notes from the photog

I thought I would start sharing some "how it was done" info with my shots to keep it interesting. I am definitely still learning photography - and love to share.

I have been reading a book at work called Light: Science and Magic... I am at the part about diffuse and direct reflection. Aunt Shanna's halloween gifts for the kids included a perfect opportunity to try out what I have been reading. She sent these very reflective glasses.
In this picture of Spence, I used my off camera flash shot through a white umbrella.
The only direct reflection seen from the flash is on the rim of the glasses. A fun way to highlight the eyes and glasses.



While this one of Amber put the camera in the family of angles (which means you see the light reflected from the entire surface).

On a different note, but still using the same flash setup... the sunset was coming through part of the closed blinds. So I quickly set up... so quickly that as I was coming down the hallway I hit the wall with my closed umbrella and it jabbed my rib pretty well. Glad it wasn't any sharper. But the sunlight produced quite an orange light. Whereas the flash wasn't as warm. And the ambient light was even cooler. So I decided to shoot with the WB around 3900K.

In this picture of Camille, you can see that the sunlight on her face and hair appears to be the correct temperature, while the rest of the picture looks much cooler. An interesting effect. This can be reproduced artificially with a warming CTO gel over your flash and setting the WB to around 3900. --And yes, that is pizza sauce on Camille's face.


And finally, this one of Spencer was at WB of 3950 with the flash still camera right and the setting sun coming through. I really like the different shades of red/orange in his hair and on his face.

In the past, I have generally shot automatic WB, but one of my goals is to have more control over what temperature I chose while shooting; even though it is so easy to switch WB afterwards in Photoshop.