my baby's baby blues- exposure questions

[istephallard]

HI everyone. I'm pretty happy with this shot because I was trying to capture how much my lil guy likes to suck on the tag of his blanky and capture his baby blues (I love his eyes). I feel like I captured this two things but would love some overall feedback. I"ve been focusing on exposure because one of the helpful critiques I received was I tend to overexpose. I think I"m getting better but would love an outside perspective. PLease critique anything that you think would make this a better shot. also, do you think the shadows on the left side of the pic are distracting (the blankets darker and that side of his face is darker b/c of the light source being on his right side) Thanks so much!!!

Canon eos d40, 50 mm iso 800, f 3.2, 1/200 used window lighting with a reflector

[Liz Caldwell]

The exposure looks good to me, and OMG he is ever so cute!

My only suggestion would be this: chins are always more important than foreheads, so if you have to pick one...

[Liz Caldwell]

I should specify... The exposure looks good to me, it's got kinda a high key thing going on... others will likely disagree

[istephallard]

thanks for the feedback. can i ask a silly newbie question, what do you mean by "high key" Im still very new to photography. : )

[mlbagley0712]

Im new in photography also so I really dont know much about the technical views but I love the pic, so cute and I love how the background is blurred and he is the focal point...he is so very cute! Great pic

[Angelclaud]

This is just my opinion, I think that the photo is just itsy teeny weeny overexposed. Especially on the right side, it's kind of losing soome detail a bit. BUT it's really not very significant. I think you definitely captured the two main points you mentioned. I love the sharpness of the main subject and the blurred background. The expression on your son's face is so precious and I love the twinkle in his eyes.

[ChrisAdval]

Originally Posted by istephallard

thanks for the feedback. can i ask a silly newbie question, what do you mean by "high key" Im still very new to photography. : )

has little to no shadows, here's a good link of a tutorial - High Key Portrait Lighting Tutorial

I love the photo and I'm not a real fan of kid photography, just the lighting to me was done very well, but yea its a little bright on the right side but I still love the shot. He kinda looks like that kid from Dexter...



its an old photo, but he's aged on the show and has more hair and looks much more like the subject in your photo.

[NicolaB]

Gorgeous eyes, I agree

You see on his left side, there is a yellowy looking area? That is where your red channel has blown.

There is so much to exposure and it is something I am still trying to grasp, but looking over the zone system should be very beneficial.

Very over simplified but; the camera exposes for zone v. White skin is generally zone vi. Therefore you need to push you exposure up one when shooting in manual. Fine, but you also need to check your histogram as bright light falling on the skin will throw this out (ie a bright spot it will prob be zone vii so the resultant image will be under exposed if you focus on the brightest area - OR as in your case, you will expose perfectly for most of the skin but the bright areas will blow. Does that make sense?

Getting used to looking at where your histogram is will be REALLY useful in cracking your exposure. There is no such thing as a perfect histogram for portraits as the surroundings will make a difference to where your channels should end. This all takes a lot of shooting and a lot of practice, but will be worth it in the end

In the mean time, have you tried pushing up your recovery slider?

hth

[istephallard]

Sorry about the wicked late response. I just realized that I am not sent notifications unless I visit each time and I must have accidentally deleted the first notification... any-who, awesome about Dexter btw. Thanks to the link for high key portrait lighting. I have just been using a window and a reflector (no flash) but I am tackling lighting of all sorts and hope to be diving into learning to use flash as soon as budget allows.

Also, Thanks for the info about the histogram. I am slowly (painfully slowly) learning to read and understand it. I just got a book to go with my editing software so and I will be learning how to correct this on this end of things but hope to understand how to do it in camera in the future.

[ccting]

nice photo..

DOn't buy YN560. I just bought a few units.. and 3 of them handicap...just after a few days/weeks..