Lighting of your subjects from the inside out.

[BillieBear]

Some photographers pictures especially of children the child's eyes are very bright and the whole frame is "lite up". Skin is very light as well but they seem to be lit from the inside out. Its very beautiful and I want to be able to achieve that effect. How do I do that? I have Corel, Adobe photoshop elements 8 as well as lightroom. I use Corel most. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[SusanH1970]

Good lighting and correct exposure in-camera, to start with. Then most portraits really need little post work.

[BillieBear]

What do I do if I don't have the correct exposure and the lighting is not good?

[SusanH1970]

If you shoot in RAW and the exposure is off, you can adjust the exposure using a RAW editor. Not much you can do about poor lighting, though.

[BillieBear]

Its not so much the lighting...its an effect...I know it is. Unfortunately people I have asked are very protective of their editing that they don't want to share.

[SusanH1970]

Can you post a link to an example?

[BillieBear]

Melissa Weicker Photography's Photos - KIDS | Facebook

[SusanH1970]

Flat lit, slightly overexposed (google ETTR), angled so the child has good catchlights, and a bit of post processing.

Here's a photo I took (pardon the hand chop, she moved just as I pressed the shutter, lol) that has a similar look:



EXIF:
Shot in manual, spot metering, used white reflector
Exposure 0.003 sec (1/400)
Aperture f/1.8
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 200


In CS2, I used the patch tool to lighten undereye circles, duplicated the layer, lassoed the eyes, new layer via copy, set to screen mode, then used a black soft brush to erase back in everything but the irises and pupils. Curves layer (slight S curve) for contrast, flattened and saved. The whole edit took maybe a minute or two.

Hope this helps!

[BillieBear]

Thanks you so much. Gives me somewhere to start.