues. I still haven’t evaluated all of the shots and I haven’t settled on which of the shots to use for her “Wanted” poster birthday invitations. It won’t be any of these but I liked these shots from the shoot today. I started using Manual Mode and changed to Aperture Priority. The lighting was a challenge and even though I found areas of nice, indirect light, and managed to get some really nice shots, these shots were made in dappled shade but I really liked them.
Here’s Faith feeding carrots to a pair of goats through the fence:
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/200
WB Sunny
Manual Mode
SOOC
And, Faith was adorable in her hat:
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/3.5
1/125
WB Sunny
Aperture Priority
SOOC
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/3.5
1/125
WB Sunny
Aperture Priority
SOOC
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/3.5
1/320
WB Sunny
Aperture Priority
SOOC
Wow she’s cute!!! You did get some really cute shots- especially the third one! And I love the one from the back too. Nice comp! You are venturing into off center placement! What in the world is complete autofocus??? Is that a D800 thing or do I have that too? Job well done – especialyl with the lighting situation and the autofocus problems!