On the heels of Saturday’s poor photos…

I took this one this morning and I looooooooooooove it.  It is definitely going up on the wall, in a big print.

Ewan at almost 9 months

3 Responses to “On the heels of Saturday’s poor photos…”

  1. Pama Says:

    Just Gorgeous!

  2. Lee Says:

    I love it too.

    I’d like to learn how much of your photos are natural lighting / backdrop vs. post-processing. Care to share a bit about your setup?

    Lee

  3. jen Says:

    Happy to oblige! Most all of it is in-camera. This was shot at f/2.5, 1/400 sec, ISO 500 in my living room. Which as you might remember looks like in this photo – https://jenjordi.org/post/2014/03/11/three-in-a-boat/. For editing, I just cropped, and slightly adjusted the white balance and exposure. Probably should have pulled the highlights down just a tad. To be even more picky, I’d go lighten up the catch-lights too.

    To get this kind of lighting effect I use 45 degree light with him near the window. So in the picture of my living room, he was sitting in front of the slide out toy bins just under the window looking at me sitting on the couch which is not pictured, but is to the right when looking at the photo. The key is that it needs to be really dark behind him, and he needs to be relatively well lit to get the dramatic drop off in shadows even though it wasn’t totally black back there. He graciously let me change angles while looking at me so I could make sure the area behind his head was all shadowed. You can see how dark it is by the front door on the left side of the photo.

    Very different from the effect that I get when he’s sitting in the same spot, but I’m sitting on top of the side out drawers in this set of pictures. https://jenjordi.org/post/2014/02/01/ewan-at-6-months-old/. Then I get flat light and the ugly background creeps in. Similar to the backlighting like the picture of the whole living room.

    The light needs to be non-direct (i.e. the sun isn’t shining right on him directly in the window, but there is light coming in the window). Semi-cloudy days can be great for this kind of light.

    Jordi’s facebook page cover photo, I threw a blanket over the girls bunk beds and had them sit in front of it, and again it’s 45-90 degree light. But that’s the only time I think I’ve used a backdrop that wasn’t already there.

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