Generations: Test Shoot 1

A big family outing to chase water turned out to be very fruitful for shooting pictures of my nephews.  I took along my camera and the idea was to shoot them in unstaged photographs just running about and doing as children do. 

I've decided to include one of the best shots of the day and also a shot that didn't turn out to be a great composition and isn't great technically but is still one of my favourites because of what it captured.

The equipment I used was a Canon 1000d slr, Canon Efs 18-55mm lens which is the standard kit lens I got with my camera.  I also had a Hoya polarising filter attached to the lens but at this point I had no idea what it was or how to use it.



Strong Cas                                                                      f/3.5   1/200sec   ISO-100

Casper picked up this log above his head and threw it.  Being a little slow I missed the shot but he kindly did it again for me.  I love the expression on his face, like an Olympic weight lifter.

I used the wide angle of my lens to try and capture the scale of the log and distort perspective slightly.  The camera was slanted to add drama and make it a more pleasing image over all.  I also noticed Richard and Daisy in the back ground and thought it would be nice to include them in the shot so I put Casper to the left hand side of the frame.  I have since cropped the picture to leave out some of the path that was on the left which has bought Casper back to the center.  The wide aperture was used to slightly blur the background and although I wanted Richard and Daisy in the photograph it kept Casper as the focal point.

Apart from cropping the image I also edited the colours and contrast of the image by using Image>New Adjustment Layer>Curves.  An 'S' curve increased the contrast by lightening the highlights and darkening the shadows.  To finish off the image I sharpened it a little using unsharp mask, although I am yet to perfect using this tool.

I am really happy with this image, I think it captures generations well especially with father and daughter in the background.  I think it is a strong composition and exposed well.

f/5.6   1/125sec   ISO-100

This image is one of my favourite from the day but is riddled with technical problems.  It is an unstaged shot which perfectly captures the relationship Gabriel has with his father.  I also like the way Jack is looking over his shoulder.

Anyway a long list of problems, To start with the light fooled my cameras meter and it exposed Jack quite well but underexposed poor little Gabriel leaving him in a very strong dark shadow.  I have fixed this the best I can using Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Exposure.  I then used the slider to adjust the exposure until Gabriel's face was exposed reasonably well.  Obviously this resulted in Jack being way over exposed so I used Edit>Fill and then painted in the exposure on Gabriel's face and shirt using the brush.  The result was that Gabriel was no longer in a deep shadow and the image was a lot better.

The image itself isn't very sharp at all and the overall quality is poor.  I tried to rectify this as best as possible using unsharp mask but sadly I couldn't improve it much at all.

Also the composition is rather poor and spoils the picture even further.  A distracting background with a head floating around is really disappointing.  I tried blurring it even more but wish I'd have used a wider aperture.  I could have waited until the background was clear but I may have missed the shot and to be honest I really wasn't thinking of the background at the time.

To enhance the contrast I used curves in a separate layer.

As you can imagine the un edited picture was in bad shape and although photoshop couldn't work miracles it certainly saved it from complete doom.

I feel like overall the day was a success because I have some lovely images and I have developed my skills using the camera and in photoshop.  I would like to be getting almost everything right inside the camera and only have to use photoshop for tweaking.  I also think I did well using the cameras flash to fill in shadows caused by the strong sun but a lot of this was down to luck rather than judgement.  Working with children was quite difficult but they were happy to take some direction when I needed something specific and it was a real joy to work with them.