Photo Friday

Photo Friday – Lessons Learned

Posted by Michelle on Jan 9, 2009 in Photo Friday, Photography | 1 comment

My sister is my daughter’s godmother (ninang in Tagalog.) We didn’t get any really good photos from The Little Empress’ baptism and we got none of all of TLE and her Ninang. To make up for this, my sister and I took TLE to a local park to take some photos.

Focal length – 50mm
Apeture – F/1.8
Shutter – 1/164
ISO – 100
Equipment: Canon Digital Rebel XTi
Post Processing: Color correction, cropping in Photoshop Elements

This was the first time I shot outdoors. Once we got there, I realized that I was going to have a bit of problem with my white balance. I didn’t know how to compensate for the fact that TLE’s and my sister’s outfits contrasted so much. If I metered off of TLE, my sister was too dark; if I metered off of my sister, TLE appeared blown out. Also not helping was the fact that the sun was MUCH harsher than I had anticipated even though it was pretty late in the day.

Most of my white balance problems probably could have been prevented by bringing either a gray card or just a plain sheet of white paper for my sister to hold up so that I could have used that to set the white balance while I was shooting. DUH. Lesson learned on that one.

Despite some lighting missteps, I’m pretty happy with how this shot came out. TLE is still a bit blown out but I think the image works fine.