Well, I have spent Easter break taking some shots of my best friends son, Cooper. I wanted to experiment with exposure (yet again since it seems to be my nemesis) and ISO settings. I am beginning to understand the importance of Aperture, Speed and ISO in manual photography, especially in low level light, indoors and you do not want to use a flash.
I hate the flash on the camera; it's harsh and not flattering. The type of portraiture work I like doing is candid shots, where the subject goes about doing what they want to do and I am there taking shots of them. It is better if they are unaware that I am there at all. The flash I have can ruin this aesthetic.
Instead I opted to play around with the ISO settings. I bumped the ISO up to 800. This means that the sensor in my camera is more sensitive to light; therefore it takes less light to expose the image onto the sensor. I also adjusted for a wide aperture - f3.5 - f4. This means that the aperture is open as wide as possible so more light can fall onto the sensor when the shutter is open.
Because I was shooting Cooper indoors in very low light, the camera (under normal circumstances) would want me to set it at a slow shutter speed. This is because it needs more time to expose the images. Because I didn’t want to use a tripod and I needed to twist and turn myself into positions to get the right shot, I bumped up the ISO to 800 and widened the aperture in a hope that the camera would allow me to use faster speeds and expose the image correctly.
I was fortunate that by upping the ISO and opening the aperture, the camera allowed me to have a faster shutter speed, therefore I could hold it and take an image without it blurring from my hand movements. It also exposed the images correctly - or near enough: D
I got some great close up candid shots of mummy and baby breastfeeding and playing. Though just by looking at the pic, what separates mine from a professional shot....one word! Photoshop
I had a bit of a play around with some of the close up pics of Cooper. I used a tip I found in a Photography mag to create these shots - I will try to explain the best way I can, since I don’t have the mag with me.
I went into the Image menu - adjust - Channels and kept the RGB Red at 100%, Blue 0% and Green at 0% and ticked the boxes for monochrome. This changes the picture to a warm black and white.
I right clicked on the layer and selected the copy background option. This makes a new layer.
Make sure the new layer is selected and then use the pen tool, wand or selection tool to select an area. For my images I selected the background area and left the face of Cooper un selected.
On the layers palette select masks option - it’s a button at the bottom of the layer window.
In the filters menu choose Blur - Gaussian blur and set it at around 15px. This had in my image blurred the background that I selected. It gives a soft, blur feel.
I then choose the image menu - Adjust-curves and I mess around with the highlights and mid tones to add a glow type of effect to the images.
