My Son On A Bench

Hi all-

I don't have a lot of experience shooting people so please feel free to comment.

This was taken with my Canon XS

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/erikacartner/5​914042660/

You need to learn to "see" shadows on faces, so you can do what you need to do to avoid it. when you took this shot, his eyes were in dark shadow and either you didn't see it, or you saw it and thought it didn't matter. If it DOESN'T matter to you, then ok. However, if your goal is to take beautifully exposed photographs, you need to learn to watch for that sort of thing.

If this was just a casual outing and you saw a moment and just snapped it, that's one thing. If you went out with the intention of taking a nice portrait of a cute little boy that is another and I'm going to assume that was the case. There are a few things you could have done to eliminate that raccoon eye problem:

You could shoot at a time of day when the sun is not overhead and so strong. Early day or late day light is much better.

You could shoot on a day when the sky is slightly overcast. nature's perfect softbox.

You could put the subject in open shade. What you see there in the background is NOT open shade, that is too dark to be much good without flash.

You could put the subject in the shade and use flash.

You could turn your subject so he isn't facing the sun but the sun is backlighting his hair. You might have to add some flash or reflect some light back on to the face with a piece of white foamcore or a reflector, but that assumes a level of effort you might not have been interested in.

I said all that to say this: what you are minimally hoping to achieve with a good portrait is that at least the light is somewhat even and consistent on the subject. Learn to "see" the light as your camera is going to be seeing it. Notice that his nose is lit up like a christmas tree, while his eyes are in shadow.

On the plus side, you have his placed to the left of the frame, which is much more visually interesting than dead center. Centering has its place, but in this case, this is better. Another good thing is that you've blurred the background, which is good because it isn't the best of backgrounds. Our eyes will always be drawn to the brightest parts of an image, and that background steals our eyes away and the bright spots are visually distracting. He has a very cute expression and I love his chubby little hands clapping, very cute! Just learn to pay attention to the light and shadow and you are on your way!

Great tips Sue

Sue-

Thank you for the advice. In this case, it truly was a situation where he climbed up on the bench himself and began applauding himself for the accomplishment. So I just wanted to capture it quickly but I hadn't really thought about the shadows on his eyes.

That is something I will be aware of in the future when I am able to pose subjects for portrait photos.

Patrick