This week I was challenged to try portraits with props. I thought about how I would pull this off. I don’t really have any other models, besides my babies. Which lets face, they are pretty models. But I wanted to try something new and different, and hopefully learn something along the way also. Then it hit me, one of the blogs I follow (Bower Power) has a tutorial under her photography tab about creating a white backdrop (you can read it here). I’ve always LOVED her technique and thought it was brilliant of her to use a sheet and take the pictures outside, yet they look like studio portraits. I also wanted to make sure that I stayed along with this week's challenge of using a prop in a portrait. I’ve been working on learning my nifty fifty lens and I’m making myself NOT take it off my camera until I feel better about using it. But I also have been wanting to start seasonal “photo shoots” of the babies. So this week’s challenge just happened to tie all three together, at least I thought it was a perfect opportunity! So here’s what went down.
To the back yard we went. I had two chairs, Stitch stuffed animal, my tripod and camera, a crop (stool), and two different “sheets”. Ok, time for the truth, I don’t own a white sheet or even off white, so I just used fabric I had in my sewing stuff. I also wanted to try something different so I took burlap with me to see how that would look. I looked for the shade to begin with, but wasn’t loving my pics, then moved to the sun and realized that the shadows were terrible so moved back to the shade. I don’t know about you other photographers out there, but I cannot NO MATTER WHAT, tell exactly what my pictures looks like by looking at my LCD screen. In fact, in most cases I don’t look at it anymore because it ticks me off and I get frustrated…so I just wait til I get the pictures into photoshop to edit and analyze them. I wish I could use the screen on the camera because I know I cold improve my pictures…anyway back to my portraits!
At first the babies were game for sitting on the sheet and letting me snap a few. That lasted about thirty seconds, then it was time to play. Mommy’s sheets, chairs, and tripod were quickly boring to them.
Stitch was the perfect model to practice settings on. I placed him where I would place the babies (my subject) and got busy tweaking my aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. When I finally got the settings close to what I wanted I begged a baby to replace Stitch.
Baby girl was the first one to pop in but she wanted Stitch in the picture with her. We snapped a few and she was done. I had a few things to tweak still.
So I set my timer and I popped in.
After I sat down, then the babies wanted to join me.
The whole time I was trying to get little man’s picture, baby girl kept playing peeping Tom.
I wasn’t digging the white, and I wanted to use my prop so I switched it for the burlap. I love the ones with the burlap.
I didn’t have enough room to have the babies sitting on the chair so I told them to “rest” on it…haha and this is what we got! Hey, they are toddlers I guess this is pretty good considering!
My favorite of the day!
So there is my attempt at the “portraits with prop” challenge, a somewhat fall photo shoot (yes I will have a re-do of this) and testing out the DIY White Sheet Backdrop. I may not have gotten the best pictures but I did learn a good bit!
*Toddlers will only look at the camera when they want
*I much rather have pictures taken "actions” instead of “posed”
*A shaded spot outside with good light is better than direct sun
*My lens can go as low as f1.8, but I prefer to stay around 2.8 or 3.5
*I need to work on my depth of field because I’m not happy with the amount of blur in my pictures
*I LOVE my photoshop. I learned about saturation, and layer masks from this challenge and the Bower Power tutorial.
I’m really enjoying these challenges and each week I learn a little more, I hope to continue them in hopes of really improving my photography!
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