Portraits of kids

[Susanne]

I take a lot of photos of my kids and would like information on how to improve them. Usually, it's the lighting that bugs me the most. Well, and the fact that my point and shoot is *way* too slow. Anyway, any ideas on how this could have been better?

Thanks!

[ny156uk]

I will say right-off that the pose/lighting on the subjects face looks nice to me. The part that lets it down is the background. I suspect that it will generally be difficult to get a good portrait in a car, but if you could somehow throw the background out of focus it would help (not sure how you do this on P&S, maybe if it has a macro mode).

[wyndhydra]

Susanne,
I love the portrait! That said, I totally agree with ny156uk about the background. Having a slow point and shoot would make that background a problem. Perhaps the best solution for this or others where you can't get distance between your subject and a distracting background would be some photo processing on the good ole computer or make a tighter crop. Depending on software you could use a lens blur in Photoshop or a gaussian blur which should be available in all other photo softwares. Just make sure to not include the girl in the selection when you blur it.

[jiminyClickit]

Susanne,

Forgive the assumption that an example is quicker/clearer than my words. This is a very fine portrait, and can be different in a good way:



You could get this out of camera, next time. Saving this one would take a little editting.

[Tiberius]

As Jiminy said, getting in closer to your subject is always a good idea. fill the frame! Also, try using a relfector. You can see that there are some blown out highlights in this pic, such as on the wrist. The reason for this is because the camera is exposing for the darker areas. A reflector can be used to bounce some light back into those shadows, so the exposure can be closer to that required to avoid the blown out highlights. the reflector can be anything that's a white or silver colour, really. A windscreen sunshade, a piece of white cardboard...

As for getting the background out of focus, the way to do that is to increase the aperture of the lens. On an SLR, this is easily done by using Aperture priority mode and choosing a wide aperture (the lowest number you can). On a point and shoot camera, setting the mode to "Portrait mode" will do the same thing.

If you want to emphasise the background-out-of-focus look, then take a few steps back and then zoom in. Longer focal lengths give more of the effect. A bit hard inside a car though.

[Susanne]

Thank you for the kind words, cropping example and tips!! I'm astounded how much better it looks after you cropped it, jiminy!

[jiminyClickit]

Susanne,

I have to crop most of mine, and take slightly more in a photo so that I can crop in a relaxed mood, with options. Your photo was a pleasure to work with.