Day 150 - Indoor portrait experiments

Another photo club meeting activity.  We had to stay indoors because of not-so-nice weather, so decided to use light from different sources to see how the photos turned out.  I have to admit that flash photography is probably not my forte, although I definitely mean to conquer that challenge.  I still prefer the use of ambient light and I hope for my own sake that I learn to use the flash.  Otherwise, winter is going to be a long and boring season with not much to keep me company.

Here are a few before and after shots. I used my on-camera flash at -2 stops to add a little fill light on one, and used a white foam board as a reflector on another.  I was using my 90 mm lens as well, hoping that the f2.8 would help with the low light inside the room we chose to experiment in.

The left frame is with the reflector and the right one is with on-camera flash.

This one was my favourite using just ambient light.  

The photos below are from the photo shoot we did recently with Jim Royal (in the first two pictures below). He was our instructor on how to use reflectors in portraiture.  The location in the first image was a covered area with light shafts coming in through the openings.  We used a silver reflector to catch the sunlight and then used a foam board to catch the reflection bouncing off the silver one to direct it to the face.  This helped soften the strong reflection of the silver one and created a beautiful smooth light.  

The one below was taken with the subject standing with the sun to the right of the camera, and a reflector to the left of the camera.  I didn't really like the yellowish cast which I found too strong, and therefore decided to change this to B&W.  I think I like this much better.

This one was with the subject facing away from the sun, with a reflector held just below the face, outside of camera frame.

Day 146 - Portrait of a duck

I went out with my photo club members to learn about portraiture from a fantastic photog and a friend.   I had to sneak in a duck shot and a shot of the underwater vegetation while he was setting up.  I almost never give up a chance of shooting random stuff and in fact these were the only shots I took of these because I noticed this duck all sleepy and it was being spun around with the water current (see the ripples around it by enlarging the photo)

Since I don't post people shots without their permission, I will have to wait to get it, so I can post a couple of shots from the lesson.  We were basically learning how to bounce off light from one reflector to another to create a soft fill light as well as use another reflector to get a hair light.  Excellent lesson - can't wait to try it out for myself sometime soon.

But for now, here's something different!  I did very little post-processing on these and I'm really surprised to see how well the colours have turned out.  The sky was very blue and the slanting rays of the sun actually hit the plants underwater and I was able to get a good shot without a C-PL.