Man...kids are fast
I looking forward to my next assignment for myself...but I've run into my first and biggest obstacle. I may be one of the first photographers to try to break into children portrait photography without actually having any kids of my own. Thus, this makes my chances at practicing very limited and few between. I'll have to plan ahead and borrow "kids" whenever I get the chance. My next targets threw me for a loop when they decided to take their three kiddies on a two week trip to Florida. They stopped by to pick up something this morning. I ran over to say hi and swung the back door open. There was sweet little "Lala" sittin in her car seat
Me: Why so sad?
Momma: She hates her carseat.
How can you turn down those sad eyes? I set her loose and decided this proved to be "challenge." So, I'm not real happy with the pictures I took but I grabbed my camera and ran after her.
Challenge #1: Little kids are fast
I've practiced action photos in flag football games before but this little girl operates at warp speed, a velocity that no known adult can possibly reach. I must have deleted 70% of my photos because she was nothing but a rosy-cheeked blur.
Solution: I also realized that my camera has a tendency to "best focus" and it catches the doorway and steps in perfect detail but not my little buttercup. I figured out how to change the focus to "spot focus" where it focuses on just a certain preset spot, a setting I'm much more comfortable with. Unfortunately, this breakthrough came well after the Del family had left. I will also have to just learn to up the shutterspeed. There's nothing worse than a beautiful crisp picture with one of their little hands blurred.
Challenge #2: I don't seem to inspire a lot of smiling
I read Audrey Woulard's blog and she says she just talks non-stop to the children and gabs away until they forget about the camera. I tried that trick but it takes way too much skill to double task like that. Plus, I don't think this applies very well when your subject is only two and doesn't seem to understand most of the garble coming out of my mouth...and what she might have understood didn't really interest her. She was a little pre-occupied with more important issues...like the fact that she only had two minutes to try on all of the fifteen pair of slippers that we have on our doorstep.
Challenge 3: Sometimes, closer is as good as it gets
I read a lot of photographers who say that "light is the key to great pictures." So, I've been trying to watch our yard over the past couple days and study what the colors of the foilage look like at different times of the day. This was complicated by the forty days and nights of rain that seems to be storming in our backyard. But, when Lala was running in and out of our house, she hit the jackpot of "light" in our front doorstep...it lit her profile up beautifully and I screamed out "eureka, stay there." And, not surprisingly, she ran right past the beautiful spotlight to the dark corner with all the pretty rubba slippahs.
"look at me...look over here...yoohoo...hui....manong"
I tried it all and I ended up with exactly one picture where she's looking at me...and she's blurry in it. Aargh. Who could blame her? Who wants to look at auntie with a black camera where her head used to be? I have to compete with objects much more deserving of fascination. Even when I could catch her eye, as soon as I raise the camera up...oh, eye contact broken...and she's gone.
(I used a new layer "overlay" and painted the lower red with warm reds to darken, I also added a "lens effect" filter)
Solution: I've decided I will have to paint a realistic image of my face on the camera. Trickery is always best.
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