Alyssa sent this to me just yesterday but it shot to the top of my to-do list because I couldn’t wait to share this little cutie. Alyssa said that her photographer cancelled her session because of illness so she thought she’d give it a shot {pun intended} and I think she did rather well, don’t you? Alyssa wondered if it might mean there’s something in store for her future photography-wise and so I would say this: knowing why an image is awesome and how to recreate it again is goal #1 on your path to studying photography. To me, Alyssa did a lot of things right:
- She faced the baby towards an open light source which lit up her eyes
- She was down on her level. I see these shots a lot, but sometimes they’re shot from too high.
- She utilized a wide aperture to create a depth of field which keeps the baby at the center of our attention. And if she was using an auto-mode like ‘portrait’, I would recommend starting to learn how to shoot in manual if you’re thinking of a long-term goal of learning photography.
A few things that Alyssa could work on next time?
- Being a little more mindful of the background. But the blur was helpful anyway! :)
- Focusing between the eyes to make this image sharper {it’s a bit soft at 100%}
- Composing it in landscape rather than portrait orientation so there would be more possibilities for re-thinking the image in the post-production stage.
This shot took just a tiny bit of editing. I cropped and re-composed the shot and then ran the ‘classic color’ action from Florabella’s Classic Workflow set and sharpened her eyes a little with MCP Action’s Eye Doctor. I then made a duplicate layer, blurred the bottom layer and masked the top layer away at the edges to make a sort of blurred vignette. And that’s it!
EVERYONE KEEP THOSE SHOTS COMIN. SEND YOUR {SHARP & WELL EXPOSED} PHOTOS TO EH@ELIZABETHHALFORD.COM
If your photo has been featured on Reader Photo Friday and you would like to purchase digital copies for printing yourself, please get in touch. Digital files are only $25 each and 100% of these monies goes to Compassion International to help us edit out poverty for our little guy Victor.
